am not a historian, or a big war through history fan, so I make no claims of expertise in this field. I do find the subject interesting, and from time to time, when I see a good article or program on the subject, I like to blog about it.  The results can be found here.

More recent additions are on top.

January 15, 2004

Depressing story about the dangerous food preparation and low quality of food the US troops in Iraq are being fed.  It's depressing not for the facts of the case; I don't think too many people are under the illusion that low paid military are fed decently, but you'd at least like to hope that they aren't being poisoned.  The thing about the story that I hadn't thought about is the private contractors.  Rather than the Army making their own food, with fellow servicemen as cooks, the food service is purchased from an outside company, a Halliburton subsidiary in this case, and they buy the food, hire locals to prepare and serve it, and pocket the profit.  Rather an obvious motivation there to skimp on quality and sanitary conditions, eh?

ON JULY 17, 2003, HEATHER YARBROUGH [photo at right] flew to Kuwait to start a new job: monitoring the quality and safety of food served to soldiers on U.S. military bases in Iraq. Her employer was the Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) Government Services division of Halliburton, the Texas-based oil company formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney that has contracts with the U.S. government to support military personnel in the field and to help with Iraq reconstruction.

Yarbrough, 33, felt upbeat and excited. She had trained hard for a position like this, one that required expertise in food and science. She was banking on the high salary -- $1,500 a week -- to pay off her student loans. And unlike many of her fellow students at Humboldt State University, she supported the Bush Administration and its war on terrorism.

Yarbrough never dreamed she'd be fired a month later for what in her view was simply an effort to implement the Army's own safety and sanitation standards. Nor did she imagine that she'd be telling congressional staffers about potentially dangerous food being served to U.S. soldiers by ESS Support Services, a food-service subcontractor to Halliburton.

While Yarbrough did not see any soldiers fall sick from food served by ESS, she did witness something else that disturbed her: the labor system that feeds and supports U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait. It's a system in which highly paid Americans oversee a huge corps of Indians, Pakistanis and other so-called "third-country nationals" working in sweatshop conditions for as little as $3 a day.

So basically, this idealistic young woman is hired to go onsite and supervise, and when she starts trying to clean things up, to make healthier changes the cronyism of the old guys who run the whole thing, active duty servicemen and their old friend/ex-service guys now working for Halliburton get her fired for some bullshit reasons.  Anyone in her position with more common sense and less integrity would just roll over and not worry about it, but she was oblivious to the currents beneath the surface (I don't get the sense she was a crusader.) and got backstabbed and removed, and I'm sure they'll find some other good old boy to come in and nod and wink and take his dinner in the officers' mess, with the other people who know better than to chow down with the grunts.

Meanwhile the troops go on eating spoiled mayonnaise and food that's been sitting out for hours, or isn't hot enough to kill of bacteria, etc.  But it's all good, since as every good Republican knows, private industry can always do everything better and cheaper than government.  Except of course the "invading other countries" part, but in those cases it's best to let the government pay for it since that comes out of taxes that would otherwise be spent on wasteful programs like medicare, welfare, education, etc.

March 21, 2002

Show on Discovery Science channel tonight, about training US soldiers to be better killers. Really.  But it was interesting when they discussed psychological issues with actually shooting another person.  They dropped in a bunch of psycho-babble about how every species has a strong prohibition against killing its own kind.  Their example was that rams and deers when they battle for fucking-rights they hit antlers to antlers, where they won't kill each other, which they would if they gored to the sides or whatever.  Which is I'm sure very easily disproven by any biologist with a few examples. Not to mention a socialogist.

Anyway, I was thinking the show would suck, if they were throwing out bullshit right from the start.  However they got into better info shortly after that, when they started speaking about things historically.  Historical studies had examined captured weapons, or abandoned ones on battle fields, and always, the majority of weapons weren't fired.

They had some wars from the 1800's, when you had to load your weapon with actual gunpowder, wadding, etc.  So you'd stuff in some gunpowder, some packing, and then the actual lead ball, with a bit more packing on top.  After some big battles the weapons were often 80% unfired, and lots of them had double or triple packing.  Which indicated the soldier would load it, go to fire, lose his nerve, and load it again, lose his nerve, etc.  They said one had 23 loadings, and wouldn't have worked if fired anyway.

I doubt their methodology and the logic as well.  Why would you keep loading it if you didn't have the nerve to shoot?  Maybe everyone fired at once and then loaded at once, so you had to appear to be doing something when everyone else was loading, (or pretending to load).  But it seems a bit suspect on the reasoning.  I'd think load once, lose nerve, run or hide in the trench.

Also, being able or unable to kill another person isn't at all the same thing as being too scared to stick your head out of a fox hole and start shooting when there are bullets whistling overhead, bombs going off, etc.  Anyone would be scared there, and your fear is of death if you move, not that you might kill someone.

Anyway, they had another discussion of this with US soldiers in WW2, and their official findings were that infantry soldiers were able to fire at a good target 15-20% of the time.  As the modern day sergeant said, "That's like having 15% of your librarians who aren't illiterate."  Not the best example but hey, he's just a grunt.  They cited extensive post-battle interviews from Iwo Jima and many other US troop battles in WW2, and typical example was of 7 guys in a trench, 2 or 3 would be firing.  One guy they interviewed said of his 9 man group, there were 2 guys who were good shots and killed anything, and he wasn't one of them.

The show went on to detail US training methods since ww2, how they desensitize soldiers to fire at any target, and they said that in Vietnam, US forces averaged 50,000 bullets fired per kill.  Which seems just impossible to me, but anyway, that was their official figure. 

Interesting component of warfare if that's true. Certainly would show how small motivated forces can win over larger conscript armies. If only 15% of the big army is actually firing, and 95% of the smaller group is. and they're more likely to hit, as they have more targets.  I'd say the actual figure varies tremendously, depending on morale, defensive positioning, etc.

So it wasn't a very good program, but it was worth a quick mention, anyway.

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