I copied Reuters' headline directly. They make it sound like just another day at the office, don't they?

A police union spokesman said surveillance footage of the attacker showed him as tall and bearded, aged about 35, possibly of North African origin and wearing a white Arab-style tunic.

Beard? North African? Arab-style tunic? I don't know about you, but if I were a criminal profiler, I might flag the suspect as a member of the Euro-Tea Party. Or it may possibly have been one of those damned Lutherans ... they're known for doing stuff like this all the time.

Three days after a British soldier was killed in a London street by two men who said they acted to avenge violence against Muslims, the attack near Paris raised questions about a possible copycat attempt to kill a French soldier.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls noted the similarity in an interview on France 2 TV saying the attacker was clearly trying to murder his victim, but he added that it was too early to offer any theories.

"Let's be prudent for now," Valls said of the attacker's identity and motivations. "Everything is being done to arrest this individual."

Yes, yes. Let's be prudent. Mustn't leap to any conclusions. more...

Posted by: andy at 02:40 PM | Comments (314)
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An armistice ended full out bloody combat in the struggle between communism and democracy. A war that was called a "UN police action", some of us (ok older us) learned about as we watched M*A*S*H.

American soldiers and Marines died in the coldest winters ever. I'd recommend Halberstan's The Coldest Winter. If you can get past his stupid political jabs in the middle, it's a very good account of combat on the ground.

So many miscalculations, so many men who suffered because of those miscalculations. Warfare changed forever then, for both sides in the cold.

It's called "the Forgotten War". I pray we never forget that one hundred and thirty thousand American men diedwere wounded or killed in this forgotten war. Today, and Monday, remember those veterans from this "forgotten war".

60 years later we have an "armistice". A temporary peace. As long as we remember it is never forgotten.

My bad.. 33,000 killed, 92,000 wounded. Thanks pep.

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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 12:34 PM | Comments (123)
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Good morning morons and moronettes and welcome to the the award-winning AoSHQ's Sunday Morning Book Thread.

War Stories

Even if this here AosHQ weren't such a smart military blog, I know we've got a crap ton of morons on here who are military history buffs and others who have a keen interest in military topics. So, in keeping with this being Memorial Day weekend, I happened to came across some books that might interest you guys, seriously.

The first book is Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe (available on Kindle, too). This came out in the aftermath of the Iraq War, that is, wars don't end when wars end.

Get a load of Lowe's description of post-WWII Europe:

Crime rates were soaring, economies collapsing, and the European population was hovering on the brink of starvation...still racked by violence, where large sections of the population had yet to accept that the war was over. Individuals, communities and sometimes whole nations sought vengeance for the wrongs that had been done to them during the war. Germans and collaborators everywhere were rounded up, tormented and summarily executed. Concentration camps were reopened and filled with new victims who were tortured and starved. Violent anti-Semitism was reborn, sparking murders and new pogroms across Europe. Massacres were an integral part of the chaos and in some places – particularly Greece, Yugoslavia and Poland, as well as parts of Italy and France – they led to brutal civil wars. In some of the greatest acts of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen, tens of millions were expelled from their ancestral homelands, often with the implicit blessing of the Allied authorities

I remember the left getting all pissy because Iraq didn't become a magical, happy land of unicorns and rainbows immediately when hostilities officially ceased. Obviously, some historical perspective is in order, which the left sorely lacks.

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You probably won't enjoy A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier but that doesn't mean you shouldn't read it. The author, Ishmael Beah, was a child soldier in war-ravaged Sierra Leone during the 1990s:

Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, heÂ’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

Yes, this is wars are fought in the Third World nowadays: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s.

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:09 AM | Comments (267)
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So when are teachers going to get the same level of attention as the military and the Catholic Church in regard to sexual assault? I know actual data is hard to come by in this regard but it is estimated that 5 to 6 million students will be sexually abused by school employees or teachers before they graduate. The best available study says 10% suffer some form of abuse. Oh I'm sure that the fact that teachers are largely unionized, liberal democrats has something to do with why they aren't talking about it breathlessly everyday like they are the military and whenever Catholic Church scandals pop up.

There is no federal clearinghouse for statistics on allegations of educator sexual abuse. Such information is frequently informally collected on an ad hoc state-by-state, or even district-level basis. Many districts and the teachersÂ’ unions are reluctant, at best, to make such information freely accessible. Since these are state-level cases (although some repeat educator-predators do cross state lines), there are no F.B.I. files, reports or statistics specifically addressing teacher predation. Nor are such reports centrally collected elsewhere.

I wonder if anyone will call out this judge like they did the generals who changed the punishments on their cases? Judge slashes sentence for Virginia teacher who slept with student, citing diagnosis of hypersexuality. So being a nympho is an excuse?

