Gen. Dunlap writes: “Vice President's Biden's reported "CT plus" approach -- which, I predict, we will eventually have to employ anyway.”

Above is the key sentence in an otherwise rather rambling and petty essay by the good general. After all is said and done in Afghanistan it is likely that not only Biden but also many others who have promoted a robust counter terrorism campaign rather than a full-fledged counter insurgency and nation building effort will in the end prevail. This is likely no matter whom in the future camps out in the Oval office since reality on the ground has a tendency to eventually make its way into even American policy. I can’t resist using Winston Churchill’s spot on remark about the United States, "The Americans will always do the right thing…after they have exhausted all the alternatives."

This was indeed a petty article by Dunlap. Whom you'll note is a retiree, and has waited until this time frame now that Gates made his retirement plans known.

Dunlap, you'll note I don't use his former rank, because the only thing differant about him and those buried in Arlington National Cemetary, is he doesn't have a headstone yet, has always given me the impression he sees air power as the dog waging the tail - the tail being the ground forces.

I think it irks him and some others from this trade guild called the Air Force, that Gates has put a priority on getting that branch to support (key word: support) the ground forces in the conflict(s) we are in now, which of course does relegate them to a support role and not the lead, which is another topic that the MajGen. likes to espouse his former branch has been doing.

Additionally, his remarks about Admiral Fox Fallon are out of context as there is some parallel to the Admiral's interview with the NYT followed again by a rather blabby, insubordinate interview with Esquire Magazine, and that of McCyrstal, which finally left Gates with not much choice but to ax the Admiral.

This post gives a good picture of what Sec. Gates is up against. It also, surely without meaning to, paints a very unflattering picture of the Air Force's general officers.

Do all Air Force generals justify entourages of colonels and lieutenant colonels with the thought that they deserve this compensation for not having made millions "...singing a song or throwing a ball?"

Do they all think of themselves as having "warfighting insights that might save someone's son or daughter," whether or not they have ever been in combat?

Faced with the criticism that the military has neglected the requirements of the wars it is fighting now to maintain peacetime readiness (and procurement) for hypothetical wars it may fight someday, do all Air Force generals fume that the requirements of wars being fought now won't be much good in hypothetical wars it might fight someday?

Whether or not he makes it entirely in good faith, I give Gen. Dunlap a pass on his complaint about Adm. Fallon. Fallon was handled badly, victimized by a peculiar command arrangement in which his subordinate had a regular, direct pipeline to the White House. Perhaps he should have recognized the position he was in earlier than he did, and responded to it in a fashion more appropriate than a magazine article, but the episode did not reflect well on the Bush administration's ability to manage senior officers with strong views. Gates, as Secretary of Defense, bore some responsibility for that.

In general, though, Dunlap uses all the weapons typically wielded by a long-entitled interest group suddenly under attack. It's a disturbing thing to see -- not so much for what it says about the difficulties facing Gates now, as for what it says about how the Air Force may have been using the vast sums of public money entrusted to it over the last several decades.

Faced with the criticism that the military has neglected the requirements of the wars it is fighting now to maintain peacetime readiness (and procurement) for hypothetical wars it may fight someday, do all Air Force generals fume that the requirements of wars being fought now won't be much good in hypothetical wars it might fight someday?

Why not? The unconventional war stuff we're doing right now isn't exactly applicable to anything where your enemy has better weapons than AK-47s and road-side bombs.

However his technical/scientific advisors should be replaced: missile defense (as planned) does not work (ie. SM3 based).

It has worked repeatedly under testing.

This sentence is unseemly coming from a General Officer, "Based on Army figures reported in USA Today, one can quickly calculate that of the 547,000 active duty soldiers, nearly 238,000 have never deployed for even a single combat tour, and an additional 150,000 have done so just once."

Why unseemly? It appears to denigrate the contribution of the U.S. Army (Reserves and National Guard included) to the military effort in Iraq and Afghanistan. Especially with the italicized emphasis in the original. Moreover, it appears that the General wants more Army folks to serve repeated combat tours based on the sentence immediately preceding the one quoted herein.

