COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

The episode I saw involved the squad sitting in a blown out little bunker outside of a town, staking out the home of a guy they thought might be a spotter for a mortar crew, which had been making life very dangerous for coalition traffic along the road going through the town.

But they weren't sure about it, so they didn't want to just assassinate the guy. So the squad sits in the bunker for a couple of days straight having their little morality play about whether or not to shoot the guy.

Apparently, there's an important logistical convoy which is about to come through the town, and the brass wants to take out "the spotter," thinking that by taking out the spotter, they can make the road safe for traffic.

No, enemy mortar crews, despite having been laying on the same section of road for days, never register their tubes on a known and fixed piece of terrain, apparently.

The squad's unit, furthermore, is too stupid to, you know, simply go and raid the guy's house to see if he has a radio, or even if the mortar fire stops or becomes less effective the day he's picked up.

No, they'd rather let a squad make a target of themselves for days on end sitting out there accomplishing nothing, waiting for the suspected spotter to do us the courtesy of stepping outside with his radio and binos in hand. Because people in Hollywood are apparently that stupid, so their characters have to be that stupid, too.

So, anyway, the squad sits there in the bunker and watches as a humvee "runs the gantlet" one night. Actually, a lone humvee runs the gantlet. With two chicks in it. Yes, because the U.S. Army routinely sends unsecured, lone humvees drive around Iraq, willy nilly. Bonus points if they're women. Even more bonus points if they leave their lights on, knowing they're being observed. And here's the tactical problem: How to defeat an enemy mortar crew who does us the favor of setting up somewhere and lobbing shells at the same spot day after day.



Apparently, this squad is basically disembodied from the rest of the Army, because while the squad leader correctly gets his orders from a lieutenant platoon leader, the platoon leader apparently gets his orders directly from the most underemployed general in the history of the military. What's more, it's a general who apparently doesn't command any assets other than that squad, because even though we know the enemy mortar has set up within a few thousand meters of the road (thanks to the fact that we know a mortar's effective range), the unit apparently doesn't bother with patrolling to find the mortar.

Nor, seemingly, does the general command any indirect fire assets. Because even though the enemy mortar crew has foolishly decided to set a pattern by firing on the same section of road repeatedly, there is no counterbattery fire to be had, despite the fact that our Q36 and Q37 radars have the capability of acquiring the exact 10 digit grid of the mortar crew, sending the information to directly to the the self-propelled 155mm which the 3rd ID most definitely has in the inventory, and launching the ordnance at the mortar crew while the incoming shells are still in the air. (The only thing that slows us down is how fast we want to clear fires.

Apparently the general doesn't command any aviation assets, either, because despite the importance of the logistical convoy, they don't bother leading the convoy with an aviation screen, which would have no problem checking out the most likely mortar launch points based on a map recon or based on painstaking local sector knowledge worked up by the infantry, would no doubt be aggressively patrolling the whole time, in order to flush out the mortar cr... oh. Right.

Nor does it occur to the Americans that you can easily drop a curtain of white phosphorous and smoke rounds between the convoy and the suspected spotter location, even if you're not willing to use HE on the guy's house.

Nope, there's no such thing as a combined arms team in Hollywood. And so there's no patrolling. No counterbattery. No aviation. No close air support. Nope...apparently the squad fights the war all by itself.

So the squad makes the decision to shoot the suspected spotter, who has destroyed a cab for no reason I can figure out (other than for the advantage of further compromising the position of the mortar crew.)

And so the semi trucks come over the hill, with their precious cargo of toilet seats. Smoker, a tough street kid from Compton, doesn't think the cargo of toilet seats is worth the risk.

Smoker apparently missed the OIF I rotation, but I digress.

Anyway, the semis come over the hill with little if any security escort, doing about 20 miles per hour, and bunched up like they were going to a tailgate party. The squad gets its sniper to shoot at the window where they think the spotter is. Good call.

The American sniper fires through the window and curtain and scores a direct hit on the observer. We know this because despite the fact the impact of the round would naturally send the guy sprawling backwards on the floor, in hollywood reality the guy actually fell TOWARD the American sniper, with enough force to actually break the window.

What's more, the guy manages to hold on to the radio and a pair of binos even as he crashes forwart through the glass. The wife runs out and screams her head off, because that's what Iraqi women do on this show, apparently. But the squad makes no attempt to arrest her, despite the fact that now she's a material witness who may have knowledge of the identities of the mortar crewmen. After all, she knew her husband was in close touch. But that's neither here nor there.

But somehow, the squad has a psychic in their ranks, because even though rounds are still falling on the convoy, vicinity of the road, and even though the road itself can be easily observed from the surrounding hills and from the villages, the squad thinks that now would be a good time for all of them to break overhead cover at once and go out and stand by the side of the road, all within a single lethal burst radius of one mortar shell.

If this squad's chain of command really acted this way, they would all be immediately and justly relieved for incompetence.

I gather that hollywood screenwriters have rather more job security.

News flash: Good military consultants shouldn't limit themselves to ensuring uniform authenticity.

Splash, out

Jason