From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea -- written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo -- There is no substitute for victory!

Beat Navy!

UPDATE: Well that could have gone better.

When you read stuff like this, it makes you wonder why we aren't drawing up strike packages for Paris.

Patrick Ruffini is back - I had forgotten until I saw a link somewhere else.

It is kind of strange, listening to the news, reading the paper, and hearing names that I know. I heard a classmate interviewed on NPR the other day, which was kind of neat. And the names I've heard have not been on the casualty list. Until now.

A few days ago, an airplane crashed in the mountains of Afghanistan, killing all 6 aboard. Three of them were soldiers. One of them, LTC Mike McMahon, was a name I knew. Cadet McMahon was my first company commander during Cadet Basic Training. He really set the example for us New Cadets, and we thought highly of him.

I never saw him or heard anything of him after that summer, but some part of who I am today is because of him.

Well done. Be thou at peace.

More from Major Dad, found through SGT Hook.

Is Syria the next Libya? He points to some things that are good signs, anyway. But as to the main point, that's a good question, isn't it?

I read this column by William Raspberry in the Post the other day, and was disgusted. Mr. Raspberry says he doesn't have a plan, and won't make a plan, because it is just too scary. Won't do any good, in his opinion, to be prepared.

Of course, I am an advocate of being prepared. Which reminds me, I should redo that post, because I've updated my box contents.

But anyway, I'm afraid that a lot of people feel like Mr. Raspberry, that there is nothing that they can do, so why bother? This survey (PDF) says:

Fewer than one in four (23%) families nationally has a basic emergency plan with the bare minimum of components: at least two days of food and water, a flashlight, a portable radio and spare batteries, emergency phone numbers, and a meeting place for family members in case of evacuation. In New York City, despite the higher level of concern about possible additional acts of terrorism, only 14% of families have made basic preparations.

23%! Even worse, that survey also reveals that most people think that another attack will happen, and that the government is not adequately prepared to help them.

If you don't think that the government can help you, then you should be planning to take care of yourself. Sure, if DC gets nuked, and you live in DC, a bugout box will not save you. But in the event that the worst case scenario doesn't happen, you are better off being prepared. Because people are right - the government isn't prepared to take care of everybody. There really isn't a way for the government to be prepared to care of all of us if they also have to try to take care of the critical infrastructure. Just like we lock the doors or have an alarm even though we have cops. They can't be everywhere.

Seems to me that if you thought that someone else couldn't take care of you, you would do something yourself. But that isn't how people are responding.

I think this means that basically people feel helpless. No wonder Tom Ridge and Homeland Security are given such short shrift. They don't feel like the information they are getting is helping them. But the ready.gov site gives people information they can act on. It isn't that hard, and it isn't that expensive, and it makes sense. The point of preparation beforehand is that it is too late to plan once disaster strikes.

Mr. Raspberry, and the 77% of the American public that hasn't made a plan, may be fine. Maybe the next terrorist strike will kill them, and it won't matter. Or maybe nothing happens, or something happens and it doesn't affect them. But in my book, it's cheap insurance. And it isn't just preparation against terror, either. Next time the power goes out, you know where the flashlights are. That's worth something right there.

PS - 5 blaster points if you can explain the title of this post.

Rush was talking about this LA Times article on his show today. I found it interesting, given what I wrote below about our communications strategy, or lack thereof. The article takes a dim view of a Pentagon briefing that showed Iraqi troops singing the Iraqi national anthem, labeling it propaganda.

Basically, this article points to a number of items that are examples of tactical communications, not strategic. I have zero heartburn with the military announcing the beginning of an a offensive when it really isn't beginning, just to pulse the system and gather intelligence. Propaganda - which is has been twisted into a negative word - is getting your message out. It was important in WWII, it is important today.

The DSB paper says that the US has had many successes with communication on the tactical front, but that the strategic is not failing - and Bush administration folks quoted in this article seem to agree about that last part.

I can't imagine a worse job to have. Like John Ashcroft, though not to the same extent, Ridge has borne an awful lot of criticism for doing his job. And yet, he did it. And if we judge by results, he did it well.

I've seen some predictions/recommendations for Rudy Giuliani to take the position, and I just don't see that happening. In fact, I don't know who would take such a job. There is nothing positive to come out of it.

John of Argghhh! comments below, in response to the link to the Fallujah presentation he provided:

Funny you should mention that - the fact that I posted the slideshow I would argue is part and parcel (if not necessarily planned by the authors) part of an information operation.

They put it out in the email stream, obviously hoping to get it out in the open.

They obviously didn't target blogs (and Instapundit still chose to not bite on it) but blogs don't yet have a truly large readership, either. But - it *is* an influential one, if you get the right ones.

I know why the MSM didn't run with it - aside from possible issues about the fact that it doesn't follow their internalized story line about the issues in Iraq - it's a single point of data, from an obviously interested party, that they can't easily independently verify - and by they time they do/did, it isn't 'news' anymore.

So your point is well taken - the info campaign should probably take into account the blogs. By our nature, we run, you decide... 8^D

The problem, I think is bigger than they didn't take into account the blogs. Near as I can tell, they (not sure exactly who "they" is, but I would start with CENTCOM - this should have been part of a post-Fallujah briefing) haven't taken into account anything. If there is no post-Fallujah briefing, then the MSM can't cover it. GEN Abizaid may be directing the warfighting excellently. But we don't know, necessarily, because he isn't on TV - Kevin Sites is. In the absence of information, the media will find something to fill up all the airtime. it isn't enough to say that they only report the bad stuff, you have to give them good stuff to report. Reporters are pretty lazy, I think - they will take whatever is given to them over what it takes time and effort to get almost every time, I think. Look at Dan Rather. Note that Abu Ghraib wasn't some huge undercover investigation, it was handed to the press by the soldiers facing court martial for what happened there.

So the point is that this got into John of Argghhh's hands through unofficial channels. It got out to the world through a blog, and it hasn't caught fire even here in the sphere. It was not part of an information campaign, or an information strategy.

Interestingly enough, one of those outside advisory groups for the Pentagon, the Defense Science Board, released a report that has been the recent peg that many news organizations have used to indict the administration for failure in Iraq/the war on terror/whatever. I haven't finished reading the whole thing yet, but it doesn't appear that it is as negative an assessment as described in the Christian Science Monitor. I also don't know that I agree with all of it, either - as it is part of the intellectual argument about whether state actors are key in the war on terror, and this paper falls on the side that dealing with states solely - which I don't think is the actual strategy, to begin with - is a mistake. However, the idea that communications are a key part of what it will take to win the war on terror seems an argument with some merit - especially given the example of Fallujah. This is, I think, one of the most insightful paragraphs in the DSB paper:

Information saturation means attention, not information, becomes a scarce resource. Power flows to credible messengers. Asymmetrical credibility matters. What's around information is critical. Reputations count. Brands are important. Editors, filters, and cue givers are influential. Fifty years ago political struggles were about the ability to control and transmit scarce information. Today, political struggles are about the creation and destruction of credibility.

You can read the whole thing here. (111 page PDF).