From the Department of Ambiguity

Surveys should clarify, not further muddy, the picture. Pay attention to the reporting when results from this survey come in.


The military is, according to CNN, asking soldiers these questions about the possible repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

-Would a repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" prompt a soldier to reconsider serving in the military?
-Would serving under an openly gay commander adversely affect morale?
-How would troops feel about sharing a bathroom or open-air shower with an openly gay comrade in a war zone?

The first question could result in ambiguous results. Presumably, a gay soldier might reconsider serving precisely because DADT has been repealed--in other words, he or she would feel safe remaining in service. But watch for interpretation that assumes that anyone who says he'd reconsider service means that the respondent is opposed to repeal.

 On the second, "openly gay." Well, let's turn that around. If someone is obnoxious about his sexuality, hetero or gay, that could be enough to affect morale.

 On the third, why limit it the question to the war zone? Soldiers have little or no privacy from day one of basic training.

 And why, honestly, are we asking soldiers this? Were soldiers surveyed before President Truman ordered the integration of the military? Don't think so. I wish someone would ask questions about this.  And dear gay friends, I respect your fears about soldiers outing themselves, but if you take yourselves out of the process, the results will be skewed.

Not the Right Word

MRAP trucks: Afghan savior or boondoggle?

This appeared on Yahoo but the headline and story are drawn directly from the Christian Science Monitor.

.....The truck was a Mine Resistant, Ambush Protected truck (MRAP) – a 16-ton behemoth that came to be regarded as the soldier's lifeboat in Iraq, its V-shaped hull saving lives by deflecting the blast of roadside bombs.
Rummel's story points to the same success in Afghanistan. "God bless the MRAP and what it does," he says.
But the mammoth trucks are built for Iraq, where troops are fighting a largely urban insurgency on city streets. Afghanistan's insurgency is rural, and the Pentagon is in a race to completely redesign the MRAP for its new duty, making it lighter, with a beefier suspension and better off-road capabilities for troops who launch missions into fields and up hillsides – often with no roads.
The effort, however, calls into question one of the bedrock tenets of Defense Secretary Robert Gates's regime: He wants to prioritize equipment that saves troops' lives. But experts wonder if, in the process, he is saddling the military for years to come with a fleet of vehicles that can be used in only one spot on the globe.

Here's the problem. There is no suggestion in this story that this is a boondoggle.

Boondoggle, according to various dictionaries, suggests something unnecessary, a waste of money, a bit of a con:

A work of little or no value done merely to keep or look busy.

a project funded by the federal government out of political favoritism that is of no real value to the community or the nation.

–verb (used with object) 4. to deceive or attempt to deceive: to boondoggle investors into a low-interest scheme.

–verb (used without object) 5. to do work of little or no practical value merely to keep or look busy.

(Really? Only a federal project?)

Anyway, none of those usages fit this story. What the reporter finds is that the trucks are extremely costly and may be suited for only one kind of environment. Adapting them to a different environment is costly. It may not be a wise decision to spend so much on a project with limited value. But boondoggle? No.

No Attention Here

Crew members stand at attention during the commissioning ceremony of the Navy's new missile destroyer Stockdale at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme.

Nope. These sailors are most definitely NOT standing at attention--the giveaway is their hands behind their backs. It is clear that many newsrooms have not had people with military experience for a very long time. This kind of error shows up regularly, though I'm still mystified by a story a few years ago that referred to a corporal in the Navy.

Ten Hut

Glenn Greenwald has a thorough piece on the use of military analysts by the Pentagon and TV operations.

Particularly noteworthy for editors is this first paragraph about what's lacking in contemporary newsrooms. A few years ago, I ran across a story that referred to a corporal in the Navy, which set my ears to twitching. I don't know that service in the armed forces is the only way to gain knowledge about military affairs--serving as a private first class in the attack on Panama doesn't make someone a strategic expert, for example--but it certainly wouldn't hurt to have more veterans in newsrooms.

Here's the money quote from a memo supporting the Pentagon propaganda effort: ...with an all voluntary military, no one in the media has current military background. Additionally we have been doing a good job of keeping these guys informed so they have ready answers when the networks come calling. ...

CURRENT ISSUES

The key issue here is that more and more, media analysts are having a greater impact on the television media network coverage of military issues. They have now become the go to guys not only for breaking stories, but they influence the views on issues. They also have a huge amount of influence on what stories the network decides to cover proactively with regard to the military. . . .

