The armed forces of the U.K., the U.S.'s biggest military ally, will need billions of dollars more than they have to spend, according to a government audit report, requiring what analysts say will be fundamental cuts to operations...

With Britain battling a record budget deficit, many political analysts say funding for the armed services will fall rather than increase...

The report underscores an evergreen criticism of modern British governments: that they ask their armed forces to project a global military presence without giving them the financial backing to do so.

Is America under funding our military while expecting them to maintain a global presence? At first glance, the answer is no.

Page one of Defense News reported on yesterday President Obama and the congress added $100 billion dollars to the defense budget to...

...cover the rising cost of operations, personnel and pressing modernization needs, officials said.

If approved by Congress, the money would allow defense spending to rise about 1 percent above projected inflation, analysts said.

DoD’s 2010 budget request called for $534 billion, plus $130 billion to cover the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq...

Among other procurement efforts, the money will pay for new Air Force global strike programs — including work on new manned and unmanned systems — Army brigade combat team modernization, a Navy attack submarine and the Navy’s new Carrier Long-Range Strike system, sources said...

Analysts called the decision a victory for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who has lobbied the White House for more funding.

At first blush, this appears to the act of a government backing its resolution with teeth as it sends men and women abroad in harms way. However, a closer look reveals this spending bill does not include...

...the estimated $30 billion that will be needed to fund President Barack Obama’s recent decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

Now the Hill reports there is even less in this spending bill for the Pentagon to accomplish its missions...

The defense-spending bill written by Congress ignores cuts to several high-profile Pentagon programs proposed by the Obama administration...includes money for the General Electric-Rolls-Royce alternative engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and for 10 additional Boeing C-17 cargo planes...It also includes a lifeline of sorts for the VH-71 presidential helicopter, which the administration has canceled due to cost concerns.

The Pentagon did not ask for money to continue any of these programs. The funding for the three programs makes up about $3.1 billion in the $636.3 billion Pentagon-spending bill agreed to by congressional negotiators.

Gates also told the Senate that he strongly opposed the $2.5 billion for 10 additional C-17s....But Democrats are also looking to the defense bill as a vehicle to raise the country’s debt ceiling and to extend unemployment benefits and healthcare insurance subsidies for the long-term jobless.

So it is unlikely that Obama will end up vetoing the bill, despite the previous threats.

There it is. These initiatives won’t fund the president’s war surge or critical programs identified by the Pentagon and Secretary of Defense. This bill is one big pork-barrel trough for initiatives already rejected by the president, the Secretary of Defense, and the generals in the Pentagon. Its also a domestic spending bill disguised as a defense bill. After this bill is signed a few contactors in key districts will benefit and the troops will get equipment they don’t want or need.  

The U.K. is only a few paces down the road to Hell ahead of us. In a few more budget cycles we’ll be in the same place. Every precious dollar congress spends on pork and not on real defense requirements is a bill our troops will pay later - when they’re stranded overseas and no one has their back. 

Our economic collapse will quickly be followed by our military collapse...unless the citizens of this nation reign in the mafia we call Congress.

First question: What advantage do ICBMs have over SLBMs? Answer: They ensure vast stretches your homeland is targeted by enemy missiles. Even the Mitchell report says if we could only retain one portion of the Triad it would be the SLBMs. Therefore, why not get rid of the ICBMs and keep the bombers? Because, as the Mitchell report points out, the bomber force has been neglected for two generations and a replacement is far off.

Second question: Are we ready to use a sea launched or intercontinental ballistic missile against a small-scale nuclear power?  How would Russia react to ICBMs or SLBMs rising out of Midwest or Atlantic, with only the President’s words over a red phone saying, “Don’t worry, those aren’t for you.” Answer: No, because we’re in a pickle if the Russians say, “If you launch, then we launch on you.” 

Third question: Without a manned strategic (i.e. nuclear) capability, what does that officially make the US Air Force? Answer: An expensive appendix to three entities – Naval Aviation, Army Aviation, and the airlines. This policy has been formalized by the current chief of staff. Re-aligning your entire force structure to be “good helpers” to the other service’s missions at the expense of “Global Reach/Global Power” is no way to ensure the future.

In the Vietnam-era movie Apocalypse Now, the flamboyant character Colonel Kilgore profoundly states, “One day, this war is going to end.”

