Where is the Love?

Where is the love
You said you'd give to me
Soon as you were free
Will it ever be
--Where is the Love?,
Roberta Flack

We shall not cease from our exploring
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And to know the place for the first time
--Little Gidding, T. S. Eliot

Ranger Question of the Day:
If a MANPAD is fired by a female soldier,
does it then become a FEMPAD?
_________________

One must wonder, is anyone is watching the military stores?

In Iraq, the U.S. had no plans to secure the munitions, ASP's after the shooting stopped. The result of this negligence supplied the wherewithal for an entire armed response to the U.S. occupation of the country.

Our soldiers died because our command structure failed to foresee this problem. This was a colossal screw up often called by the Church, a "sin of omission".

MANPADS are man portable air defense, shoulder-fired, heat-seeking missiles. When the Soviets left Afghanistan the Central Intelligence Agency bought back all the red-eye type anti-aircraft missiles that we so obligingly once gave them. Accordingly, the millions that we spent on this buy-back program was instrumental in financing the Taliban's campaign to dominate Afghanistan.

Here we are in 2011 after a lot of sand has passed under the bridge, and we find ourselves coming full-circle. The U.S. / NATO has just helped the Libyan revolutionary movement overthrow the Big Bad Wolf Moammer Qadaffi, without considering the ASP's and stored weaponry of the dictator's regime. After blindly providing the muscle to depose Qadaffi, the U.S. is having to pay for the privilege by buying back all the MANPADS (or worrying where they have gone, which is probably into the hands of terrorists -- our own Big Bad Wolves.)

Why didn't any of the himbos on any major staff consider this eventuality? Where was the Central Intelligence Agency and the DIA? Do the personnel of these agencies inhabit the same universe as the rest of us mere mortals?

The failure to address this issue us unforgivable, and brings yet another issue to the fore. Let us think "capabilities and intent" once again. Is it possible that the U.S. is being sold a bill of goods with the hullabaloo of the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), and the "facts" are merely hyperbolic propaganda aimed at keeping Army Strong going?

With Iraq, if Saddam was such a bad customer, then why did he not use weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against U.S. troops in either Gulf War I or II? Why does no one ask the question? U.S. troops were clustered and ideal targets for all the supposed WMDs that United Nations Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said Saddam did not possess. Where was the dictator's malevolence? Was it a lack of intent or a shortage of capability? Both, or neither?

In Libya, if Qadaffi had all of these reported MANPADS, why did he not use them reactively? Why did he not send teams to commit international mayhem, teams that could shoot down commercial aircraft? Did he lack these contingency plans? Did he lack intent or capability? In both the Iraqi and the Libyan scenarios, the supposed threats do not hold up to a realistic appraisal.

In the world as it exists, there are MANPADS on the loose that are capable of attacking the major airways of the world. The only requirement is a gunner and a weapon on the flight path of a commercial aircraft. Another analysis will see them infiltrated to the Afghan skies and utilized to depredate U.S. tactical flights. This is a likely course of action.

Whatever the outcome of this scenario, the troubling question of incompetence continually raises its ugly little head in our endless war.

It is strong-armed robbery when the U.S. provides free bombing support and then and is then extorted to pay for the destruction of MANPADS. Someone is embezzling someone here.