Tabloid Edition

Fort Hood victims list

There is as yet no definitive Fort Hood victims list but one newspaper has been scouring the stories as they appear in hte national media and has been able to compile this non-exhaustive Fort Hood victims list:

Killed

Michael Grant Cahill, 62, of Cameron — formerly of Spokane, Wash., — was a physician's assistant who was working on the post as a contracted civilian

Staff Sgt. Justin M. DeCrow, 32, of Plymouth, Ind.

Reservist John Gaffaney, 56, of Serra Messa, Calif.

Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, 22, of Tipton, Okla.

Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Kiel, Wis.

Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka, 19, of West Jordan, Utah, was killed.

Pfc. Michael Pearson, 21, of Bolingbrook, Ill.

Russell Seager, 51, of Racine, Wis.

Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Chicago. She was pregnant.

Military physician assistant Juanita Warman, 55, of Pittsburgh

Spc. Kham Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minn.

Wounded

Chief Warrant Officer Chris Birmingham of Eclectic, Ala., was shot three times.

Sgt. Patrick Blue III, 23, of Belcourt, N.D., was hit in the side by bullet fragments during the attack

Amber Bahr, 19, of Random Lake, Wis., was shot in the stomach.

Keara Bono Torkelson, 21, of Ostego, Mo., was shot in the back left shoulder.

Alan Carroll, 20, of Bridgewater, N.J., was shot three times.

U.S. Army Reserve Dorothy “Dorrie” Carskadon of Rockford, Ill., was critically injured.

Staff Sgt. Joy Clark, 27, of Des Moines suffered a gunshot wound

Spc. Matthew Cook, 30, of Binghamton, N.Y., was shot in the abdomen

Staff Sgt. Chad Davis of Eufaula, Ala., was wounded.

Pvt. Joey Foster, 21, of Ogden, Utah, was shot in the hip

Cpl. Nathan Hewitt, 26, of West Lafayette, Ind.

Justin Johnson, 21, of Punta Gorda, Fla., was shot in the chest and leg.

Staff. Sgt. Alonzo Lunsford, of Richmond County, N.C., was shot multiple times.

Shawn Manning, 33, formerly of Redman, Ore., was shot six times

Army 2nd Lt. Brandy Mason, of Monessen, was wounded.

Reserve Spc. Grant Moxon, 23, of Lodi, Wis., was shot in the leg.

Sgt. Kimberly Munley, 34, of Killeen is the Fort Hood civilian police officer who was shot multiple times by the suspect.

Warrant Officer Christopher Royal of Elmore County, Ala., was shot three times.

Maj. Randy Royer of Dothan, Ala., was shot.

Pvt. Raymondo “Ray” Saucedo, 26, of Greenville, Mich., had a bullet graze his arm.

George Stratton III, 18, of Post Falls, Idaho, was shot in the shoulder.

Patrick Zeigler, 28, of Orange County, Fla., was critically wounded.

You can see that there are problems with this method of course: 13 people were reported as killed and there are only 11 dead on this list. But its a good piece of work by the San Antonio Express and the best we're likely to get until the military releases the definitive Fort Hood victims list.

The Jimmy Carr outrage

Jimmy Carr has sparked outrage by claiming that because we've got so many amputees from the wars then we're going to have a great team for the 2012 Paralympics.

The outrage might be a tad manufactured: for if you go look at what the squaddies themselves are saying about it there's a thought that not only is it a funny joke (if very black and macabre) but one that may well have come from those soldiers who have been wounded themselves.

Click through to see the source of that allegation.

USNS Impeccable

The USNS Impeccable appears to have got itself into a spot of trouble. Nothing that a ship of the US Navy can't get itself out of, of course, but politicians and Admirlas do so hate the sort of publicity that the USNS Impeccable is getting.

Five Chinese vessels in a possibly coordinated effort yesterday “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity” to a U.S. Navy surveillance ship in international waters, the Pentagon said.

Two of the vessels closed to within 50 feet (15 meters) of the USNS Impeccable, waving Chinese flags and telling the U.S. ship to leave the area, according to a Defense Department statement issued today. The Impeccable sprayed water from its fire hoses at one of the boats to protect itself.

The incident took place eight days after the U.S. and China agreed to resume exchanges of military officers for information sharing after China in October froze some contact to protest arms sales to Taiwan.

It has to be said that this sort of harrassment is uncommon in international waters. However, the Chinese may not regard the waters that USNS Impeccable is in as being international.