Our current wars will end, too. When the dust settles, we will find ourselves with an air arm only capable of fighting bush wars, but unable to strike globally at will. This wasn’t the truth twenty years ago, but it’s the truth now. Since sitting on its laurels at the end of Desert Storm the U.S. Air Force has brilliantly succeeded in self-destructing and ceding its mission to the other services. Walking away from a manned, long range strategic and nuclear bomber is the final nail in the coffin.

This morning’s DOD Buzz over at Military.com hints the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) will recommend slashing the carrier force from 11 to 9, killing the Marines’ Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, reducing the Joint Strike Fighter pro­gram buy, and chopping two Air Force wings.

The EFV is the centerpiece of the Marines’ future conventional warfare capability. Will the Marines fight for this one? According to DOD Buzz, “Reports are that Marine Commandant Gen. James Conway will come out swing­ing to pre­serve the abil­ity to kick down the door and ensure forcible entry from the sea.”  Will Gates fire him? Nope.

After the demise of the F-22 program, the F-35 is the last active production fighter program in the US. The Air Force (after having its n*ts cut off and handed to it by Gates) gently rolled over on the F-22, handed over majority on control of tactical UAVs to the Army, rolled over on CSARX, and got bi*ch-slapped on the tanker. This service will mutter some weak-kneed platitude about “jointness,” meekly cut even more from it’s F-35 program (I’m sure the Navy and Marines will adequately defend their F-35 purchases) as well as a couple of combat wings. Afterwards, to make themselves feel better, the Air Force will issue a new policy about wearing reflective belts.

“First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam...Yet this argument depends upon a false reading of history. Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action. Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists who are plotting along its border.”

I’ll buy that. However, I would like to expand upon the commander-in-chief’s remarks and show the other ways Afghanistan is not another Vietnam.

First, I’ll state the obvious. Vietnam is a coastal country, full of low-lands, swamps and jungles.It’s sticky, hot, lush, and full of really nasty bugs. Afghanistan is a, mountainous place. It’s dusty, brown, and full of nasty people.

Second, Vietnamese women are hot. Afghanistan, not so much. I mean, lets face it, there aren’t many war brides coming home from this place.

In Vietnam, we didn’t care so much about offending people. We usually cared more about the accuracy of our ordinance.

In Vietnam, our soldiers listened to better music. Seriously, have you heard the lame crap which passes for popular music these days? I have a request for the left-wing in our nation...how about some good old fashioned war protest songs? I don’t agree with them, but they were still fun to listen to. Hey, now, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down....That stuff was great!

In Vietnam, few people supported the troops. However, there was a hell of a lot more people as troops. American’s from all walks of life fought and died in that war. Today, people loudly support the troops, then slink off to the mall, grateful someone else is doing the dirty work.

Hollywood made one anti-war movie after another about Vietnam. Some of them were damn good, even if you fundamental disagreed with the political perspective. Many conservatives have The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, and Coming Home in their DVD collections, right along with John Wayne’s Green Berets. Other than HBO, Hollywood isn’t making so many movies about the wars these days. And when they do, they suck (I mean, Lions for Lambs?? Come on, folks, you can do better than that!) Hey, Hollywood, if your going to make an anti-war movie, fine, just blow more sh*t up!

Fashion is very different between the two wars. In Vietnam, the enemy wore black pajamas and hid in the jungle. In Afghanistan, the wear white pajamas and hide in caves. Beards are very popular among the Afghani men...not so much in Vietnam.

In Vietnam, the American media was openly against the war effort. In Afghanistan, the American media is trying to figure out how ignore the war as not embarrass their messiah, President Obama.

For our money, one of the better parts of President Obama's speech at West Point this week was his connection between a healthy economy and U.S. national security. To quote: "Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy." We only wish Mr. Obama understood the link between the larger welfare state he is trying to build at home and the economic weakness that will undermine our military power.

The proof is right before his eyes in the U.S. struggle to get Europe to contribute more forces to Afghanistan. Mr. Obama has called on NATO to buttress the U.S. surge of 30,000 in Afghanistan with 5,000 or more European troops. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Brussels today to round up promissory notes. But except for the usual stalwarts—Britain and Poland—the allies are having trouble meeting even this modest goal. Germany and France are reluctant to contribute anything more to defeat the Taliban.