A Virginia high school teacher who slept with a student will only spent four months of her 11-year sentence behind bars after she was diagnosed with hypersexuality.

Kathleen Cawthorne, 33, will be freed more than a decade early after a judge ruled she could not control the sudden sexual urges that took over her body.

Grumpy Cat photo. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 06:28 PM | Comments (711)
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Thanks to @DoreenHDickson for sending me the story behind Lee Brice's hit song.

Then came the part of the interview that hit me hardest: It was the moment when Paul Monti talked about his sonÂ’s truck, and why he still has it, and still drives it.

“What can I tell you? It’s him,” Jared’s father explained, nearly choking on his words. “It’s got his DNA all over it. I love driving it because it reminds me of him, though I don’t need the truck to remind me of him. I think about him every hour of every day.”

I was already tearing up before that story about Jared’s truck. But as the details piled up — the truck was a Dodge 4X4 Ram 1500 with decals on it that included the 10th Mountain Division, the 82nd Airborne Division, an American flag, and a Go Army sticker — I lost it.

And there I was sitting in my car in a Walmart parking lot on a sunny Memorial Day in my hometown crying hard. Crying like a child. Crying as if IÂ’d lost my child.

I wasnÂ’t the only one in a car crying that day. It turns out that a Nashville songwriter named Connie Harrington was in her car, too, listening to the very same story. Moved to tears, she pulled over to the side of the road, scribbling notes as the story proceeded.

And here's the result, which I have loved ever since I first heard it. more...

Posted by: andy at 09:20 AM | Comments (160)
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I read this in a post on Friday night and realized how appropriate it would be for this weekend. I asked the commenter for permission to repost it.

Thanks "An Observation" for the wonderful story. more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:37 AM | Comments (95)
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Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. ~ John 15:13

I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend, and I thank God for the blessings He has bestowed upon the United States of America.

And I'll be damned if a bunch of two-bit socialist bastards who weaseled their way into positions of power will cause one drop of the blood spilled from Lexington & Concord to the Kunar Valley to have been done so in vain.

This Memorial Day, let's re-dedicate ourselves to preserving that for which our soldiers fought so valiantly.

Posted by: andy at 03:37 AM | Comments (432)
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It, or something close to it, is hidden on an old Next computer, but the drive is password protected and nobody remembers the password.

...Thankfully one of the people he showed it to while in the US for the Hypertext 91 conference kept a copy. This was largely because, said Mr Noyes, he had one of the same types of machine, a Next computer, that Sir Tim used for the demo...

The saying the internet never forgets is not really accurate. Shit goes completely missing constantly...particularly on vendor support sites after mergers. The archive.org effort isn't snap shotting everything either.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:12 PM | Comments (19)
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Check the calendar. I'm completely serious.

Jake Tapper had some good stuff on Twitter.

Posted by: JohnE. at 05:13 PM | Comments (199)
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It gets worse.

They fought to keep Rosen from finding out about the warrant because they wanted to keep searching his emails for a long period of time. Years, as it turned out.

And it gets worse yet.

[The prosecutor, Machen] argued that disclosure of the search warrant would preclude the government from monitoring the account, should such a step become necessary in the investigation. Machen added that “some investigations are continued for many years because, while the evidence is not yet sufficient to bring charges, it is sufficient to have identified criminal subjects and/or criminal activity serious enough to justify continuation of the investigation.”

Machen insisted the investigation would be compromised if Rosen was informed of the warrant, and also asked the court to order Google not to notify Rosen that the company had handed over RosenÂ’s e-mails to the government. Rosen, according to recent reports, did not learn that the government seized his e-mail records until it was reported in the Washington Post last week.

...

According to recently unsealed documents in the case, the Obama Justice Department sought an extensive amount of information from Rosen’s e-mail account. In addition to Rosen’s correspondence with Kim, the government wanted to know about Rosen’s contacts with other government officials, including “records or information relating to the Author’s communication with any other source or potential source of the information disclosed in the Article.”

Do you see what's going on there? Not only do they want to see which of Obama's people are disloyal in the actual case, they also want to keep secretly reading a private citizen's email for years in order to find other sources of leaks in other matters.

In other words: It's nakedly a Traitor Fishing Expedition.

Question: What happens if we find out that one of Rosen's sources -- say his other government sources, who are not in possession of any confidential information, but who can offer some negative information about Obama personnel -- failed to be promoted due to his name surfacing in this years-long Loyalty Crusade?

At 5:00, Holder says -- under oath-- he stayed out of any decisions to spy on the press. And not just in the AP matter.

In regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material. This is not something IÂ’ve ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be wise policy.

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Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (292)
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