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People keep saying this, but they have no reason to believe it. You only get prosecuted in a case like this, if they can show that you had intent to trade national secrets.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

https://www.marinecorpstimes.c...

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

The link in the summary goes to NetworkWorld's pictureless, short rehash of Marine Corps Times' better article . Go there for the details and some actual pictures.

What do they do if you mess up an F/A 18?

You can get fired just for having a close call.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2008/05/navy_myanmar_050608m/ The 31st MEU is fairly close.

"Refusal to be prepared for that sort of thing is the fault of US military leadership."

Troll, eh?

Sending soft-skinned light truck HMMWVs into urban combat works badly. They cannot surmount roadblocks and do not effectively protect their crews. (US forces at Mogadish had to be rescued by Pakistani M113 and M48s, because the US armor was left in CONUS!) Uparmoring HMMWVs for Iraq was reactive to tactics that had been used against soft trucks for DECADES.

http://www.specialoperations.com/Operations/Restore_Hope/97-0364.pdf

As for soft-skinned supply convoys (OK in open desert, not OK when channelized in cities) we had protective solutions in the form of the famous Viet Nam war gun trucks. We have them again, but they had to be fabbed locally (again) because of the collective post-Viet Nam brain dump. Good thing the enlisted folks and contractors had their act together.

VN "Iron Butterfly" truck w.box style body:
http://134.198.33.115/sims12.htm

OIF homebrew version:
http://news.webshots.com/photo/1124605382054144800oTBMQt

Livermore high-dollar version:
https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2005/NR-05-07-07.html

VN truck King Cobra (scroll down)
http://134.198.33.115/agee1.htm

Looks familiar!
http://www.cmvmag.co.uk/cgi-bin/news.cgi?article=040103

MRAP armored truck:
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/xml/news/2007/05/marine_mrap_070523/070253mrap_story.JPG

BTW, Israel has figured out how to carry troops into combat under far more armor than the US uses. The Israelis use recycled Russian tank hulls as the basis for the Achzarit. Might be time for us to do the same thing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1ly0fk1Pro

I don't know - but Iraq doesn't exactly seem like a bank holiday Superbowl:

Parents of a U.S. Marine Who Committed Suicide After Returning Home from Iraq File Wrongful Death Lawsuit Against Veterans Affairs

PTSD reports up 20,000 in a year

Army Suicides Highest in 26 Years

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This is the same as the issue I discussed in another article here

No troops were withdrawn from the middle east.

That's not what Marine Corps Times says:

The Air Force has announced it will send 300 airmen, who are based at Keesler, home from Iraq and Afghanistan in the next two weeks, and nearly 100 more who were scheduled to leave Keesler for war duty will be staying home.

Actually there WAS a controversy over retouching in another less-reported incident: Boudreaux case. This was basically a case where some solider was posing with some Iraiq kids holding up some deragotary sign. You can check out the story behind it here. There were multiple similar-looking but different images floating around the web. So there was a controversy over the accuracy of the picture...

Sivaram Velauthapillai