This is by now a familiar story, and a big part of the problem is the relative lack of military spending. Among the Western Europeans, only France and the U.K. spend more than 2% of GDP on defense, supposedly the NATO-mandated minimum. Nearly everyone else is below that. Germany, the continent's largest economy, stands at 1.3%. U.S. defense spending has been above 4% of GDP since 2004, having fallen to 3% after the Cold War ended.

No amount of pleading and shaming has worked on the continentals. NATO launched the "Defense Capabilities Initiative" in 1999, only to abandon it a few years later. Various attempts to stand up European "rapid reaction" forces have floundered.

Most European countries also commit more than half of what little they do spend on defense to soldier salaries and benefits. Equipment and training are shortchanged. Belgium devotes 74% to personnel; the U.S. 30.6%. Europeans lack cargo planes and helicopters to enable troops to get to, and move within, far-off conflict zones. In 2007, the U.S. deployed 14% of its troops in overseas operations, Europe 4%.

Such relative strategic weakness has made the Europeans more dependent on the American security umbrella, even as they resent it. But it also makes Europeans more disposed to avoid confrontation with adversaries like Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. As Henry Kissinger has put it, European leaders are no longer able to ask their people to make major sacrifices.

The overlooked culprit here is the rise of the modern welfare state. Since World War II and especially from the 1960s, Europe has built elaborate domestic income-maintenance programs, with government-run health care, pensions and jobless benefits. These are hugely expensive, requiring high taxes and government spending that is a huge proportion of GDP. The nearby table compares the so-called tax wedge across nations, which is one measure of the relative burdens to finance cradle-to-grave entitlements.

One consequence has been slower growth in Europe, relative to the U.S. and China, with less tax revenue to spend on everything. Another result is that welfare spending has crowded out defense spending. The political imperative of health care and pensions always trumps defense spending, save perhaps in a hot war. Europe may never again be able to muster public support for a defense buildup of the kind the U.S. undertook to end the Cold War in the 1980s, or even the smaller surge after 9/11.

The tragic irony of this year is that Democrats are rushing the U.S. down this same primrose entitlement path. With ObamaCare certain to eat up several more percentage points of GDP as it inevitably expands, we will take a giant step toward European social priorities.

For many Democrats, this is precisely the goal. Many Europeans, such as those at the Financial Times, will also welcome America's relative decline. But we doubt the American people fully understand what such a gilded entitlement cage means for our national vitality, or for our ability to defend U.S. interests at home and abroad.

The chart nearby shows the change in the share of U.S. federal spending on defense and domestic programs across recent decades. The upward blips in defense outlays occurred during Vietnam, the Reagan buildup and post-9/11. But the overall trend has been to spend less of the budget on defense. Add the stimulus, ObamaCare, a new entitlement for college and other Democratic plans, and the defense squeeze will only tighten. Higher taxes and borrowing may allow guns and butter to co-exist for a while. But over time, the welfare state will defeat the Pentagon here, as it has in Europe.

President Obama's domestic agenda may well mean that his successors lack the option to deploy 100,000 troops to Afghanistan, or to some other future trouble spot. This is the way superpowers lose their superiority.

Over the longer run, to my own estimated departure date of 2039, spending on health care rises from 16 percent to 33 percent of GDP (some of the money presumably is going to keep me from expiring even sooner). But spending on everything other than health, Social Security, and interest payments drops from 12 percent to 8.4 percent.

The Foreign Office refused to discuss the funding but privately officials confirmed the money was cut amid vain hopes that the Americans would foot the bill instead...

“It was a highly successful mission and the Afghans were getting better every day,” a special forces source said last week. “The paltry sums involved were getting a pretty valuable return.”

Ed Butler, who commanded British troops when they first deployed to Helmand in 2006, said: “It strikes me as pretty counter-intuitive and verging on the ridiculous to cut this funding when the government is stressing the training of Afghan security forces as a way of withdrawing our troops.”

...The Conservatives said it “beggared belief" that the Foreign Office should withdraw funding from what was clearly an important project.

Even the smallest of counter-insurgency programs prove too much of a strain for the British military to sustain.

The next article, U.S. Seeks 10,000 Troops From Its Allies In Afghanistan, shows America’s other allies cannot sustain token troops in Afghanistan, let alone increase force levels.

