Understatement Man Strikes Again! We Can All Aspire to This Level of Mediocrity

Medal of Honor awardee insists he's an average soldier.

The first living Medal of Honor recipient Honor in a generation says he’s just another grunt trying to complete the mission.

“In this job, I’m mediocre. I’m average,” Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday by video link from his base in Vicenza, Italy, where his 173 Airborne Brigade Combat Team is based.

“This was a situation we were put into,” Giunta said. “By no means did I do anything that everyone else wouldn’t have done.”

On Oct. 25, 2007, Giunta was a team leader wrapping up a day’s mission in the rugged Korengal Valley in Afghanistan’s Kunar province when his platoon came under fire. A round slammed into his bulletproof chest plate, but he quickly regained his footing and ran into the gunfire and helped pull three wounded soldiers to safety.

He helped provide cover and care for Sgt. Josh Brennan, who was struck by six rounds and was later medevaced out.

“I didn’t run up to do anything heroic or to save Brennan,” Giunta said. “In my mind Brennan wasn’t in trouble. I was just going up and I was going to find Brennan and we were going to shoot together. It’s better to be shooting with a buddy than to be shooting alone.”

By: Brant

You're Going to Bar School From Reporting the Results of a *MILITARY* Test to, uh, THE MILITARY?!

Color me stupid, but why the hell would you even take the ASVAB if you weren't interested in joining the military? It was created to help ID what specialty you'd be suited for in the service. And more to the point, if you're a high school offering a test designed to identify aptitude for military occupational specialties why would you bar schools from releasing the tests to - get this! - the military!?

A first-of-its-kind law bars public high schools in Maryland from automatically sending student scores on a widely used military aptitude test to recruiters, a practice that critics say was giving the armed forces backdoor access to young people without their parents' consent.

School districts around the country have the choice of whether to administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery exam, and ones that offer it typically pass the scores and students' contact information directly to the military. Topics on the test range from math and reading to knowledge of electronics and automobiles.

The Maryland law, the first in the nation after similar California legislation was vetoed, was signed last month and bars schools from automatically releasing the information to military recruiters. Instead, students, and their parents if they are under 18, will have to decide whether to give the information to the military. The law takes effect in July. One other state, Hawaii, has a similar policy for its schools, but not a law.

By: Brant

Understatement Man Strikes Again!

C'mon folks - you really got a document leaked about how to stop leaks?

Last October, WikiLeaks got a hold of the U.K.'s Ministry of Defense's Defence Manual of Security, a 2,400-page, restricted document designed to help government officials "maintain information security in the face of hackers, journalists, foreign spies, and others." And this morning, the site published a 32-page U.S. counterintelligence investigation, which included plans to "damage and destroy" WikiLeaks' "center of gravity." Why does this keep happening?!

Blame the moles
According to U.K. report, information usually leaks via "disaffected members of staff, or as a result of the attentions of an investigative journalist, or simply by accident or carelessness." The U.S. report echoes that sentiment: "The possibility that current employees within DoD or elsewhere...are providing sensitive or classified information to WikiLeaks cannot be ruled out." So, naturally, the solution is to release a document that explicitly talks about how to stop moles. Which, of course, the moles will see, and then leak. Because that's what moles do.

Blame the report
Okay, I'm no expert in classified documents, but if the governments really didn't want these reports to leak, why did they give them such obvious titles? Like, "WikiLeaks.org--An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups?" Was "Hey, WikiLeakers--The Most Perfect, Leaktastic Document Ever To Not Yet Be Leaked" taken? That's just begging to wind up on the Internet. What happened to code names? And anagrams? And ciphers? Don't these people read Dan Brown novels?!

Blame the Chinese
In the U.K. report, the Chinese are singled out for having "a voracious appetite for all kinds of information; political, military, commercial, scientific and technical." So, you know, it was probably them.

Blame the irony
Every so often, a news story breaks that's so hilariously ironic, you have to wonder if--to some extent--it was simply meant to be. (See: Anti-Gay State Sen. Got DUI After Leaving Gay Nightclub; Octomom Calls Kate Gosselin An "Attention-Whore.") Sorry, governments, but Classified "How To Stop Leaks" Document Leaks Onto Internet makes a welcome addition.

By: Brant

Understatement Man Strikes Again!

Gee, how bold is it to predict that someone will try to attack the US in the next six months?

America’s top intelligence official told lawmakers on Tuesday that Al Qaeda and its affiliates had made it a high priority to attempt a large-scale attack on American soil within the next six months.

The assessment by Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, was much starker than his view last year, when he emphasized the considerable progress in the campaign to debilitate Al Qaeda and said that the global economic meltdown, rather than the prospect of a major terrorist attack, was the “primary near-term security concern of the United States.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Mr. Blair to assess the possibility of an attempted attack in the United States in the next three to six months.

He replied, “The priority is certain, I would say” — a response that was reaffirmed by the top officials of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I.

Citing a recent wave of terrorist plots, including the failed Dec. 25 attempt to blow up an airliner as it approached Detroit, Mr. Blair and other intelligence officials told a Senate panel that Al Qaeda had adjusted its tactics to more effectively strike American targets domestically and abroad.

“The biggest threat is not so much that we face an attack like 9/11,” said Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director. “It is that Al Qaeda is adapting its methods in ways that oftentimes make it difficult to detect.”

Gee, they're gonna try and attack us?! RUN TO THE HILLS!
OK, so there's an attack. Everyone says "See! I told you so!"
If there's not an attack? Everyone says "See! Our defenses are working!"

In the meantime, these part-time Cassandras couldn't tell you what kind of attack, where, by who, targeting what with any sort of accuracy.

By: Brant

What? A problem with contractor accountability? Sigh.

Apparently, the firm responsible for training the Iraqi police lost some spare change in their sofa cushions.

The State Department has consistently failed to properly monitor defense contractor DynCorp International's $2.5 billion, five-year-old effort to train Iraqi police, a government audit found on Monday.
Stuart Bowen, the U.S. government's special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said the State Department has exercised "weak oversight" of DynCorp's contract, failing to watch over the money being spent on the training program.
"As a result, over $2.5 billion in U.S. funds are vulnerable to waste and fraud," according to the report released by Bowen.
The report said State Department officials have repeatedly stated that they recognized long-standing problems and would improve management and oversight of the contract, but have "fallen far short."

You'd think we'd have this accountability thing fixed after seven years...

By: Brant

Understatement Man Strikes Again!

EagleSpeak asks, If only . . .



By: Brant

Understatement Man Strikes Again!

So apparently Japan fired the head of their air force:

Japan sacked its air force chief on Friday after he wrote an essay in which he denied the country was an aggressor in World War II, a stance likely to anger its Asian neighbours.

Our emphasis...

Ya think?!

By: Understatement Man!