Reading is FUNdamental...

From time to time I "read" something and I see where I think a sentence is going to and "read" what I think it was going to say versus what the sentence actually said.

That is a tortured way of saying I wasn't really reading anything I was skimming through it...in other words I failed basic reading comprehension.

It appears that I am not the only one...

In a rush to call some COL a unfeeling zealot in the religious war that isn't, some folks at the Danger Room call out COL David Rice (not named in the Danger Room article but named in the Ares article that was linked as the reference) for a statement that he made about GMLRS and their effectiveness in Iraq.

Here's the statement as quoted in Ares

U.S. Army commanders and troops have come to view the Army's Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) as their "70-kilometer sniper rifle," but enemy forces in Iraq see the weapon in a starker light.

"The enemy is calling it the 'Hand of Allah,'" said Col. David Rice, Army program manager - Precision Fires Rockets & Missile Systems.

For enemy forces, the rockets seemingly come from nowhere, Rice said Aug. 1 during a press briefing on the program.

Now the good folks at Danger Room (Sharon Weinberger and various commenters) say this among other things:

You'd think after all that someone, somewhere in the Pentagon would inform people to be a tiny, little bit sensitive when talking about religion, particularly other people's religion. Then again, maybe not.

Now we've got an Army colonel, who in a briefing earlier this week with reporters, claimed that the Army's Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) is being called the "Hand of Allah" by the enemy (the provenance of the colonel's information is a bit unclear).

The colonel's apparent explanation: the weapon he calls the "70-kilometer sniper rifle" seemed to "come from nowhere."

It's just so, so, so wrong.

Hey, I got news for you about what is wrong...maybe you don't realize, the enemy we face aren't observant Muslims. They hide weapons in mosques. They take drugs to get themselves hyped up for attacks. They read porn (our troops have found it, while raiding their buildings).

Christians and Jews blaspheme their own religion all the time...I'm sure you've heard or seen the Lord's name taken in vain. SO why would it be unreasonable to suggest that we have encountered captured enemy on the battlefield who have referred to a weapon system that strikes without warning as a hand of GOD? And the COL is the one who needs to be more sensitive?

Maybe if someone read a little closer they would see it's the enemy not the COL who said this stuff...oh wait, you said that in your own article. But then you go on to infer that maybe the COL made that up "(the provenance of the colonel's information is a bit unclear)"....because we don't KNOW where he got that quote from. How insensitive we are to say such things.

These animals we face, blow up hundreds innocent people on a daily basis. They commit unspeakable acts in the name of God and you get rilled up because the head of the GMLR program repeats what some prisoner on the battlefield said during an interrogation. I hope the AC is working where your at lady...because it's pretty hot where I am at and I really don't give a shit if I'm sensitive enough for you or not. I'm glad the people at home have the luxury to be able to sit back and debate on the wisdom of a COL to have revealed to the world that an enemy combatant referred to a weapon that we used against his buddies as the "hand of Allah"...that has got to be some of the dumbest crap I've had the pleasure of reading in quite some time. And believe me tons of stupid crap appears on my desk and monitor every single day.

Danger Room takes the "Stupid Crap" award for the first week of August...if there were in fact a stupid crap award...geeze.







By the way GMLRs are the SHIT.