The United States is scrambling to coax NATO allies to send 10,000 additional troops to Afghanistan as part of President Obama’s strategy for the region. Those countries appear willing to provide fewer than half that number, American and allied officials said Wednesday.

The British government is facing opinion polls showing that around 70 percent of the public favors an early withdrawal...

Germany and France have balked at committing any more forces to a war that has so little public support that they can barely maintain current troop levels...

The Netherlands and Canada have begun discussing plans to pull out. Canadian defense officials told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in Halifax last week that they had no intention of sending troops in the future, and that they remained committed to withdrawing by the end of 2011...

Waning public opinion plays an important role in most NATO members’ reluctance to remain in Afghanistan, but I believe the heart of the matter lies in two important facts: Europe can no longer afford to send troops abroad; and they know the US will pick up the slack.

As sun sets in the west, it also rises in the east. China,Japan Boost Defence Ties illustratesas western power quickly retreats once staunch allies are running for cover and seeking other benefactors.

Japan and China yesterday agreed to conduct their first joint military training exercise as ties warm up between the Asian neighbors, which have long argued over a range of issues and have been suspicious of each other

Top defence officials and military officers from both sides will also meet regularly...(and) The joint exercise will be held next year, according to the Japanese Defence Ministry.

Japan knows the Pax America that kept peace across the Pacific for half a century is coming to an end and China’s rising power is fed from America’s and Europe’s decay. They are smartly moving out from under one shadow to another.  US Navy and Air Force power in the region is atrophying, and China is quickly rising, as seen the article Admiral Says PLA's Strength, Intentions Should Be Displayed.

Beijing should not be shy of displaying the full breadth of its growing military power and intentions to the world, a senior naval officer wrote in comments published yesterday.

In a commentary in the Global Times, a newspaper published by party mouthpiece the People’s Daily, Naval Rear Admiral Yang Yi said Beijing should expand its military power and need not hide this from the world.

“We should confidently and overtly tell the US and other countries that China needs to expand its overseas military power because of the continuation of national interests abroad,” wrote Yang, director of the Strategic Studies Institute under the People’s Liberation Army’s National Defence University

...Yang said Sino-US strategic relations were moving from the level of “common interest” to “ balance of power”.

 “The Taiwan issue has been the most sensitive and explosive problem,” he wrote. “This is a friendly reminder to the US – please be careful, careful, careful, and don’t think Beijing won’t dare to declare war with Washington.”

Anthony Wong Dong, president of the International Military Association, an independent grouping of observers based in Macau, said the article was a candid assessment.

These articles show the West can no longer sustain low-intensity combat operations against an enemy clearly bent on their destruction. At the same time, China is drawing traditional allies from the US orbit and brazenly challenging America as the sole military superpower.

They have the money and leverage to do so. We, on the other hand, have vaults full of IOUs and a congress full of fools.

I don’t like the odds.

The Hill reported on 19 November:

Ranking member Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) raised alarm over a “dramatic decline” in funding for weapons systems — from 35 percent of the overall defense budget in fiscal 2010 to 24 percent in 2020...

“The picture is not a pretty one,” Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said in his opening statement Wednesday at a hearing on future defense budgets.

The CBO also states the Obama Administration is low-balling its requested Pentagon budget by 6% versus what is required for the Department of Defense's current missions.

A 13% cut vs. GDP over 5 years...while fighting two wars.  Keep in mind, the GDP is stagnant due to the deep recession and this figure also doesn’t factor in potential inflation.

By Tom Coghlan, Kandahar

As Sergeant Matthew O’Neill spotted the thin copper wire snaking through the dust he knew, too late, that it was attached to a roadside bomb. It exploded under him an instant later, picking up the stocky, sandy-haired US Marine combat engineer and catapulting him more than 20 feet.

From a ploughed field in southern Helmand to the medical care of the main Nato field hospital in Kandahar is a journey of 100 miles — and getting there, or to the British hospital at Camp Bastion, is a race against the clock. Make it in less than an hour and the rate of survival is well over 90 per cent. Any longer than that, and the chances of survival begin to ebb away.

Meeting that target is the job of the 55th Expeditionary Rescue Squadron, a US Air Force unit now nearing the end of a three-month tour. They have flown nearly 1,500 missions so far, making them the hardest-working American casualty evacuation unit since Vietnam. “This is the highest tempo of missions we have ever seen,” says their commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Kuehn, 41.

