Monday, January 18, 2010

Blessed are the Snipers, for they shall Hit the Center of Mass

This is sweet. Turns out that this outfit is adding little Bible verse citations to the end of the serial numbers to the weapon sights they supply the U.S. Army.
"Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. The company's vision is described on its Web site: "Guided by our values, we endeavor to have our products used wherever precision aiming solutions are required to protect individual freedom."
"We believe that America is great when its people are good," says the Web site. "This goodness has been based on Biblical standards throughout our history, and we will strive to follow those morals."
Because nothing - nothing - says "Blessed are the peacemakers" like a full metal jacketed round right through the fucking forehead.

15 comments:

  1. Well...there it is.
    /facepalm
    Well, I guess it's better than...

    "Blessed are the skirmishers, for they are the ones the Snipers ignore.
    But woe unto you who points, and gesticulates too much on the battle-fields, for it is you who will feel the wrath of accurate windage, elevation, and distance."

    Sometimes I think we, we being Americans, get a hard on for war porn that is spiced with religious "humor" just so everyone can have a chuckle at the gallows humor.
    Oh well, perhaps the Gov. will put some useful quotes on the scopes now, like, "When they're in range, so are you."
    Either way, I can hear Jeffereson rolling over in his grave.

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  2. The thing is, Sheerah, that I don't know anyone (outside the truly hard-core Quakers and similar all-in pacifists) trying to say that being a man or woman of faith means renouncing violent acts altogether. Christians - and other communities of faith - have tried that and it's lasted as long as it took the bloody-handed savages to find them and send them to their God.

    But it's a different thing entirely to revel in the taking of life, regardless of how evil the life and how good the cause. IMO a truly "Christian" (or devout Jew, Muslim, Zoroastrian...whatever) person will take life as a butcher kills for meat; doing what needs to be done without vaunting, without relish, without glorification. At the very most a satisfaction in a job done as well as possible.

    But the bottom line is that war, destruction and the taking of life is always the Devil's work and always had been. These damn Trijiconites don't seem to realize that the Devil quotes Scripture and so do they.

    I would suspect that assuming their theology is accurate that when they eventually arrive at the Final Destination they will be unpleasantly surprised at its heat and humidity.

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  3. True dat, even the Buddhists will allow violence if the outcome is to save a greater amount of people than inaction. But the problem of going "Old Testament" on military gear, and specifically kinetic devices, is that it resurrects the "Crusades against Islam" idea, and that's not really what we need in trying to resolve conflicts in the Middle East.

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  4. Sheer-

    Sometimes I think we, we being Americans, get a hard on for war porn that is spiced with religious "humor" just so everyone can have a chuckle at the gallows humor.

    I wish I could conclude it is humor. Sadly, I cannot keep myself from seeing this as an extreme, in my eyes, form of "God is on our side" mentality. Let's provide for good, clean Christian kills. I wonder if these are the scopes of choice for those who assassinate abortionists?

    As a life long, churched and believing person, I find this kind of crap not only sickening, but blasphemous.

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  5. "...person will take life as a butcher kills for meat; doing what needs to be done without vaunting, without relish, without glorification."

    I can only speak for myself Chief, but after the first Gulf war I lost that feeling altogether. I was a war porn, war is necessary, uh-ruh-get-me-some!
    But I had this thing...stupid as it is...that wrong beyond wrong was the death and wanton killing of non-combatants.
    For me...well, yeah, anyway, I had that moment of epiphany which very few have and that is why for me I just lost that...whole war feeling.
    Yes, there is a time for war, but damn me if I'll go singing battle hymm of the Republic for it.

    "As a life long, churched and believing person, I find this kind of crap not only sickening, but blasphemous."

    I had a couple of guys at my church get all excited about America going to war back 03 and I yelled at them in the middle of Church yard. Christians should never be happy about war...it should be the moment of profound sadness.
    Beside I think it's worse than blasphemous, it's stupid beyond the pale.

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  6. Sheerah: The blasphemous thing about war is that it has a way of giving that feeling to even the most peaceable among us.

    For me it was the feeling of giving the fire command into the handset and hearing my guns explode like the very Voice of the God of War. It's a kind of feeling of power, of the manic high that the Viking berserks must have felt, of the sort of thing that must have propelled the kamikazis into the deck of a carrier.

    It takes some reflection, and a bit of maturity, to recognize it for what it is.

    Not for nothing did Bobby Lee say "It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we would grow to love it too much."

    But for my money, Bill Sherman was the better general - and the wiser man. War is all Hell, and the fact that these idiots can't see that makes me suspect that their own Savior would put them on the left hand with the goats rather than where they THINK they're going...

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  7. Here is an update on the story I linked yesterday regarding the alleged suicide of three detainees at JTF-GTMO.