This is more pertinent when one looks at combat death totals for our recent (and ongoing) military operations. Total U.S. Army combat deaths as of 11 Sept 2010 are over 3200. USAF combat deaths 57.

I am surprised that General Dunlap was unable to find a more suitable statistic to make his point.

Please remember that Charlie Dunlap is a lawyer who happens to be an Air Force general officer. He has never represented the views of Air Force warfighters.

You know you're on the right path.

Dunlap has been a faithful and unabashed airpower enthusiast (some would say segregationist) for many years - something many of us in the Air Force both admire and despise about him.

As a lawyer, Dunlap often selects only those factoids and opinions that provide him persuasive power in this debate. He does not necessarily present all sides of the story. There are many of us in the Air Force (especially those who regularly and faithfully operate in the SOF realm and conduct low-intensity COIN/FID/BPC activities) that have celebrated Gates' down-to-earth approach to our USAF capabilities, and recognized that our USAF incompetence with procurement has made a bad (and expensive) situation worse. So bad, in fact, that it took the SECDEF to shake things up and bring some sanity back to our enterprise. Dunlap would apparently like a return to unrestrained spending on high-tech "next-war-itis" weapons without recognizing that airpower comes in many forms. Like all good Air Force folks, he believes in airpower, but generally fails to recognize the role of airpower as a "supporting" asset in today's fights. I like his argument for high-tech China-bashing airpower, but hate that he largely ignores the value of the good old Cessna 172.

Don't get me wrong, we need guys like Dunlap to argue for airpower and Air Force primacy - just as the Army needs guys like Gian Gentile to be the COIN counterpoint. I think Dunlap's a great debater with well-crafted arguments. I just don't find them persuasive in the real world, nor particularly helpful as we try to create synergy with our ground-bound and interagency brothers and sisters in today's fights - whether in Afghanistan or the Beltway.

As for the above commentary, I think it is petty - and not really worthy of a retired officer. Critique policy, not the individual, if you must.

Interesting comments. While I don't agree with with some of what the general said I think most of you are missing the point. I think it was poorly stated but the general's main point is that insurgencies are not a threat to our national existence. We can fight and loose dozens of insurgencies in other countries and it still will not effect the American way of life. But if we loose just one war with China we are done. Our whole way of life is predicated on our military superiority and fighting insurgencies as we are doing now in Afghanistan and Iraq is a waste of time and resources.

The best way to fight them is what was done with plan Columbia. That is a small group of special forces advisers with locals leading the way, and you will notice even that will not succeed unless we have a leader such as President Uribe that cares about his country and not just the best way to loot it. That is his main point.

Body counts are a cheap emotional pitch. True the Air Force has not lost as many people but they are not a ground fighting service. It would be similar for the air force to complain about the armies lack of casualties in Europe during world war 2 when the strategic bombing was taking place. The army ground forces (I know they were still Army Air Forces but you get the point) had no part of that bombing campaign and so they had no casualties. Fighter aircraft are not needed in insurgencies and insurgents have nothing that could harm them.

As far as USAF contributions you do a pretty good job of ignoring them. Let me point out that during Iraq invasion Iraqi Air Force did not risk a single air to air engagement. I guarantee that if you went in again with air support full of UAVs they would get the same treatment as Georiga's UAV did (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U49n1JuWAmc) and then the Army would get crushed. And if you think your SAMs will protect you, well that's what the Iraqi's thought too. The best defense against an aircraft is another aircraft. I wont even get in depth all the strategic and tactical airlift USAF provides.

The reason no one wants to engage USAF now is because we are the best. As Iraq and Serbia showed if you take off in your MiG or SU you die with zero chance of inflicting casualties on us. But that will change if the Air Force atrophies its fighter force and if we don't have enough fighters to establish Air Superiority.

I can go on and on, but here is my last point. In order to fight DEFENSIVE wars a big army is not needed. All you need is firepower and someone to direct it as was shown in 2001 in Afghanistan, in that one case secretary Rumsfeld was right. The same was true in Iraq invasion. Not arguing about whether it was right or wrong but rather just stating the facts. A bigger Army is need only if our national policy is to engage in OFFENSIVE wars of long term occupation. Which I submit no one wants to do.