As Sergeant O’Neill crashed to earth, adrenaline surged through his body and carried him straight back to his feet. A figure bolted across the field ahead of him. Sergeant O’Neill was sure it was the bomb’s “trigger man”. He opened fire and the figure collapsed. Only then did he realise that he was injured.

He had third-degree burns to his left hand and face. His hearing was gone in his left ear and the vision in his left eye was blurred. The bones in his left forearm — the arm that had just supported and held his rifle steady — were fractured. His left side and face were peppered with high-velocity dirt and stones picked up by the blast. It was not immediately clear whether the pressure wave from the blast had caused damage to his internal organs and brain. At Kandahar airbase, the casevac crews wait for the call to scramble in a hut by the runway, much like the fighter squadrons of the Second World War, although these days the news comes with the simultaneous bleeping of pagers. The crews are in the air within five to seven minutes, flying in what Colonel Keuhn describes as “the single worst helicopter environment in the world”. Afghanistan’s high altitude air is thin; the heat reduces lift for rotor blades and the mountains incubate storms; the fine, dust of the plains attacks electronics and moving parts. The helicopters are regularly hit by enemy fire, but a bigger danger are the “brownouts” of dust whipped up around a descending helicopter.

As they fly into hastily prepared emergency landing sites to pull out wounded men, often from rough fields littered with drainage ditches, the pilots are blinded by a dense dust cloud for the last 50 feet. The casualties appear through the haze, carried by their comrades, while the rotor blades are still turning.

“The violence here is very ‘in your face’,” says Captain Colin De Groote, 27, from Los Angeles. “To see kids injured, to see Brits and Americans with horrific injuries, in a lot of pain, to see their buddies’ faces of shock and disbelief . . . a lot of guys I replaced were really ready to go home.”

As Sergeant O’Neill was lifted into a helicopter, it was clear that he was incredibly fortunate. “He was the first guy I’ve seen get blown off an IED (improvised explosive device) and not get any appendage loss,” said Senior Airman Lucas Ferrari, 27, who treated the wounded Marine as a helicopter carried him off the battlefield. Further examination in Kandahar hospital would also show that he had suffered no internal injuries.

Swathed in bandages in his hospital bed, Sergeant O’Neill was phlegmatic about the experience the next morning. “I was out chasing command wires,” he told The Times with a shrug. “I stepped on a bomb.”

The number of casualties recorded during the summer months has begun to drop with the onset of cold weather, but a steady stream of broken bodies still arrives in Kandahar aboard the Black Hawk helicopters. On Friday night Sergeant O’Neill’s arrival was closely followed by three young American soldiers wounded in a mortar blast. On Saturday morning they picked up a dead American and a British Special Forces soldier with a serious bullet wound to the neck.

The medics say that some badly wounded patients can become extremely violent in the helicopters; drawing on, as one medic puts it, “some sort of primordial survival instinct”. Others are freakishly calm. A British Special Boat Service soldier who was shot through the face earlier this month astonished the helicopter medics by refusing morphine and calmly picking bits of bone and teeth out of his own wound. “Some people are just tougher than others,” said Staff Sergeant Brian Oswald, who treated him. “I guess it is no surprise that they tend to be in the special forces.”

As well as rescuing the living, the evacuation crews must collect the dead; eight in one day late last month. The crews drape the body bags with the national flags of the dead soldiers as they carry them from the aircraft.

They have, they believe, saved the lives of about 300 soldiers and civilians who would not otherwise have survived to reach hospital since September and they have carried a further 500 who did not have immediately life-threatening injuries.

Almost 50 per cent of their patients have been Afghans, many of the rest have been British soldiers. A letter on the wall of the squadron hut in Kandahar airbase from Colonel Rob Thompson, whose 2 Rifles have suffered the worst casualties of all the British units, reads: “It seems you’ll fly through anything and land anywhere just to be there for our wounded Riflemen within the shortest time possible. I know that the speed with which your crews have made it to our emergency helicopter landing sites has saved a number of lives and we will be forever in your debt for that.”

In my last blog entry I highlighted the imminent demise of the Royal Air Force. Over the next 5 years the RAF will slash its force by 25%, essential ending it as a global power projection force.

