Not just a disturbance in The Force, but a complete gutting.

Once again, I sense a great disturbance in The Force. In this case, the force in question is our Army force, and it's a force about to be gutted once again.

I remember the drawdown of troops that started when I was in Germany in the late 80s. While I was there, the Army shut down the 8th Infantry Division and the 56th Field Artillery Command, the command responsible for the Pershing intermediate range nuclear missiles. The drawdowns stopped abruptly at the end of 1990 when Papa Bush found himself headed to Gulf War 1. That brought a new term to my lexicon: Stop Loss.

Stop Loss meant that NO ONE, and I mean no one, was allowed to exit the Army unless under the most dire of emergencies. No one was leaving their units, either. If you were scheduled to get off active duty, you were stuck in Uncle Sugar's service until further notice. If you were scheduled to leave your unit and transfer to another unit, scratch that till further notice. Several of my friends were stuck going to Iraq when they were supposed to be getting out and starting college or starting police jobs they had set up in advance.

After the war ended, Stop Loss ended too, and the great RIF of 91 began. Reduction In Force meant at that time that "Hey, the Russians are a non-issue, we just won a quickie war, and you guys are no longer needed", and basically the Army was letting people take Early Outs and Early Retirements if they had served a certain amount of their enlistment contracts.

The Clinton years saw a further reduction in forces and we found ourselves after 9/11 with less equipment and fewer troops than we would have liked. The active duty Army had to rely MUCH more on reserve components and National Guard units than ever before since WW2. Fewer troops meant longer deployments and more frequent deployments, especially in our Special Operations forces. It's nothing in the SpecOps community to see guys who have made 20 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the regular forces, I saw guys make three to five and sometimes as many as seven rotations through the combat theater.

And now Obeezy and his minions are busily gutting the military again, cutting the forces we do have left. This means that when things go to shit again in the Middle East (and they always do; just look at Syria)or when something threatens us domestically  we'll have fewer assets around to deal with it.

We have a Navy with the fewest ships since the First World War, when we had a 600-ship Navy under Reagan. Sure, our ships are more capable now than ever before and in some cases one ship can do the work of two or three of its predecessors, but fewer ships means longer deployments and a longer time between refits and maintenance. Gear wears out and doesn't get replaced and it fails and people die. People get tired, mistakes get made, and people die.Families get tired of longer deployments and marriages die. Dudes stop re-enlisting. The force suffers.

They canceled the Air Force's orders for F-22 Raptor fighters. Just make do with the excellent-but-thirty-year-old planes you have now. The F-35 program crawls along and stalls.  Just make do with the excellent-but-thirty-year-old planes you have now.

I'm just the messenger...

And now, the Army announces that it's cutting 12 Brigade Combat Teams over the next three and a half years.  In addition, Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno told reporters at a Pentagon news conference the Army will shrink its active component end strength by 14 percent, or 80,000 soldiers, to 490,000, down from a wartime high of 570,000 troops.

The Army National Guard will cut 8,000 soldiers, he said, without making any force structure changes. And the Army Reserve will skip a planned force increase and maintain its current size of 205,000.

In all, 12 brigade combat teams will inactivate, the general said, including two brigade combat teams stationed at Baumholder and Grafenwoehr, Germany, that were already scheduled to inactivate in fiscal 2013.

Two brigade combat teams will remain in Europe to fulfill strategic commitments, Odierno said.

This makes sense to some of you...

One brigade combat team will inactivate at each of the following installations: Fort Bliss, TX; Fort Bragg, NC; Fort Campbell, KY; Fort Carson, CO; Fort Drum, NY; Fort Hood, TX; Fort Knox, KY.; Fort Riley, KS; Fort Stewart, GA, and Joint Base Lewis-McChord, in Washington. (God I hate that Joint Base name crap. It's their new way of combining a local Army base and Air Force base into one giant entity to keep it from being closed. It's all the latest rage. Locally, Joint Base Charleston combined the Navy's Goose Creek Weapons Station (which houses their nuclear power school) and the Charleston Air Force Base)

In Germany, the 172d Infantry Brigade Combat Team is going to get the axe in Grafenwoehr (or just Graf as we called it), leaving the Second Cavalry Regiment to hold the line at Graf. Up in Baumholder (The Rock, as it was always known) I'm less certain who was closing up shop as their website listed no current BCT at the base. Baumholder was actually supposed to close as a base not too long ago but seems to have been spared. Most recently though the base was home to the 170th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, which closed up shop and disbanded six months ago.