Lastly just because F-22s are not used does not mean they are useless. Just like nuclear weapons they are a deterrent. If you believe that we should get rid of them just because they are not used then the same would apply to nuclear weapons. After all we did not use a single one since 1945, but would you get rid of them too? I think not.

Looking forward to all spears coming back at me.

The biggest and the worst legacy that Secretary of Defense Gates will leave behind will be the legacy of Afghan mess that he engineered with other Bush officials by mollycoddling Pakistan at the expense of Afghanistan.

Of all the people in administrations of Bush and Obama, Gates knew that Taliban’s Pakistani connections are fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/10, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/10 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/10 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

Yet Gates has continued to justify Pakistani government’s (Pakistani Army as well as civilian government) terrorist connections by always evading to answer most fundamental question - why didn’t he order drone attacks on Mullah Omar’s QST in Baluchistan?

General McChrystal had warned about Pakistan’s sheltering of Taliban terrorists in his August 2009 report to Obama: Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan. At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year‘.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they can not prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line.

As Matt Waldman reported, “support for the Afghan Taliban is ‘official Pakistani ISI policy’ and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude. There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign in Afghanistan.”

The ISI is said to compensate families of suicide bombers to the tune of 200,000 Pakistani rupees, claims the report. Thus US aid to bankrupt Pakistan finances the death of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. So in a way, US is financing the death of its own troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied umpteen times the existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal called QST as the biggest threat to US Afghan mission in his report to President Obama in August, 2009.

Pakistan has denied presence of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil umpteen times and just recently Adm Mike Mullen repeated in Islamabad that Osama is hiding in a very secure place in Pakistan.

But US can not even use its drones to destroy QST that is causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan since 2002! That shows Obama’s continuance of Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan.

As Afghan President Karzai told a news conference in Kabul on 7/29/10 after WikiLeaks leaks, “The time has come for our international allies to know that the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages. But rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centers and training places of terrorism which are in Pakistan. Our international allies have the ability to destroy these Pakistani sanctuaries, but the question is why they are not doing it?“

With the trio of Pakistan apologists - Gates, Mullen and Petraeus - guiding US Afghan policy, no wonder US Afghan mission is headed for failure.

MG (RET) Dunlap has made a small writing career arguing that the USAF can win the nations wars.

His slavish devotion to the failed notions that we can bomb the enemy into the stone age is reflective of the culture of the USAF; who fails to to understand that no service alone can win our nations war, rather it ultimately comes down to paraphrase Ferenbacher, a grunt standing on the ground.

..when its time to go..form a song by John Prine.

Gates knows when it is time to ask the Generals and Admiral to go...go for the long live of their services and the Nation. Pace, Giambastiani, Fallon, McCrystal and other faded men in blue, green and bluish grays. Men who became costly in their reliability to take orders from those without ethics or honestly, those with conflicts of interest between the nation and their portfolio, those who offered them a new toy or weapon or armada paid for by the children of the beguiled patriot and who like any thorough-bred large animal became gluttonous to feed, dress and house.

We have nearly a thousand of these either greats or toadies on the payroll. A few, Petraeus, Conway, Mullen, Mattis, appear worthy of our gratitude and endless respect but these are hundred of others that appear to be there to homestead, provide powerpoint entertainment and continue generations of patronage entitlement income for family, friends and former colleagues.

Our temple of Defense, the Pentagon, has become filled with money changers. Gates and Mullen are politely advising them so before it appears on Sarah's twitter and snake flags start appearing on the headquarters lawns.

Maj. Gen.:

I think that you and the vast majority of the Air Force miss Secretary Gates point. The point, as I read it, is that he want the Air Force to get its behind in gear and get involved with the war(s) were having. Its that simple. The Secretary has asked the Air Force for certain types of air support and the Air Force has repeatedly stalled and delayed in giving this support. Thats what hes got a case of complaints about.