This morning’s Washington Times heralds the same forces are now at work eroding America’s military might:

...The era of American military dominance, or "Pax Americana," is dwindling as the nation loses its position far atop the global marketplace, a congressional military analyst said Wednesday...

...The new dynamic - in which the U.S. remains a world force, but does not hold the pre-eminent position it attained after World War II - is the result of global financial centers shifting to Asia, said Stephen Daggett, a defense policy and budget specialist for the Congressional Research Service...

..."It seems this administration finds massive amounts of money for bailout and [stimulus spending] but not enough to fund the basic money needed for defensive hardware and personnel," said Rep. Trent Franks, Arizona Republican.

Victor Davis Hansen had a good quote this morning, “...political influence and military power are ultimately predicated on economic strength.”

Our economic strength, like that of Great Britain, is dying as we quickly drowned in a sea of self-induced socialist debt. Only two pillars are keeping us afloat: the fact oil is traded in dollars and the might of the US military protecting the global trade system.

The dollar hangs upon a precipice; it dies overnight if the world turns to another medium for oil trading. Now, our military is about to be cannibalized to feed the socialist beast eating us all alive.

When the US military is gone, depleted in endless wars abroad and cashiered for progressive votes, it will not rise again. We will be naked before our enemies and creditors...one in the same.

The once mighty British Royal Air Force will cut 10,000 personnel, close five bases, and retire the majority of its Harrier and Tornado fighter aircraft. The RAF will reduce its flying programs, ground or mothball major weapons programs such as the Nimrod MR2, Puma helicopter, and Boeing E-3D AWACS.

These cuts are generated by the RAF itself “designed to pre-empt the savage cuts expected as part of the strategic defense review promised by whichever party wins power in next year’s general election.” According to the Times Online “Senior RAF officers believe that whichever party wins the general election it will have to make cuts to defence because of the economic situation.”

The RAF will cease to exist as a strategic force. Why?

Britain is broke. It budget deficit now runs 100 billion pounds, or over 12% of its GDP. The Pound is falling as fast as the dollar. Stand and Poor is threatening to downgrade their debt from AAA to AA. Why does this concern America?

No other European air force ranked with the RAF in its ability to project air power both regionally and globally. The British spend less than 1% of GDP on defense. They have just ceded air defense of Western Europe to the American. Under NATO, Americans are now stuck with the bill.

The UK is the literally “canary in the coal mine.”  Last year, Rep Barney Frank called for almost identical cuts in our military. This level of cuts will come to our shores. Our debt is almost $1.5 trillion, that’s the same 10% ratio as the UK. The national debt just passed $12 TRILLION. Our GDP is only $15 trillion. Translation – we are on the brink of owing more than we are worth. This is called insolvency.

Insolvent nations cannot afford world class militaries. Trading empires without power projection cannot defend their economic interests. Insolvent nations unable to defend their national interests...perish.

America’s deficit and debt are our number one national security issue.

From the Raleigh News & Observer, November 13, 2009 on Pg. 1

By Jay Price, Staff writer

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- As Chief Warrant Officer 3 James Woolley eased the giant Chinook down into the mud-walled compound, Special Forces troops on the ground dashed to form a perimeter to protect the helicopter, a prize target for Taliban insurgents.

The landing zone in the western Afghan province of Badghis wasn't under fire when U.S. Special Forces called for help to evacuate five wounded U.S. soldiers. But seconds after the Chinook, call sign Flipper 76, touched down, generating its trademark cloud of khaki-colored dust, the attack began.

Woolley, of Sanford, N.C., and the other pilot, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Eric Slover, of Hope Mills, noticed a puff of smoke maybe 175 yards away up a slope, and the chopper immediately lurched like a car hit in a fender-bender.

As a medic began rushing the wounded men to the rear ramp, the thin-skinned helicopter, unknown to its crew, now had a live rocket-propelled grenade aboard -- a weapon capable of disabling an armored vehicle.

The incident, which turned into one of the biggest medical evacuations of the Afghan war, occurred on Nov. 4. On Thursday, the commanders of the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, based at Fort Bragg, cleared the crew to tell the story of a miracle that came within inches of disaster.

The story began when two 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers, based at Fort Bragg, went missing in a river during a resupply mission.