The United States defence departments say that the USNS Impeccable was "harassed" by five Chinese

ships

including a Chinese naval vessel, trawlers and an "intelligence ship" in

international

waters.

The US ship was unarmed and was made up entirely of civilian mariners, the Pentagon said.

The USNS Impeccable was conducting ocean

surveys

as part of a Defence contract.

In a statement, the US Department of defence said the Chinese Naval vessel crew stripped down to their

underwear

after the the Impeccable used a water cannon to spray one of the Chinese ships that came as close as 25 feet.

In international waters this is outrageous....in territorial waters this is just fine. What causes the probem is determining just which are which:

The Pentagon charged Monday that five Chinese ships shadowed and maneuvered dangerously close to a U.S. Navy vessel in an apparent attempt to harass the American crew.

The Obama administration said the incident Sunday followed several days of “increasingly aggressive” acts by Chinese ships in the region.

…

A Chinese intelligence ship and four others surrounded the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed vessel with a civilian merchant marine crew, as the craft conducted ocean surveys in international waters in the South China Sea, the Defense Department said in a statement.
There's an awful lot of islands and reefs out there where people are arguing whether they make a certain part of the South China Sea territorial waters of international. The Spratly Islands come to mind as one of them.

More information in these news stories:

Chinese Vessels Harass US Navy Ship, Pentagon Says Bloomberg - USA Two of the vessels closed to within 50 feet (15 meters) of the USNS Impeccable, waving Chinese flags and telling the US ship to leave the area, according to ...

US says Chinese vessels harassed Navy ship elEconomista.es - Madrid,Madrid,Spain The Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively manoeuvred in dangerously close proximity" to the USNS Impeccable and its crew of civilian contractors, ...

USNS Impeccable: Chinese Vessels Harass US Navy Ship Right Pundits - Lafayette,CA,USA By beth The USNS Impeccable is an unarmed US Navy ocean surveillance ship. The US embassy in Beijing has lodged a protest with China that on Sunday five ...

Pentagon: Chinese vessels harassed unarmed ship The Associated Press The USNS Impeccable sprayed one ship with water from fire hoses to force it away. Despite the force of the water, Chinese crew members stripped to their ...

Chinese Vessels Harass US Ships in International Waters Voice of America - USA A news release says two of the Chinese ships stopped directly in front of the USNS Impeccable, forcing it to make an emergency stop. ...

US says Chinese vessels harassed Navy ship Deutsche Welle - Germany A Defense Department statement said the Chinese vessels at one point closed to within 8 meters of the ocean surveillance ship, the USS Impeccable, ... Chinese Vessels Harass USNS Impeccable. Time to be concerned? The Inquisitr - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia Five Chinese vessels “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity” to the USNS Impeccable, a US surveillance ship operating in ... Chinese ships 'harass' US vessel BBC News - UK The incident happened as the USNS Impeccable was on routine operations in international waters 75 miles (120km) south of Hainan island, a US statement said. ... Pentagon: Five Chinese vessels harass US ship Stars and Stripes - Washington,DC,USA In what the Pentagon says is the fourth such incident in less than a week, the USNS Impeccable, a contract ship in the Military Sealift Command carrying a ...

EOTech sights

I love wandering through catalogues of products that I don't know very much about. Weird, I know, but it does have its attractions. It helps me find out how inventive my fellow humans are, the magic if you will of human ingenuity. Take this example, information about eotech sights. I know very little about guns and indeed all things military and hunting. But they lead me on to this page about holographic sights. Anmd they just sound amazing.

Even if the lenses and surfaces are broken or smashed then the sight is still usable. Because all of the information needed to construct the image is recorded everywhere....so you might get a smaller image, but you'll always get one. I just think that's fascinating.

Royal Marine awarded George Cross

L/Cpl Matthew Croucher will be awarded the George Cross by the Queen in recognition of his act of bravery in saving three of his fellow comrades.   

Croucher will be joining a very select group of only 20 living George Cross holders.  The George Cross is the highest decoration awarded for bravery whilst not in the face of the enemy.

The incident for which the award is being given occurred last February in the Helmand province, Afghanistan.  Croucher set off the trip wire booby trap and knew he had to do anything to protect his fellow soldiers.

"I thought, 'I've set this bloody thing off and I'm going to do whatever it takes to protect the others,'he said

He alerted the other men with the call "Grenade. Take Cover"

Knowing that there was no cover, the serviceman from Birmingham, England took the decision to cover the grenade with his body.