Firing the Sec AF? He needed to. If things are so lax in the Air Fore that we're flying nukes over the country without the crew of the aircraft even knowing what was on their own aircraft, potentially endangering the American public on an unimaginable scale - I'd do the same thing if I was Gates.

Never in my life would I ever think that I would hear a Flag grade officer complain about how much better perks are at the Cabinet level. Then to hear it from an Air Force Flag grade Officer makes me nauseous. The service that brought the phrase "sense of entitlement" to the military. Generals paygrades are published, so dont try to act like youre wallowing in poverty - I dont care what the premise is. Its most unbecoming of your rank. I didnt take any complaining from my E-3's and I refuse to take pity on a General. You chose the job, you accepted the pay, thats the short and long of it.

The Air Force, while needing to keep one eye focused on the future, needs to get the other eye focused on the war were involved in. The current Air Force culture is not sustainable as it rewards avoiding combat deployments, to the point of being an Olympic sport. I couldnt believe that in the Air Force, an airman who had just returned from a combat deployment was passed over for promotion because she had not completed any college courses and had not done any community service in the previous two quarters. Its small things like this that are broken in the Air Force that I think Gates is trying to repair in order to make the Air Force accountable for its actions, become a responsible member of the Department of Defense, and contribute rather than be its current parasitic self in the military culture.

What a truly disappointing email from someone who is capable of writing provocative and serious articles. There is certainly room for arguments about whether we are over-emphasizing COIN, whether the challenges of the future will look more like Iraq or more like Taiwan Straits, etc. Col. Gian Gentile is just one of several prominent authors who have been challenging the conventional wisdom in a thoughtful way.

Dunlap, however, mostly limits himself to breathtaking personal swipes at Gates that are beneath what you usually see out of think tank partisans and political hacks. To suggest that Gates' memoir is "not quite Wikileaks, but...." is just slander. Does Dunlap seriously think that Bob Gates is on a mission to destroy the USAF because of a perceived slight he got one day as a 2nd LT, 40 years ago? Seriously?!? If nothing else that'd be news to the Navy, which someone less myopic might have noticed is taking hits right along with the AF. More seriously, it's not like Gates was or is the only person in DC arguing for these changes. Dunlap himself serves on the board of a think tank that was pushing for a COIN-rebalance before Gates ever took the SECDEF job. Or who knows, maybe Gates just bribed all those COINistas at Small Wars Journal, Gen Petreaus himself, etc, with Aggie football tickets.

Frankly, the email conveys a strong sense that what bothers Charlie Dunlap isn't any loss to our nation's future security, but a loss to Charlie Dunlap. I don't doubt that Dunlap would have enjoyed better perks as a general officer -- I've been at events with Charlie and I can vouch that he does have excellent taste in dress and food & wine -- but a petulant, whiny, personal attack is hardly the way to convince his fellow officers that he has a sound strategic critique of our current national policy.

The only question is: Why doesn't Obama listen to experts who clearly have some experience in the field instead of people who sit in their chairs and do nothing?

Writers are doing it...for example, when I wrote the post on how to find people for free, my task was to get a tons of experts who can provide a reason why each and every one of those engines should be put in the list.

It may be a simplistic analogy compared to the military but that's the point..simple things work in complex situations. Take the book 'Checklist manifest' where that guy worked with the WHO and reduced death rates by half by just using a checklist.

But I still feel compelled to voice my support for the Sec Def. I don't know anything about his past but I know something of his present. It seems to me he's more interested in winning wars and securing our country than he is making friends and catering to well funded interests. From my limited vantage point, he may well be the best friend the Air Force has seen in recent history.

The retired JAG's comments don't come close to nudging my admiration for this man.

Sorry to pile on the good General, but now that he is retired, his arguments sound like those of someone who is looking for invitations to collect speaker fees at the expense of those doing real work. Charlie has been a self -promoter throughout his military career and his articles like the one that argues AF JAGs are combat multipliers provided comic relief to anyone outside the small circle he was trying to impress. The fact that he ended up at Duke by virtue of his friendships with Peter Feaver (a frequent panel cohort of his at gov't funded conferences) is no coincidence.

