[Bill Murray]

Dave & Steve:

I would surmise that I had already had quite sufficient of the Scottish elixer before I posted last PM.

On the other hand as I have to live with the name Bill Murray, I sometimes feel forced to attempt more humor (humour for my Commonwealth mates) than I am capable of.

As this is the Sergeants Mess, give me some moments.

Dave, I saw the smiley, but I still would like to say that I am sorry that we continue to see these "blue on blue" situations that needlessly take lives of our own. Regarding Normandy, and you have read the same histories that I have, the situation was a bit different with respect to technology and communications. Even so and Ike probably would have agreed with the statement which is common in the USMC, the Normandy invasion with all of it's planning was just another potential "cluster ****" as far as the real participants were concerned. Luckily, the mistakes were not as bad as projected and the Allies prevailed.

With respect to blue on blue in Afghanistan, the First Gulf War and the Current Gulf War, I find those mistakes far less than acceptable and/or excusable. The technology exists to install IFF recognition receivers/transmitters on almost everything down to individual combatants. For the moment, they are pretty much restricted to aircraft and naval vessels.

With respect to my countrymen in particular, sad to say that we still have a lot of the "frontier" or in the case of President Bush, the "cowboy" mentality which often results in a shoot first ask questions later sort of way of carrying out our military operations.

Mind you, I am pretty patriotic, I voted for Bush and I am not all that unhappy that we are trying to do something in Iraq. We just don't seem to do these type of things really well and I suppose that is in part rooted in our lack of patience. Get in, get out and go home. Probably not the best tactic. Not decades ago and not now. We do not have the history of the Romans nor do we have the history of the British who devoted centuries to trying to mould foreign cultures into what they most likely thought was a better idea.

Today, we are basing our projection of force on the threat of terrorist attacks, which I think is probably viable, but we don't have any real sort of end game strategy at least as far as I can determine.

Enough of the pulpit stuff. I stand on my reading of contemporary history that described the troubles of 1914/1918 as the Great War and the troubles of WWII or however you wish to characterize it as the 1939/1945 War.
Skol
Bill