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jwsteele, Here's a bit of advice from one of the other ranks (NCM - WO) - decide what you aspire to. I'd offer that aspiring to be a Capt is not setting your sights very high, especially if you're Infantry. You should, IMO, aspire to command - at least to command a Company, which means you...

First off, as pointed out early you won't have much call for Farsi if you deploy with the Canadians to Kandahar or Kabul. Pashtu, which is quite different from Farsi, is the most common language in the South and East of Afghanistan. Dari is similar to Farsi, so if you go to Kabul you might find...

OK, now I know that all that conflict going on since 1979 (or '92 if you count the time from Soviet withdrawal in 1989 to the rise of the Taliban as a period of peace) wasn't really conflict. Thanks for clearing that up.

Pardon?

The absurd argument I've seen is that my firearms may be stolen, and used in a crime. Therefore I should be forbidden from owning them. I hate to dredge up the car argument again, since it's a bit cliche, but consider this: A firearms owner who fails to take the legally mandated...

They would be "hanged." "Hung" has an entirely different meaning. The fact is that our justice system is imperfect. Capital punishment must require a level of perfect justice. If it were a deterrent it may be worth the occasional innocent victim, but it doesn't deter, so the retribution must...

All Arabs consider the Iranians to be Persians (they certainly don't consider them to be Arabs - and Kurds are something else - Iranian or not). Some Shi'a Arabs may accept them as co-religionists, but Arabs in general believe they are the roots of the faith. The Persians came later.

And, to add to FDL's comment according to the news piece the jorno remarked that the soldiers noticed that something was "wrong" just before the explosion. Acorn

The US Army doesn't have a WO2 rank. They have WO1, and then CW2, CW3 etc to CW5. The CWs are commissioned as has been mentioned before. Comparing billets works to a point, but it gets more confusing when you go outside the aviation role of US WOs. Acorn

I'm a former firearms owner (handguns and long guns) who succumbed to the "rules" due to the paperwork nightmare of transporting firearms to and from different provinces and abroad (too many postings in the past 20 years). I don't own any any more. However, this 'ban" is a pure vote-grab, in...

ISAF is supposed to expand (ISAF III-IV) to include the South, transitioning from OEF to ISAF sometine in '06. The Europeans are getting a bit wobbly about the expansion as the South and East involve actual COIN ops, as opposed to more benign stab ops. Apollo was in K'har under the US. Athena...

Are they? Given that battalions are around 300-400 troops?

No end of good clean fun. The EATD course staff claim that it's one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive, courses for it's length in the CF. Each car (I think the course uses 4 cars per serial) uses two sets of tires, and that doesn't count the wear-n-tear on other components, like...

And, as fun as it is, there's no "bumping."

I'm still trying to fathom wearing the Garrison jacket for the LCF..... ???

My apologies to all about that last tirade. My wife should have taken the keys to the computer. I edited the post out, so sorry about the loss of quotations. Frankly I'm glad at least one of my stupider moments won't be immortalized. The problem I have is that it does appear that some look at...

Incomprehensible crap deleted.

"She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" is a 1949 John Wayne movie about the US Civil War, with a theme song suitable, and apparently based on an old "army marching song." I think it goes back at least that far. My folks had it on an old Mich Miller (and his orchestra0 record from the 50s or 60s. Like many...

Leadership courses, especially, should have failure built in. Assessing how a leader (or potential leader) deals with failure is critical, IMO. 3rd Horseman hasn't expressed it well, but I think I agree that everyone on a leadership course must fail a task at some point in the course (not...

They are examples of poor leadership, training and lack of supervision. Whatever spin you want to apply to it, Abu Ghraib was a monumental error in judgement. Was it an error by the nameless "intelligence personnel" that allegedly encouraged it? Or was it a failure of command by Karpinski? Or...