There seems to be a debate about the wisdom capabilities, taxpayer-paid perks and personal "biases" of our government and our top military leaders about almost everything they do. I choose to follow one issue. For those who believe that our only real threat for the next two decades is insurgency armed with AK47's under secure airspace, consider this wee bit of observation and connect the dots.

Sometimes, there is a story embedded within a bigger story. We need to connect the little stories together to discover the pattern that forms the bigger story. Without understanding the big story, we only report symptoms of the problems that lurk beneath unnoticed. Once we understand the bigger story, we understand the true significance of the little stories.

A story appeared in the Internet that one of the largest active spam botnets on the world-wide web was mostly dismantled by all of the nations except one: Communist China. The majority of the infected computers were located in India. India is collaborating with Russia to build their equivalent of the F-22 stealth fighter. (We would not let India buy F-22's. They could not wait for the F-35.)

Another story appeared a while back on the July 4, 7 and 11th cyber-attack that took down the NCIS server farm. Its source was traced to North Korea, a willing surrogate to test a Chinese cyber attack strategy. Another fact: The Chinese military report to the head of the Communist Party, not to the Chinese government.

At least two years ago, the British discovered rogue Internet card chips in computer appliances manufactured in China. They also found rogue CMOS chips in appliances manufactured in China. They were nicknamed “trapdoor chips” and “Trojan chips.” They were found in conference phone equipment so cyber intruders could listen in on conference room meetings VOIP without detection even when the devices were “turned off.” The trapdoor chips were found in server boards and high-end internet routers. Cyber intruders could penetrate our internet defenses outside the operating system because their malware was embedded within the hardware.

The US Cyber Command conducted a demonstration using one of their larger mobile power generators, a “white hat hacker” and a notebook computer. Within an hour, the “hacker” used his notebook from over 100 miles away to find the power generator, disable its overload protection, and create a meltdown. The hacker was asked if he could do the same for the national electrical grid. He said “Yes, within an hour or two. However, my presence would be detected. Others could do it without detection. Even if I got caught, it would be too late to do anything about it.” This was reported in a military news piece about a breakfast meeting with Armed Forces Committee members of the US Congress in attendance.

Communist China has an operational missile that can be tipped with a tactical nuclear warhead they already have. It is powerful enough to destroy an aircraft carrier and sink most if not all of its escort vessels. China is enhancing the missile’s avionics to enable cruise missile performance. China already sold previous versions of this missile to Iran (called the Silk Missile). If Iran received the upgrade, they could turn Israel cities into a cinder and destroy any aircraft carrier that gets too close. The new missiles could fly at mach 5 to mach 7, so defense is difficult if not futile with present on-board weaponry.

Communist China is increasing the size and range of its military aircraft fleet and its naval fleet, including submarines. You do not need this kind of military hardware if you do not have imperialist ambitions. Both Russia and Communist China will be in production mode of F-22 style stealth fighters before any version of the F-35 reaches production status.

The United States has less than 500 aircraft that have any chance at all of surviving a modern surface-to-air missile in hostile airspace. Only the F-22 and B-2 bomber have any good chance of survival in hostile airspace.

Our naval surface vessels are sitting ducks for enemy aircraft loaded with nuclear-tipped smart bombs in hostile airspace. The bigger the naval vessels are, the easier they are to hit. So why is the US building another $14 billion + aircraft carrier to replace the Nimitz? Do you smell fresh pork? Follow the money.

Communist China could use their anti-satellite weapons to knockout our military communication satellites and create enough space trash to prevent further use of that orbital path for decades. That action would cause GPS to no longer function. It also would cease secure military communication and make our unmanned aerial vehicles useless. It also would disrupt both civilian and military sea navigation.

The new nuclear treaty with Russia covers only strategic nuclear weaponry. It does not include so-called "tactical" nuclear weaponry. The treaty does not define what is strategic and what is tactical. Oops! Has Communist China signed any nuclear treaty with anyone? If so, would they keep it?