"I knew a grenade like this has a killing circumference of about five metres," he said. "I'd been through this scenario in my mind and realised there was nowhere to take cover-there's no point running off because you're going to catch shrapnel.The lads behind me would have caught a lot too."

L/Cpl Croucher had just seconds to make his decision which was to roll over and use his backpack to smother the grenade and contain the shrapnel fragments. When the grenade exploded, Croucher, was thrown through the air and suffered only a nose bleed.  He "fully expected" to lose a limb and realised the outcome could have been much worse.

"It took 30 seconds before I realised I was definitely not dead," he said.

After being checked over by a medic who recommended evacuation for the Marine, L/Cpl Croucher declined in favor of remaining with his unit.

L/Cpl Croucher has kept his backpack as a trophy of the day he "beat the grim reaper".

"When I see it I'm constantly reminded how lucky I am," he said.

Donley And Schwartz To Lead The Air Force

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended that Michael Donley serve as secretary of the Air Force, and that Gen. Norton Schwartz, be the next Air Force chief of staff.

While Schwartz may have had some experience with special operations it is unusual that someone with a background in logistics be appointed to a chief of staff position for a service. This would normally be a role for an ex fighter pilot.

AFP had this to say.

Gates sacked air force secretary Michael Wynne and air force chief of staff General T. Michael Moseley on Thursday after an investigation found that two nuclear-related incidents resulted from systemic problems in the control of nuclear weapons and related components.

"Mike Donley is presently the director of administration and management for the Department of Defense, essentially charged with running the Pentagon and its many complex operations," Gates noted in a statement saying that "to minimize any disruption caused by this leadership transition, I have also recommended to the president that he designate Mike Donley as Acting Secretary of the Air Force effective June 21."

Schwartz is currently Commander of US Transportation Command.

AP, Has this on the past record of Norton Schwartz.

Schwartz has held several high-level assignments on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and has been commander of the U.S. Transportation Command since September 2005.

Schwartz, a pilot with more than 4,200 flying hours, served as Commander of the Special Operations Command-Pacific, as well as Alaskan Command, Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region, and the 11th Air Force. Prior to assuming his current position, Schwartz was Director, the Joint Staff, Washington, D.C.

He attended the Air Force Academy and the National War College, and he participated as a crew member in the 1975 airlift evacuation of Saigon. In 1991, he served as chief of staff of the Joint Special Operations Task Force for Northern Iraq in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

And this on Michael Donley.

"Donley is a solid, solid guy and very experienced," McPeak said.

Donley served as acting secretary of the Air Force for seven months in 1993 and was the service's top financial officer from 1989 to 1993. He is currently the Pentagon's director of administration and management, and has held a variety of strategy and policy positions in government, including a stint on the National Security Council from 1984 to 1989.

Before that he was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee staff. He served in the Army from 1972 to 1975. He earned bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Southern California.

Gates Announcement in full.

D-Day 6th June - 64 Years On

In amongst the celebrity gossip, the cynicism and sarcasm I'd like to remind the readers of this blog that 64 years ago tens of thousands of men were fighting for their lives on the beaches of France.

We are already down to a meagre handful of surviving veterans of the trenches of 1914-1918. As the years go by we will see lower and lower numbers of those, who on the 6th of June 1944, survived places we can only have nightmares about. Pegasus Bridge, Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Gold Beach, Juno Beach, Sword beach, they all claimed the lives of men who courageously went into the unknown with no idea if they would return.

Remember them today.

Matt Maupin

The remains of Matt Maupin have been identified in Iraq. Maupin had been listed as missing, captured in action, in Iraq since April 2004.

The fuel convoy he was travelling with was ambushed just outside Baghdad. DNA testing has been able to identify remains found just recently as those of the missing soldier.

Matt Maupin's remains found
WHOI - Peoria,IL,USA
By Nishi Gupta PEORIA -- We have confirmed tonight that the remains of army reservist Matt Maupin have been found. A spokesman for Maupin's family says ...

Secret trip spurs call to halt attacks
Seattle Times - United States
Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy was ambushed west of Baghdad. ...

Body found of Ohio soldier missing in Iraq
CNN - USA
A 2004 memorial at Glen Este High School in Ohio in honor of Sgt. Keith Matthew Maupin. Military officials informed the family of Staff Sgt. Keith Matthew ...

