Category Archives: Uncategorized

How does this rise in the use of IED’s compare to the millions of unexploded bombs in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam left behind by the United States after the Vietnam War?

Legacies of War.org says that “At least 20,000 people have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance in Laos since the Vietnam War-era bombings ended.”

Or do we not count left-over bombs that became IED’s of a different nature that still kill noncombatants decades after a war ends?

Quick facts from Legacies of War.org:
• At least 20,000 people have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance in Laos since the Vietnam War-era bombings ended.
• About one third of the land in Laos is contaminated with unexploded ordnance.
• Many cluster bomblets became buried in the earth – waiting for an unsuspecting farmer to place a shovel in the earth or the monsoon rains to uncover them.
• Many farmers in Laos know their land is contaminated but can’t afford another plot. They simply have no choice but to cultivate their land.
• The most common injuries victims sustain from a UXO explosion include loss of a limb, blindness, hearing loss, shrapnel wounds, and internal shock wave injuries.
• Over the past four decades, only 500,000 of the estimated 80 million cluster munitions that failed to detonate have been cleared.

This increase in suicide may have nothing to do with the VA’s medical system and there may not be much we can do. Instead it may have more to do with the length of the two wars and the number of times troops are sent back to combat. Endless deployments has a price tag.

The Tet Offensive also destroyed the National Liberation Front (popularly known as the Viet Cong) and handed the leadership of the war, by default, over to the North Vietnamese Communist leadership and its army. The NLF was not 100% a communist organization but was an organization and army that fought the US in South Vietnam and before the US they fought the French under a different name—the Viet Minh—and before the French, the Vietnamese fought the Chinese occupation that lasted for a thousand years before liberation from China. However, the communists organized the NLF as a blanket organization of many Vietnamese resistance groups to continue the fight against foreign occupation/intervention in Vietnam.

The Tet Offensive was fought primarily by the NLF and they lost about 75,000 troops compared to 6,000 U.S. and ARVN dead. History paints the Tet Offensive as a communist victory but that is wrong. The Tet Offensive saw half of the NLF’s troops killed. The victory was turning the American public against the war. It was a military loss and a PR victory. The Viet Cong lost that battle but the North won the war. After Tet, the North had to step up moving its troops and supplies into the South until the NVA made up 70% of the troops fighting there.

In 1968, the NLF or Viet Cong’s manifesto called for an independent, non-aligned South Vietnam and stated that “national reunification cannot be achieved overnight.” That all changed after Tet. In fact, that lost battle with the US handed the South over to the communist led North.

Andrew Godfrey's avatarNostalgia and Now

American women soldiers could find themselves in combat situations, as early as May as the services have until then, to implement plans for using them in combat.

I may be in the minority, but am not in favor of having women in combat, especially when a husband and wife are both in a combat situation. I hate to think of kids growing up without a mother, because they died on a battle field.

Now that the Pentagon has approved using women in combat there is concern about their safety. However, there may be some cases in which a woman would react better, in a combat situation than some men. I still can’t condone a woman having her life in jeopardy.

A Los Angeles Times poll shows that those polled favored women in combat, with 66 percent favoring women in combat, while only 26 percent were against it. The following article…

View original post 170 more words

We must be ruthless in the war against global terrorism. Negotiation serves no purpose.

Stephen Bryen's avatarBryen's Blog News

By Stephen Bryen

News reports from Algeria tell us that the hostage siege at the Ain Amenas Gas Plant in the Sahara is now over, but the final list of casualties remains uncertain. So far we know that the operation resulted in the escape or release of some 685 Algerian workers and 107 foreigners.  Current information says that 23 hostages are confirmed dead; another 25 bodies, presumed to be hostages, have so far been found in buildings.  There are probably more deaths as a number of vehicles were struck by Algerian Air Force helicopters and destroyed, and these vehicles are said to have been carrying both hostages and terrorists. The Algerians report that “all” 32 terrorists were killed.

There has been serious criticism of the Algerian Army and Special Forces raid and claims they did a poor job resulting in an excess of civilian deaths. From information so far that…

View original post 736 more words

aviatrixkim's avatarThe Greenery

Scanning the Lonely Planet Cambodia Guide a few weeks before my trip, I ran across the following passage:

.

“Do not leave the roadside in remote areas, even for the call of nature. Your limbs are more important than your modesty.”

Holy. Smoke.

To my mind, the dangers of whizzing (or just strolling) in the woods have always included:

1. Poison ivy

2. Biting and stinging insects

3. Snakes

4. Frostbite

5. Wild boars

6. People with machetes and an axe to grind

7. Quicksand

8. Rednecks

Whereas, it never crossed my mind to fear:

9. Landmines

10. Unexploded ordnance

And so it happened that on day 4 of my Cambodian Odyssey, I found myself in A Remote Area, specifically a small village north of Kompong Thom town. We stopped en route for lunch at a small park with a simple, open-air restaurant. I couldn’t help but notice this amidst…

View original post 1,204 more words

My PTSD may be responsible for me being an unlikable guy—at least for some people that do not think as I think. This reblogged essay is worth reading–important nutrition for thought. If you regularly read one of my blogs where the posts often run more than a few hundred words and are not written for a fifth-grade reading level (the average person in America reads at this level), I suspect you are a thinker and are in a minority in the United States when it comes to thinking.

Lloyd Lofthouse's avatarLloyd's Anything Blog

All it takes is nine minutes of your time to watch this video as a way to understand why we need healthcare reform in the US.  We cannot return to the way things were in 2007-2008 as Mitt Romney says he will do if elected president. Romney has pledged he will repeal Obamacare if elected.  What does that mean?

“The percentage of people without health insurance in America in 2008 was not statistically different from 2007 at 15.4 percent. The number of uninsured increased to 46.3 million in 2008, from 45.7 million in 2007.

“The number of people with health insurance increased to 255.1 million in 2008—up from 253.4 million in 2007. The number of people covered by private health insurance decreased to 201.0 million in 2008—down from 202.0 million in 2007. The number of people covered by government health insurance increased to 87.4 million—up from 83.0 million in 2007

View original post 557 more words