As for the other bases, it's starting to come out as to who is going to have to "case the colors", Army lingo for closing up shop, folding your flag, and being shut down. At Fort Bliss, it is rumored that the 3d Armored Brigade Combat Team, part of the First Armored Division, is the likely unit to be axed. At Fort Bragg, it's looking like it's the 82nd Airborne Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team. At Campbell, it's the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division, which traces its lineage back to the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which was activated in 1942. Soldiers from the regiment serving in World War II were made famous in historian Stephen Ambrose’s book “Band of Brothers.”

Up in New York at Fort Drum, it's the Spartans of the 10th Mountain Division's 3d Brigade Combat Team. At Fort Carson it's the 4th Infantry Division's 3d Brigade Combat Team, where it has been assigned since the Vietnam War. Ar Fort Hood it will be the First Cavalry Division's 4th Brigade Combat Team. At Joint Base Lewis-McChord it will be the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, part of the 7th Infantry Division.

At Fort Stewart, just an hour or so down the interstate from me, it is 3d Infantry Division's 2d Armored Brigade Combat Team. Some of the base's loss is offset by other units moving to the base, however. As such, the division's remaining brigades will gain a maneuver battalion and fire and support elements under pending Army restructurings. Additionally, Fort Stewart will gain a Fires Brigade headquarters, a Gray Eagle drone company, a Civil Affairs Battalion, a heavy transport company and a Chemical Maintenance company.

At Fort Riley, my old stomping grounds, the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division is getting the axe. The First Division, the famous Big Red One, is getting a serious one-two punch because their 3rd Brigade Combat Team, housed at Fort Knox in Kentucky, is also getting axed. That cust the division in half until other units move in under restructuring. The two brigades set for reorganization are the 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team and 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, both located at Fort Riley. As part of the reorganization, each brigade will receive a third maneuver battalion and see an increase in its engineer and artillery capabilities.

Each brigade that gets cut means a loss of around 3,000 soldiers and their families, not to mention civilian employees at the bases associated with the units. The economic impact in the base's communities will be felt sorely until new units move in.

Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear said he was disappointed by the plan to inactivate the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Fort Knox.

“This decision will likely remove nearly 10,000 military employees and dependents from the area, which will have a profound economic impact, not only on Fort Knox but the surrounding region as well,” he said in a prepared statement.

Oh, goody. More unemployed people in a shaky economy.

And with the National Guard shedding 8,000 troops, that's 8,000 people with a reduced income from their Guard drills and 8,000 fewer people on hand to assist their local communities in times of emergencies like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and wildfires.

But that's okay. As long as we can send weapons and supplies and aid to people who hate us in Syria or Egypt or Pakistan, and as long as we can keep printing food stammps and welfare checks, it's all good in Obeezy's Hood. It's the Democrat Way.

Picking Our Next War via Magic 8-Ball

Let me be clear. I won't know where I send troops until I see it on TV.

So, here we are after a decade of America's finest sons & daughters coming home in metal boxes draped with a flag, a flag later dutifully and solemnly folded and handed to a grieving family member with the thanks of a grateful nation, and John McCain and other alleged Great Men are shaking dice in a plastic cup like a Yahtzee Game  or looking at a Magic 8-Ball to see where we'll send troops next.

Steve, you sound like a pacifist. What the hell? That's not like you.

Me, a pacifist? Not bloody likely. I love seeing Bad Guys get a beat down courtesy of the best warfighters the world has ever known. But as a former soldier I am keenly aware of what it's like to be a pawn of Great Men and being the pointy end of the spear. No one longs for peace like a warrior, for the warrior is the one who has the most to lose in war.

What fresh Hell is this? If it's Wednesday it must be Asscrackistan...