A massive U.S.-Afghan manhunt turned into a fierce firefight with insurgents. Four Afghan soldiers, three Afghan police officers and an interpreter were killed, and 22 men were wounded, including the five Americans.

NATO is investigating whether some of the friendly casualties were a result of errant fire from U.S. aircraft that were called in to help.

The body of one missing soldier has been found.

The crew of Flipper 76 didn't know any of that when the medevac call came about 4:30 p.m. It had just finished dropping off troops and supplies at a small U.S. base nearby, along with Flipper 13, another Chinook. Flipper 13 stayed put while Flipper 76 headed for the compound, which was in a rural community with several other compounds.

A grenade to the head

The rocket-propelled grenade punched through the nose of the helicopter. It zipped between Woolley and Slover, went down a short passageway and struck the door gunner, Sgt. Roger Rathbun, in the back of his head.

The impact ripped away a palm-size chunk of his flight helmet, and propellant from the rocket scorched his neck as it deflected up into the ceiling of the cargo area. Rathbun was spun halfway around and knocked to the floor. Chinook pilots can't hear much of what's going on around them, but after hundreds of hours flying helicopters, they develop a musician's ear for any odd sound or change in the tone of their engines and rotor blades. Pilots quickly learn to recognize the "tink" of small arms fire hitting the fuselage. This hard slap and shudder was new for Woolley.

Slover, too, was startled. "What the ... was that?" he said.

Woolley saw damage to the nose of the chopper and immediately guessed that it had been struck by a rocket-propelled grenade, the weapon that brought down the helicopters in the famous Black Hawk Down battle in Somalia.

Slover was wondering why they were still alive.

"I think we both knew, even though I was trying to convince him it possibly might have been something other than an RPG, because I was trying to convince myself there was no way we had just been hit by an RPG but survived it," Slover said.

Rathbun, of Bunnlevel, up the short passageway, motioned to the pilots that he could hear them, but that his microphone had been torn away. His injuries turned out not to be serious, but he was shaken.

Then the pilots saw puffs of dust around the helicopter as the insurgents began firing small arms at them.

"The biggest thing was sort of sticking it out when they started engaging us with small arms fire," Woolley said. "Fortunately the ground guys did return fire, which helped us.

"We were kind of scrambling inside the aircraft in the front, trying to assess Sgt. Rathbun to see what his status was, and also taking a look at the aircraft to see what kind of damage we had sustained.

"All the while the ramp gunner was continuing to load casualties, and he said 'Ah, they're shooting sir, there's rounds popping,'" Woolley said. "I could see 'em, and I said, 'I know, just stick it out, and get these guys on.'"

It took maybe two or three minutes to get everything sorted out in the helicopter, call in close air support to help suppress insurgent fire, and get the other wounded men aboard, but it felt like two or three hours, Woolley said.

Then began a long odyssey to get the five wounded Americans - and later the wounded Afghan troops - to safety, and also get the dead out of the combat zone.

Would it fly?

They weren't sure the helicopter could fly. Their luck held, though, and they zoomed back to the small base nearby and put it down inside. Woolley badly wanted to know where the exit hole was and whether the RPG had hit anything vital.

When the crew couldn't find a second hole, he told them to start looking for something worse: a live grenade inside the chopper. After two or three long minutes, one of the soldiers found the grenade on the floor between a helmet bag and a set of goggles.

The pilots shut the chopper down, and Slover dashed off to find explosives experts and medical help for the wounded soldiers.

The rest of the crew started pulling the wounded off Flipper 76 and transferred them to Flipper 13 for the flight to a medical facility in Herat.

En route, they learned that the RPG had been removed, so after they unloaded the casualties they headed back. Casualties had mounted during the search for the missing paratroopers, and both choppers were needed. For the second trip, they loaded 14 wounded Afghan troops and six dead.

They headed to Herat, but there wasn't room for the wounded there, so they pushed on to another base, where they dropped off the casualties.

After a long night of flying back and forth across western Afghanistan, they headed for a small staging base.

The 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade crews are all flying a new model of the Chinook. After Flipper 76's RPG miracle, a standard joke among them now is that the new version has been equipped with a secret device that disarms enemy munitions.

Inches from death

No one had to tell the Flipper 76 crew how lucky they were. Even when a rocket-propelled grenade doesn't explode, it can tear through a person; and this one passed inches from both pilots and grazed Rathbun.