Remains ID'd As Missing Ohio Soldier's
Bismarck Tribune - ND, USA
Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy was ambushed west of Baghdad. ...

Remains in Iraq identified as Ohio soldier's missing since '04
Akron Beacon Journal - Akron,OH,USA
Keith Maupin said an Army general told him DNA testing had identified the remains of his son, Sgt.

Remains found in Iraq identified as those of missing Ohio soldier
KTVZ - Bend,OR,USA
AP - March 30, 2008 10:23 PM ET BATAVIA, Ohio (AP) - Army Sergeant Matt Maupin had been listed as missing-captured in Iraq since 2004. ...
 Maupin's remains found in Iraq
Community Press - Florence,KY,USA
Matt's parents, Carolyn and Keith Maupin, were notified two days ago that it was possible remains found were those of Matt, said June Izzy-Bailey, ...

Maupin remains found in Iraq
Middletown Journal - Middletown,OH,USA
Keith Maupin says an Army general told him Sunday that DNA was used to identify his son. Sgt. Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was ...

Children portray city in parade
Cincinnati.com - Cincinnati,OH,USA
There also are young versions of Marge Schott, Bootsy Collins, President William Howard Taft and missing Army reservist Sgt. Matt Maupin. ...

Parents hold out hope for return of Ohio airman lost in crash
Mansfield News Journal - Mansfield,OH,USA
April 9 will be the fourth anniversary of the capture in Iraq of Army Sgt. Matt Maupin, of Batavia. The Maupin family plans to hold a “let-us-never-forget” ...

Sgt Matt Maupin- RIP
 By GSMSO(GSMSO)
The AP reported tonight Matt Maupin was a 20-year-old private first class when he was captured April 9, 2004, after his fuel convoy, part of the 724th Transportation Company, was ambushed west of Baghdad. ...
- http://gsmso.blogspot.com/

Keith Matt Maupin Iraq Body found
 By friend(friend)
Keith Matthew "Matt" Maupin was born July 13, 1983 in Batavia, Ohio, date of death unknown. His body was found in late March, but confirmation was not made until March 30, 2008 in Iraq. He was a United States Army Private First Class ...
Celebritys Friend - http://celebritys-friend.blogspot.com/

RIP Sgt. Matt Maupin...
 By TheBronze(TheBronze)
Maupins' Confirm DNA is from Body of Missing Soldier Matt Maupin (UNION TOWNSHIP, OH) -- Keith Maupin confirmed this afternoon that the remains of his son, Matt Maupin, have been identified by the army in Iraq. ...
The Bronze Blog - http://thebronzeblog.blogspot.com/

RIP Matt Maupin
 By Wes
What many have feared is true. WF.
Walk In Brain - http://wesflinn.com/walkinbrain/blog

Remains of SSgt. Maupin Recovered in Iraq...
Following up on a blog entry I made four years ago, the remains of US Army Staff Sergeant Matt Maupin have been located in Iraq and he is finally coming home to his family. From the Cincinnati Enquirer (with hat tip to the always great ...
Conservative Blogger - http://www.conservativeblogger.com/

lgf: Sgt. Matt Maupin's Remains Found in Iraq
little green footballs - anti-idiotarian headquarters.

Kremlin Zoria

So, over in Moscow, they've been having the Kremlin Zoria. Think of it as a version of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

The festival, known as Kremlin Zoria, has already drawn favourable comparisons with the Edinburgh tattoo since its first performance on Thursday.

Cossack dancers and Russian mounted guardsmen delighted a 7,000-strong audience in front of the famous domes of St Basil's cathedral before the Commonwealth pipes and drums emerged from the Kremlin's Spassky Gate in a shroud of dry ice.

The event culminated in a spectacular finale, with over 1,000 soldiers, accompanied by a choir, massed on the cobbles of the square to perform excerpts from Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture, Beethoven's Ode to Joy and the Coldstream Guards' famous arrangement of Amazing Grace.

The final salute, accompanied by a blaze of fireworks, was taken by Prince Michael of Kent.

Prince Michael is an interesting choice. He does speak Russian, has been involved in a number of ventures over there in recent years. But peraps this is the real reason:

Tsar Nicholas II

Prince Michael of Kent.

They are, after all, related (a great nephew, second cousin, something like that). Actually, I've read a novel where the solution to Russia's problems of the 90s was to put him on the Throne.

Do Your Duty!

Read this.

Then go here.