RECOMMENDATION

1.) I recommend we develop a core group from within our media analyst list of those that we can count on to carry our water.

Iraq War Slang

Over at GlobalSecurity is a list of Iraq war words making it into the lexicon.

Note the use of "Haji," normally a word of great respect in the Muslim world but used by soldiers flippantly, at the least, and derogatorily, even racist, at worst.

Others will disagree, vehemently, I suppose, but I believe in cutting soldiers who are getting blown up a break when they use these terms about their enemies, whether it's Kraut for Germans, Rebs for Confederates or Hajis for Iraqis. Of course, what they mean when they say it, and whether they use it against every Muslim as a slur, affects the level of negativity.

"Iraq War" seems to be showing up more often lately, and, like everything else connected with Iraq, how to refer to what's going on there is subject to debate. Is it a "real war"? An occupation? When do we decide to capitalize "war"? We used to say it was capped only in referring to declared, official wars, but that doesn't seem to work anymore since the last few "wars" we've been in as a nation haven't been declared by Congress. But to the soldier or sailor or airman or Marine getting blown up or shot to pieces, it sure is a war.

(h/t Josh Marshall for finding the list.)

Here are a few of the words:

* angel : a soldier killed in combat, used among some US medical personnel.

* battle rattle : Full battle rattle is close to 50 pounds worth of gear, including a flak vest, Kevlar helmet, gas mask, ammunition, weapons, and other basic military equipment. One component is the soft vest that covers the torso the shoulders and the back. It's made of soft material, a mixture of Kevlar and Twaron. These are sown together in sort of a sandwich fashion inside a nylon camouflage-pattern shell. The nylon vest has attaching points for load-bearing equipment. The second component of the system is ceramic plates that fit in pockets in the front and back of the vest.

* Bombaconda : nickname for LSA Anaconda, , a major base near Balad, reflecting the frequent mortar attacks.

* CHU : Containerized Housing Unit (pronounced “choo”) - Aluminum boxes slightly larger [22’x8’] than a commercial shipping container, with linoleum floors and cots or beds inside. This insulated CONEX shipping container has a door, window, top vent, power cabling, and an air conditioner. One version houses four people, while another is split into two, two-person rooms. The version with a shower and toilet shared between two rooms is called a "wet chu", which provides less crowded latrine and shower conditions than tents. The CHU gives soldiers a lot more living space than tents.

* Death Blossom : The tendency of Iraqi security forces, in response to receiving a little fire from the enemy, to either run away or do the "death blossom" spraying fire indisciminately in all directions. The term originated in the 1984 movie "The Last Starfighter" as a maneuver in which a single starfighter can single handedly wipe out an entire armada.

* fobbit : service member who never goes outside the wire off the forward operating base.

* frankenstein : A Marine Corps monster truck, bulging and rippling with spot-welded seams of add on armor. "We scrounge around for what we need and 'Frankenstein' it together."

* haji : Arabic word for someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca; 2: used by the American military for an Iraqi, anyone of arab decent, or even of a brownish skin tone, be they afghanis, or even bangladeshis; 3: the word many soldiers use derogatorily for the enemy.

* haji armor : improvised armor, installed by troops hiring Iraqis to update the vehicles by welding any available metal to the sides of Humvees

* hillbilly armor : Improvised vehicle armor, salvafed from digging through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal to bolster armor on their vehicles. Typically a half-inch of scrap steel hastily cut in the shape of the door and welded or riveted on.

* Jingle trucks : [Afghanistan] (transport trucks with a narrow wheel base that are usually adorned with colorful stickers and chimes), the military contracted for host nation delivery trucks, known as “jingle trucks” because of the decorative metal tassels hanging from the bottom of the truck frames that jingled when the trucks moved.

* Mortaritaville : nickname for LSA Anaconda, a major base near Balad, reflecting the frequent mortar attacks.

* Muj (pronnounced: Mooj), short for Mujahadeen. Formally a person who wages jihad, informally used for the Irai Insurgents starting in 2005.

* POG : People Other than Grunts [pronounced "pogue"] rear-echelon support troops. Arose in 2005 as a synonym for Fobbit, it seems.


* shake and bake : first used during the Vietnam War, and revived in Iraq, to refer to attacks using a combination of conventional bombs, cluster bombs (CBU), and napalm. In the battle of Fallujah in 2004 it was used in reference to a combination barrage of White Phosphorus and explosive artillery shells.


While we're at it, can we stop calling bombs IEDs and call them, oh, I don't know, BOMBS?