It wasn't Woolley's first brush with death. A Chinook he was flying in Iraq once took 32 bullets. Another, in an earlier stint in Afghanistan, caught several rounds in the Plexiglas windows of its bulbous nose. In 2007, he was just five helicopter lengths behind another Chinook that was hit by a Stinger anti-aircraft missile and went down, killing all five crew members and a British military cameraman who was aboard.

This time, when he got back to base he called his wife to tell her what had happened.

"Boy, you are crazy," she said. "Quit using those lives up!"

Then she asked if they'd evacuated all the wounded men. He said he had.

Woolley said Thursday that there's some question in the unit about whether flying with him is a bad idea - or really, really smart.

"Either they want to or they don't. The jury's still out on that," he said. "Either I'm lucky or I'm unlucky."

When Maj Nidal Hasan walked into the Ft. Hood deployment center and killed 13 soldiers it came as no surprise to many who knew him. Fellow Army doctors complained about Hasan’s extremists rants. ABC News reports Hasan’s radical Islamo-fascist views were so blatant US intelligence agencies investigated him months ago. The media reports Hasan contacted two of the 9/11 hijackers.  Major Hasan gave every warning imaginable he was an enemy sympathizer.

All of these warnings were ignored in the name of political correctness.Now, the bodies are buried and a nation mourns the dead. The media cannot bring itself to call Hasan a terrorist. On cue, the apologists blame America for the horrors at Ft. Hood. James Alan Fox, in this morning’s USA Today:

“But calling the Ft.Hood ambush an act of terrorism would only compound the tragedy by reinforcing the kind of intolerance toward American Muslims that appears to have contributed to Hasan’s despair.”

And statement came from Gen Casey following the attack:

"We have to be careful because we can't jump to conclusions now based on little snippets of information that come out. And frankly, I am worried -- not worried, but I'm concerned that this increased speculation could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And I've asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that. It would be a shame -- as great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well."

Americans no longer speak truth. We make excuses for our enemies instead of confronting them. Can truth be found in America anymore, or has the poison of political correctness killed it off?

I direct your attention to the stoner comedy called “Squidbillies” appearing on Cartoon Network show Adult Swim. Okay, now that I’ve admitted I watch Adult Swim, please stop your snickering and read on.

Squidbillies is a show mocking a certain breed of southerners typically called “rednecks.” In lieu of humans, the show uses squids to make fun of the last ethnic group not protected by hate crime laws: white people. As a white male southerner, I find the show offensively hilarious and I’m not ashamed to say it. How did I get from the horrors of Ft. Hood to Squidbilles?

I’m not making light of the tragic events at Ft. Hood. This a serious commentary on the fatal stupidity of political correctness and how difficult it is to find the truth.  

Watch this 10 minute episode of Squidbilles about an alien named Lerm Edwards. He comes to earth screaming “Death to America” and destroys everything in sight. He makes not secret of who he is or his radical agenda. Yet the squidbillies and the rest of America embraces him.

Substitute “Maj. Hasan” or “radical Muslim” for “Lerm” and watch this episode of Squidbillies.

Hasan, like Lerm, screamed his equivalent to “Death to America” right up to the point “he went that way.”

Kill political correctness before it kills us all.

3. Evidence that one is associated with a hate group is defined both explicitly and as “...a person is associated or affiliated with a group associated with hate-related violence...Individuals known to have attended meetings, rallies, conferences, or other activities sponsored by a hate group. Individuals known to be involved in online activities with a hate group, including being engaged in online discussion groups or blog or other postings that support, encourage, or affirm the group’s extremist or violent views and goals. Individuals who are known to have in their possession photographs, written testimonials (including diaries or journals), propaganda, or other materials indicating involvement or affiliation with a hate group. Such materials can include photographs, written materials relating to or referring to extreme hatred that are clearly not of an academic nature, possession of objects that venerate or glorify hate inspired violence, and related materials, as determined by the Attorney General.”

4. The military will have to screen all recruits and discharge “immediately” anyone classified in accordance IAW with potential law.

This bill was pushed forward under the guise it will purge from the military (and subesquently keep out) gang members and white supremacist. Will the Attorney General apply it to radical Islamists in the military, like Nidal?