 I'm okay with US troops being deployed to hot spots to protect American citizens in danger or to assist good, solid, proven allies in protecting their people. I'm okay with sending US troops to help after a disaster like an earthquake of tsunami. I'm not okay, however, with just sending troops in pell mell every time some Third World crap hole country with a tin pot dictator or Jihadi government says "boo" to us or thumbs its nose at the impotent United Nations. Worse, I am most certainly sure as hell not cool with sending troops into harm's way to satisfy some politician's need to use troops to extend his penis and garner what he thinks is gravitas points.

Hi ho, Hi ho...it's off to war we go. With guns and blades and hand grenades, hi ho, hi ho, hi ho...

I find it ironic that John McCain, the RINO with the biggest horn in Washington, likes to gut immigration reforms that leave our borders unprotected but hawkishly calls for us to scurry into Syria to help topple their government like that's going to make us more secure. Even more ironic is that as a guy who spent years as a POW getting the crap kicked out of him he's always willing to send in the troops if it makes him look more like a prototypical Republican, especially when he needs to score points with Conservatives after he does something progressively liberal to appease potential voters who just vote Dem anyways.

Yeah, after a decade of Americans fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan with few tangible results in our favor we've just recently sent a couple hundred troops to Jordan to curb Syrian violence (It hasn't worked) and now Capitol Hill wants to send in more troops and send in arms shipments to equip the rebels. But last time I checked, we were under a sequester, right? They cut military spending because all those babykillers and evil war mongering knuckledraggers are just a drain on the coffers of polite society when that money is better served on welfare and food stamps for baby-mommas and generational lagabouts who vote Democrat because the Dems keep handing them free money.

I digress.

But if we're cutting military spending, with troops seeing tuition assistance cut and public affairs events like annual airshows cancelled, with thousands of federal employees losing hunks of their paychecks due to furloughs, where the hell is the money coming from to magically deploy troops for Syria? Why are we able to cobble together billions in military aid packages to an anti-American Islamist government in Egypt or billions for Pakistan, a country known to harbor Islamoterrorists, a country we routinely drone-strike because of it?

We cut money and punish the military when it suits the whims of politicians and then deploy them to satisfy the whims of politicians. We have troops deployed all over the place and while most of the locations are well-known spots like nearly 30,000 in Korea or 35,000 in Japan or 55,000 in Germany or 20,000 in Italy, or 6,000 or so in Panama, maybe 5,000 in Guam, there are a dozen or more that are less known.

We have a thousand or so people in Cuba at Gitmo even though Obeezy closed it when he took office as promised. Oh wait...no he didn't. He couldn't because we kinda need it to keep scumbags off the streets. We keep 500 or so troops on a rotational basis in Honduras as part of Joint Task Force Bravo. We've got 700 or so out in the Philippines chasing down Islamists there. We have over 3,000 in Djibouti coordinating drone strikes and Special Ops missions. We have at least a hundred in Niger to help the French fighting Islamists in Mali by doing drone recon. For the past year and a half we've been rotating about a hundred Special Forces advisors in and out of Uganda at a cost of about $4.5 million a month to operate in Uganda, South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic, helping to eradicate Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army terror group.

There are already over 1,000 Marines from the USS Kearsarge amphibious group in Jordan on a training exercise, along with 4,000 more from the Army & Air Force, many of whom will be staying behind with their F-16s and Patriot missile batteries after the exercises are over at the behest of the Jordanian government.

We're all up in the 'Stans....Good old Afghanistan, of course, with about 70,000 or so pairs of boots on the ground in addition to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikstan, & Turkmenistan.....plus Turkey, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Diego Garcia, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and that good old standby, Iraq. We still have some people in Iraq, even though the average low-information Joe & Jane Voter thinks we completely pulled out. News Flash: while we stopped combat operations there ostensibly and pulled out the majority of our troops in order to continue grinding them up in Afghanistan, things in Iraq have just gone back to random bomb attacks on civilians between rival groups just like the Bad Old Days.

Oh, yeah, before I forget, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Messiah Obeezy (Blessed Be His Name) also has troops at bases on the borders of Bolivia in Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay to hunt for drug lords or something like that.

