John T. Reed’s blog about military matters

Copyright by John T. Reed Nate Sassaman was the quarterback of the Army football team and led them to their first-ever bowl victory (it was the first bowl Army was allowed to play in). He graduated from West Point in 1985 and was a battalion commander in Iraq in 2003 and 2004. He retired from the Army after 20 years as a result of an Article 15—roughly the equivalent of a serious traffic ticket to which you plead guilty. A couple of his soldiers decided to jerk two Iraqis around by throwing them into a two- or three-foot deep pond....

When I was at West Point from 1964 to 1968 and in the Army from 1968 to 1972, we regarded ourselves as “cadets” or “army officers.” That is, if you asked me what I did for a living in, say, 1970, I would say, “I’m an Army officer.” ‘I’m a soldier’ Back in the late 60s, one of my West Point classmates announced that he had begun to answer that question with the phrase, “I’m a soldier.” I reacted sharply saying it was melodramatic and self-conscious. When people ask what you do they are not interested in any philosophical or...

Copyright John T. Reed 2015I decided to see American Sniper after all. I went with a West Point classmate with whom I like to see war movies. We see stuff laymen do not and it’s fun to talk about it with him. With my sons and other laymen, they don’t like to hear how the movie was a bit off or a lot off.Our wives also went which is unusual. My wife usually has no interest, but because of all the hype on Fox she went and the other wife went because my wife went. And the four of us...

Copyright 2014 John T. ReedOn Saturday 1/18/14, I saw the Lone Survivor movie with one of my West Point and ranger school classmates. We are both also Vietnam vets. He was for a time the platoon leader of the tunnel rats in the Cu Chi area. We were both stationed in that III Corps area of Vietnam at the same time.I make no pretensions about being a movie critic, but this movie contains a lot of stuff that buttresses what I have said about Afghanistan and special ops in other articles. See my web page www.johntreed.com/military.html for a complete list.Operation...

The Navy SEAL team, SEAL TEAM SIX, from NSWC briefed the OSC (Commander Castellano, CO BAINBRIDGE) on how they could rescue the captain from the life boat with swimmers– "Combat Swimmers," per se. That plan was denied by POTUS because it put the captain in danger– and, involved killing the pirates. The FBI negotiators arrived on scene, and talked the pirates into sending their wounded man over for treatment Saturday morning. Later that afternoon, the SEAL's sent over their RHIB with food and water to recon the life boat but the pirates shot at it. They could have taken them...