Miscellany.

This is coolbert:

Here are some noteworthy items from the StrategyPage web site:

1. Here is an explanation of why only four Medals of Honor have been awarded service personnel since the end of the Vietnam War. The criteria for awarding the Medal have just become more stringent. As it should be. This award is NOT something to be handed out like aspirin tablets!!

2. Boss video showing the Merkava 4 in action. The latest version of the very successful Israeli tank. The brainchild of the great Israeli armor commander, General Israel Tal [Talik]. Manned by the best troops in the Israeli Army. The Israeli takes the top 10 % test scorers on military entry exams and puts them in their armor battalions.

"The Israeli government decided in 1970 that it needed an indigenous tank-building capacity. General Israel Tal led a development team which took into consideration Israel's unique battlefield characteristics and lessons learned from previous wars, and began the development and building of Israel's Merkava tank."

[video best viewed of course from a broad band connection.]

The Merkava is the total combined arms package. Has an anti-aircraft capability? Carries a five man infantry fire-team in the rear compartment of the tank. Does have the organic 60 mm mortar for indirect fire to suppress anti-tank-guided-missiles [ATGM].

[it is not clear if the scene where the infantry dismounts is a five man fire-team in addition to the Merkava crew or if that is the tank crew itself taking up defensive positions. I know the concept WAS for the Merkava to carry a fire team in the rear compartment of the tank, but I was not sure if that concept was ever actually pursued.]

3. This article deals with material that has been covered to some extent in a previous blog entry. The Egyptian Q'tub has had an influence on the modern jihadi philosophy and specifically on the now # 2 man in Al Qaeda, Dr. Zawahiri [Zawahiri is of course an Egyptian too!!]. Q'tub was both attracted and repelled simultaneously to American ["western"] women? I think this maybe a common personality characteristic of the Islamic [Arab] male? Zawahiri's wife, laying in the bombed out rubble of an Afghan buildding, chose death rather than having herself rescued [dug out] and having her face seen by a man????!!!

The way and reasons with which the wife of Zawahiri faced death and accepted same is the sort of thing that just drives "westerners" crazy. This is just one incident that illustrates the mentality that the jihadi possesses. A mentality that to the secular "westerner" is incomprehensible and outrageous!! But a mentality that is the status quo and has to be taken into consideration!!

"the American girl is well acquainted with her body's seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs -- and she shows all this and does not hide it. ..." - - Q'tub.

"Jazz is his preferred music, and it is created by Negroes to satisfy their love of noise and to whet their sexual desires ...." - - Q'tub.

coolbert.