Yeah, we have boots on the ground in more countries than WalMart does, only they're turning a profit doing it while we're pissing away billions to countries that hate us and we're pissing on the countries that actually still do like us. We're over-taxing our troops and wasting resources and giving away billions to be later used against our own people.

Meanwhile, the Obeezy Family is dropping $100 MILLION in our money to vacation in Africa and Ireland and Germany. Another vacation. Another damned vacation. I haven't had anything more than a long weekend away from home since 2007 and those assholes are on ANOTHER mufti-million dollar vacation. In the middle of a sequester. When we're 17 TRILLION in debt. While Americans are still dying in Afghanistan. (But Americans dying overseas is no big deal to Obama. Look at Benghazi...)

But Obama won't know he's on vacation till he sees it on the news, I guess.

The Pipes and Drums of......Homeland Security?

I almost choked on my Belvita cracker when I read this crap about Homeland Security putting in (and then almost immediately cancelling) a purchase request through the GSA for accessories to outfit a bagpipe band.

Yes, a bagpipe band.

What in the hell does the Department of Homeland Security need with a bagpipe band? Don't get me wrong; I love bagpipes. I have friends who are in various pipe bands. My own paternal grandfather was a drummer in a bagpipe band. I attend Scottish events and own a kilt & all the accessories.

But, really, we have terrorists running loose and illegals pouring across our wide open borders to receive amnesty at the hands of the Left. Aren't we in the middle of a sequester that allegedly cut federal spending? I know that my buddy Jack who works for the federal prisons, keeping scumbags locked up, and he has unpaid days off now. My buddy Joe, who works internet security keeping hackers out of government computers, took a $17,000 pay cut due to the sequester. The military had to cut tuition assistance to soldiers on active duty trying to further their educations while keeping us safe from harm. But Homeland Security wanted a bagpipe band? For what?

Lads & lasses, let me assure you; this stuff ain't cheap. I know from experience. The entire purchase request is available here to verify my veracity, but I'll repost it if you haven't seen it.

The DHS Customs and Border Protection requires the following items, Brand Name or Equal, to the following:
LI 001: Carbon Bagpipe Drone Reed Set, 5, EA;
LI 002: Bagpipe Chanter Reeds-Easy, 12, EA;
LI 003: Bagpipe Chanter Reeds-Medium, 12, EA;
LI 004: Deluxe Bagpipe Bag Covers w/ Non-slip Grap Patch and Zipper, 5, EA;
LI 005: Drone Cords, 5, EA;
LI 006: Highland Bagpipe Tuner and Metronome with cases, 2, EA;
LI 007: Combination Tuner and Metronome, 6, EA;
LI 008: Black Polypenco Bagpipes w/ cases, 10, EA;
LI 009: Polypenco Bagpipe Chanter, 10, EA;
LI 010: Bellows Blown Blackwood Smallpipes in "A" w/ cases, 4, EA;
LI 011: Black waxed bagpipe hemp, 4, EA;
LI 012: Real Beeswax, 4, EA;
LI 013: Long Polypenco Practice Chanters, 10, EA;
LI 014: Bagpipe Tutor Book - VOL 1 C.O.P., 10, EA;
LI 015: Practice Chanter Reed, 10, EA;
LI 016: Rol of Pipe Bag Tie-In cord, 2, EA;
LI 017: Tapered Reamer, 1, EA;
LI 018: PiobMaster 2.3 CD ROM-Bagpipe music writing software, 1, EA;
LI 019: Pipe Band Base Drum Carrier, 2, EA;
LI 020: Folding Bass Drum Stand, 1, EA;
LI 021: Inverness Rain Cape, 14, EA;
LI 022: Glengarry Plain, 15, EA;
LI 023: Snare Drum Stand, 4, EA;
LI 024: Pipe Band Snare Drums-Black, 4, EA;
LI 025: Snare Carrier-Silver, 4, EA;
LI 026: 16" x 12" Pipe Band Tenor Drum, 4, EA;
LI 027: 18" Bodhran Pack w/ Beater, 4, EA;
LI 028: Deluxe triple function drum sling, 2, EA;
LI 029: Heavy Duty Tenor Drum leg rest, 2, EA;
LI 030: Drum-Mount Snare Drum stick bag, 4, EA;
LI 031: Heavy Duty Drum Key, 2, EA;
LI 032: Short Black Classic Tenor Mallets, 3, EA;
LI 033: Black Bass Beaters, 2, EA;
LI 034: TyFry Tenor Tutor Tenor Instruction DVD/CDROM, 1, EA;
LI 035: Snare Stick Set, 10, EA;
LI 036: Square Tenor/Snare Drum Case, 5, EA;
LI 037: Spats Canvas-White, 20, EA;
LI 038: Hose-Blue, 14, EA;
LI 039: Flashes-Red, 14, EA;
LI 040: Leather Day Sporrans-Black, 14, EA;
LI 041: Horsehair Sporrans, 14, EA;
LI 042: Sgian Dubhs, 14, EA;
LI 043: Shipping/Handling/Delivery, 1, EA;