    January 19, 2010
    THE OFFICIAL RESPONSE BEGINS
    by Scott Horton

    http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006395

    And it raises a military slang question: what's a "spotlight ranger"??

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  8. Charles,

    A "spotlight ranger" indeed. I guess the good Colonel doesn't like his integrity questioned by a mere sargent -- and a spotlight, guard tower soldier at that!

    As Horton notes, the non-denial denial and ad hominem are true indicators.

    One wonders just how close to this case the SASC investigation of SERE to GTMO came to this little sidestory of the so-called "Global War on Terror."

    And how much friendship we still engender in the police general father of one of the dead Saudi kids. Who does he hate more now? Al Qaeda? Or us?

    Nothing short of a fully independent prosecutor is needed. And anything short of this response from the DoJ tells the whole story.

    SP

    PS - its also notable how the traditional media is keeping this one as far away as possible... trying to deprive the cinders of any oxygen I think...

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  9. A spotlight ranger is someone who is a "ranger" only when someone is watching. When no one is watching they are sleeping, goofing off, not doing their job, but as soon as a superior shows up, they are "under the spotlight" and they perform like the best soldier since Audie Murphy.

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  10. bg: Interesting. That particular military skill was referred to as "cheese-eating" when I was in. To wit: "There's Varney cheese-eatin' the smage again. That fucker sucks ass like a protologist's vacuum cleaner."

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  11. Chief, "cheese eater" does work, but not to confuse a spotlight ranger with a brown noser, perhaps instead of superior, I should have more clearly stated "rater" or "evaluator". It comes from Ranger school were your leadership is being evaluated, and the ranger student is not "sucking up" to the Ranger instructor, instead they are just trying to put on a show to look good for rating purposes.

    In the context of this article, this COL is suggesting that this SGT is using the investigation make a name for himself. I disagree, I feel this SGT is doing the right thing, however, I would rather see his actual witness statements before passing judgement on his version of the story. I find it very interesting to see the authors use LSA (Linguistic Statement Analysis), I took a course on it a few years back. I would like for him to do the same to the SGT's sworn statements, just to be fair. It seems like a lot of hearsay and rumor, which anyone who words at a guard post knows, runs rampant and feeds off of itself. Again, to be fair, ISTM that this COL's point is that this SGT's was in no position to accurately state what happened, that he could only make observations from a great distance. I completely agree this situation requires new investigation, but we all know that eyewitness accounts have to be taken with a grain of salt, especially when the eye witness didn't actually see the alleged acts, he just saw suspicious movements and made assumptions based on those.

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  12. The thing about "cheese-eating" was that it didn't have a hard-and-fast association with sucking up or brown-nosing. It was often used the same way the "spotlight ranger" expression is - as a way of designating something you did to get favorable attention while someone was looking. Highly-shined boots or immaculately clean TA-50 were described as "cheese boots" or "that's my cheese webgear" - i.e., the stuff hauled out for inspections and not what was in daily use.

    As far as the whole thing re: Gitmo, well...the very NOTION of Gitmo is nonsense. When you're living and working in a nonsense world, perhaps hanging a couple of towelheads makes sense.

    The frustrating part is that even IF these stories are true and IF some sort of investigation even happens, you know some low-rent 31C will get hung up for it. The senior NCOs, and the officers? Hell yeah, they'll skate.

    Sometimes my Army really pisses me off.

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  13. To all,
    In my day cheese eating had several meanings.
    First is one that Chief should be familiar with. As a 4.2 leader we always counted the charges that we pulled and counted them at the end of the day b/c some troops would eat them to get a high similar to sniffing glue-hence cheeseeater, we burned these every day after counting them up. They actually looked like cheese.
    I think of cheese eating grin when calling some one a cheese eater. HRC is a good example- she has a cheese eating smile. You get my drift.
    In our own way we all ate cheese at some point.OER's/EER's!
    jim

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  14. To all,
    This is a small cmt on the rifle pictured.
    As a sniper qualified infy type i feel qualified to do so.
    The scope has a very weak mounting system. There are several civilian mounts available that mount to the reciever and use the dovetail for the stripper guide which is removed for scope mount.This is an improvement on the old Jim Leatherwood single screw system to the reciever used on the initial XM 21's that i shot.
    In addition i've never seen a real shooter not pad his weapon for a shot. This shooters platform is weak.
    I plan to do an article for milpub on this topic.Will do so this week end.
    Have a nice day.
    jim

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  15. Oh yeah,
    The rifleman in the pic also has a crummy spot/stock weld.This is hard to do on the m 21 but he has a built up cheek piece.
    OK,You heroes out there are gonna say this is just a publicity shot. Yeah!!
    jim

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