Thinking Meat

Suman Palit is back, and he is distinctly unimpressed with Kerry's Convention speech.

And exactly how does Kerry plan on doubling the number of Special Forces..? These guys are called Special Forces for a reason. They are simply brilliant warriors, to a man. They are all volunteers who often apply for Spec Ops training over and over again, rejected until they are accepted. What does Kerry want to do? Impose Quotas on Spec Op hiring? All this will do is dilute the effectiveness of the Special Forces, making it difficult to use them as they were designed. Again, this tells me that either Kerry knows nothing of the military he claims to be proud of having served in, or this is a cynical and calculated effort at undermining it. . .

The carnard [sic] about the backdoor draft is just that, a canard. When you sign up for the Guard, it's not for sunny jaunts in armored cars across the Califormia coastline on a taxpayer funded binge. People join up knowing fully well that there is a eight year commitment, and that the purpose of the military is to fight wars. The Pentagon is now calling up reservists on the basis of something that all enlistees know about when they do sign up. They never have had to in past engagements, because our post-Vietnam entanglements never came close to stretching our resurces until Iraq-II. But this is exactly why the deferred service clause is in the contract. Does it suck? Of course it does? War sucks for everyone, particularly the soldiers. . .

(By way of Pejman.)

Update: Also back: the mustard-yellow Russell Wardlow. Well, he isn't yellow, but his site is.