From experience I can attest to the cost of certain items. Item 40, the leather day sporrans, average about a hundred bucks a pop. They ordered 15, so call it $1500 bucks for that line item alone. The horsehair sporrans for pipe bands run, say $300, so there's another $4200 for the 14 ordered. Blue kilt hose for 14 people at $25 a pair is $350, and the 14 pairs of flashes at $20 each is $280. If you shop around you can get those 15 plain Glengarry hats for only $45 each....I kinda got shafted when I dropped over $60 on a diced Glengarry 14 years ago (dicing is the nifty red & white checks on Scottish headgear that generally denoted affiliation with the military in the past but is now more of a decorative thing). Call those 15 Glens another $675. Those Inverness rain capes for playing in inclement weather are about a hundred each, so there's $1400 more.

A 16 x 12 Pearl tenor drum runs you a good $570 each, and they wanted four. That's $2280. Snare drums from Yamaha are around $609, or $2436 for the four. An 18" bodhran drum from Meinl is around $140, making it $560 for the four. White canvas spats to go over your Ghillie brogues (traditional shoes work with a formal kilt outfit) are $25 a set, so 20 sets is another $500. And the sgian dhu (Gaelic for Black Blade) is the wee dagger carried tucked inside your kilt hose with the handle sticking up out the top, those can really vary. I have several. A nice dressy one can run another $100, so that's yet another $1400 for this purchase.

See? I told you this gets expensive REALLY quick.

This is not exactly a spur of the moment purchase, either. This has been an ongoing process, actually. Back in September of last year, the purchase of 12 sets of bagpipes was awarded to MacLellan Bagpipes of Monroe, NC. The contract price was $27, 060 for the set of 12 or $2,255 a piece. Funny thing is, the MacLellan website sells their pipes for $1500. Somebody got shafted, namely Joe Taxpayer.

What hasn't been covered, either, is the cost of the kilts for, say, 15 people. I paid $500 for mine when I ordered it. That could mean a good $7500 in kilts alone. They'll likely need piper's doublets, a military-type jacket favored by pipe bands. They're actually cheaper on average than the Argyll jacket I wear for my formal occasions. I paid $375 for my Argyll, but many places sell the doublets for a mere $200 to start, so that's $3000 for the 15. The footwear, as previously mentioned, are a type of wingtip shoe called a Ghillie brogue that laces up your calf. Those run about $150 a pair for the type needed for marching, so there's $2250 in shoes. Those Glengarry hats need a cap badge (as low as $20 depending on what they use, or $300) and kilt pins for 15 will be another $300. Who knows what they'll pay for the white shirts & ties...

The band leader, the Pipe Major, will most often be attired additionally in a pipe major's sash (as low as $40), a fly plaid (a piece of tartan fabric that is flung over the shoulder, perhaps $200 thereabouts), a large scepter called the Mace (a good $300) and in many cases an enormous bearskin hat. That hat can be a good $500 on its own.

Again, this is an expensive thing to get into. In the middle of a recession that spawned a sequester, Big Sis Napolitano and company are going to drop a good $100,000 or so to outfit a band to accompany their armored vehicles and huge weapon & ammo purchases. Meanwhile, our border is a sieve and terrorists are doing the Allah Akbar Shuffle from Texas to Boston.

Hey, Big Sis: EXPLAIN YOURSELF.