Richard Disney

When reading this British news article, I detected some angst from the author that a weapon designed to obliterate terrorists actually works. Also down further in the article, there is a sense that the author would like to see a weapon that is more humane.

War is an ugly thing, it is even uglier when wars are lengthened by “humanitarians”  who make war “humane” enough to endure for longer periods. What is so controversial about a missile that kills the enemy? Wars are virtually impossible to fight let alone win when large segments of a population cringe at killing the enemy.

Article follows:

From Times Online by Michael Smith

British forces in Afghanistan have used one of the world’s most deadly and controversial missiles to fight the Taliban.

Apache attack helicopters have fired the thermobaric weapons against fighters in buildings and caves, to create a pressure wave which sucks the air out of victims, shreds their internal organs and crushes their bodies.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted to the use of the weapons, condemned by human rights groups as “brutal”, on several occasions, including against a cave complex.

The use of the Hellfire AGM-114N weapons has been deemed so successful they will now be fired from RAF Reaper unmanned drones controlled by “pilots” at Creech air force base in Nevada, an MoD spokesman added.

Thermobaric weapons, or vacuum bombs, were first combat-tested by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s and their use by Russia against civilians in Chechnya in the 1990s was condemned worldwide.

The secret decision to buy the Hellfire AGM-114N missiles was made earlier this year following problems attacking Taliban fortified positions.

British Apache pilots complained that standard Hellfire antitank missiles were going straight through buildings and out of the other side. Even when they did explode, there were limited casualties among the Taliban inside, particularly when a building contained a number of rooms.

American Apache pilots overcame the problem in Iraq with the thermobaric Hellfire.The weapons are so controversial that MoD weapons and legal experts spent 18 months debating whether British troops could use them without breaking international law.

Eventually, they decided to get round the ethical problems by redefining the weapons.“We no longer accept the term thermobaric [for the AGM-114N] as there is no internationally agreed definition,” said an MoD spokesman. “We call it an enhanced blast weapon.”

The redefinition has allowed British forces to use the weapons legally, but is undermined by the publicity of their manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, which markets them as thermobaric.

When the American military bought them in 2005, President George W Bush said: “There are going to be some awfully surprised terrorists when the thermobaric Hellfire comes knocking.”Despite the Bush rhetoric, it is unlikely anyone targeted by the missile would know much about it. The laser-guided missile has a warhead packed with fluorinated aluminium powder surrounding a small charge.

When it hits the target, the charge disperses the aluminium powder throughout the target building. The cloud then ignites, causing a massive secondary blast that tears throughout any enclosed space.

The blast creates a vacuum which draws air and debris back in, creating pressure of up to 430lb per sq in. The more heavily the building is protected, the more concentrated the blast.

Click here to read entire article Army ‘vacuum’ missile hits Taliban - Times Online

Tags: vacuummissile, thermobaric missile, enhanced blast weapon, george bush, british army, ministry of defence, taliban

Hat Tip: First Friday Collective

Hat Tip: Internet Archive

This blast from the past is a newsreel from Universal Studios produced in March 1945 during very heavy fighting as American forces entered Cologne (Koln) and crossed the Rhine River on the Bridge at Remagen soon before it collapsed under fire. Also shown are meetings leading up to the formation of the United Nations in San Francisco and relief efforts for civilians ravaged by war. Notice the very different tone of the war coverage from that we hear today. Even though thousands of U.S. troops were dying and being wounded, the focus is continually on victory and not how many of our troops died that day. Enemy troops are regarded as such and even ridiculed as shown by the narrator’s comment, “…one “superman” gets his.”

I actually visited Cologne and Remagen (the bridge was not rebuilt) multiple times while I lived in Germany. It is sobering to see how “WW2″ style wars are fought. The entire city of Cologne is shown in rubble except for the Cathedral which was intentionally spared by Allied bombing. Because fighting “WW2” style was so brutal, the Nazi Germans, Fascist Italians and Imperial Japanese were all defeated in less than five years. We should learn a lesson from that and not “wuss out” about the war we are fighting now.

Hat Tip: Internet Archive.

In another nostalgic video we see a case against “ISM” and why it is dangerous to our freedom. This cartoon was produced in 1948 and it is interesting to see today how many members of many “isms” would be howling at the top of their lungs against this simple cartoon were it broadcast on any Main Stream Media (MSM). Enjoy.

Too bad, embeds not working well from Internet Archive site.

Although the news is getting better and now Iraq is no longer the headline it was in the Main Stream Media that it was just a few months ago, this is no time to relax the pressure.

Since we have seen that the MSM is not prone to reporting good news out of Iraq, the fact that we are seeing almost no news about Iraq presently can only indicate good things are happening over there. The term “No News is Good News”, has double significance with regard to Main Stream Media reporting on Iraq.

It is strange how The Media was so resistant to President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech and tried to convince Americans that we had not won, yet now when it appears that we are winning, The Media let’s Iraq slip from the national consciousness. Could The Media really be against the United States attaining victory? It sure seems like it.

If you want to see a contrast with between how present combat coverage compares with wars past, click here to watch the media coverage of D-Day in 1944. Realizing that total Allied casualties for the Normandy invasion were estimated to be over 10,000 killed, wounded and missing, it is evident that the media reporting the event were focused on showing the facts of the situation and were optimistic about Allied victory.

How things have changed. The way Big Media covers American combat now is by focusing on the number of casualties suffered by U.S. Forces on a daily basis and how doubtful U.S. victory may be. One wonders why major news media outlets act as if they don’t have an interest in whether the U.S. wins or loses in the War on Jihadists. Someone should inform Big Media that Jihadists don’t believe in freedom of speech.

Hat Tip: Army.mil

More stories like this should be covered by the Main Stream Media. The United States Military is full of heroes but one seldom hears about it in Big Media. Realize that the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) is a combat award for valor second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor (CMH). Sergeant Gregory Williams earned the DSC by saving the life of his platoon leader and fellow soldiers.

Click here to read more.

The short answer to the title question is no. There was a story today about a “man who was reportedly walking around St. John’s University campus in Queens armed with a .50 caliber rifle, and apparently wearing a Halloween mask of the killer from the horror movie “Scream.”

Now here is where Big Media ignorance of weapons is revealed; the wcbstv.com post on the story said, “Police say the man, apparently a 22-year-old Guyanese student, was carrying a .50 caliber black powder Wolf muzzle loader rifle inside a bag.”

Do they know that a “.50 caliber black powder Wolf muzzle loader rifle” looks more like something Davy Crockett would carry in the wild frontier of yesteryear rather than Rambo would carry today? Apparently not, based on the photo they posted with the article (shown below).