The fastest transmission speed is the theoretical speed of light. This is about 300,000 meters per second give or take the direction of the receiver relative to the center of the universe. A signal from an unmanned aerial vehicle (AEV) to the nearest satellite takes time. The satellite must digest and repeat the signal (called latency) before it can relay it to another satellite. The process repeats until the signal reaches a pilot's console over 7,000 miles away from the AEV. The pilot has a reaction speed of variable duration before another signal is sent along the same path to the AEV. How long does that take before the AEV gets the word? It is classified. Would you agree that it is slower than a pilot in the cockpit of a piloted fighter? During the Yom Kipper war, Israeli pilots decimated the enemy fighter force because teenagers were flying Israeli fighters. The lopsided Israeli success was attributed to the faster reaction speed of the Israeli pilots.

A modern surface to air missile has an onboard computer that can use optical pattern recognition and predictive tracking technology with radar and thermal assist to send a missile to its target at Mach 7. How many aircraft in our US arsenal could avoid certain destruction?

Now that you have a few little stories, connect the dots. Do you still believe that our only threat within the next two decades is a bunch of insurgents armed with AK47s? Do you believe that our Air Force arsenal could win a strategic conflict in hostile airspace and protect our navy and ground forces from assured airborne destruction? Who within our political and military leadership still thinks so? Who disagrees? Who is asassinating the personal character of others in a public forum? Are we next?

Next-War-itis may be a complication of No-War-topia

Secretary Gates is one of the most competent men to have held what is perhaps the most difficult job in Washington. He is good at it because he is ruthless and a political knife fighter. Gen Dunlap is right, in order to support President Bush's vision of using ground forces to stabilize, remove corruption, and democratize Iraq and Afghanistan, Gates has strongly defended the current boots on the ground war at the expense of the Air Force and Navy and the country's long-term defensive capabilities. To do so he has taken steps such as mocking "next-war-itis," launching personal attacks on good men, stifling debate, and playing upon inter-service bigotry to gain support on the Hill. To put it another way, SECDEF is using Machiavellian methods to support fighting a land war in Asia and somehow winning the argument by silencing debate and appealing to land forces parochialism. Undoubtedly he believes the issue is important enough to warrant this type of politics. Whatever his reasoning, however, someone should be willing to call him to account for his methods. Democracy only works if political leaders are held to account. I for one am glad to see someone force some attention on Gates' methods.

The problems are manifold. Yes, the big danger is very much computer based. But how much is the AF doing about pulse weapon attack, e bombs and the like? Compared with the huge amounts spent on fighters?
Yes, air superiority is important, but the AF has --and continues to--ignore fiscal life. Does Duncan argue for a war tax? Did he? No way--anymore than he wrote about Rumsfeld and the hash he was making of defense during his tenure.
Let's face it, the AF still recruits pilot types when what is needed is a more scientist type.
The Chinese will build good--but cheap--and plan on swamping us. You think they have all those diesel subs because they like anachronism? Or because they are reliable, and can swamp our defenses.
In the meantime the Air Force hasn't focused on building well but cheap, hasn't bothered with aircraft designed for ground support because it isn't cool, isn't top gun. Well, while the other guy watches us spend our way to bankruptcy because the General and many of his supporters want to have an aggressive defense budget without tax increases, they are investing in technology education, research and development, but with an eye toward doing things cheaply.
Gagarin's spacecraft may not have had some of the primitive niceties ours had but it got the job done. That's the philosophy our oponents are using. But they may not need to worry about defense--if they encourage us to keep on with the old style of thought and defense spending methods, we won't be able to afford but 5-8 fighters, let alone afford the maintenance, the special weapons, and won't be able to test fire the weapons because they're too darned expensive. We'll be back to the 30's though instead of cut-outs of military hardware we'll tell ourself practice with "virtual" armaments is as good as the real thing.
And then we'll get creamed.
And of course the Tea Party and others who delight in the thought that ignorance is to be celebrated will do the final job of ensuring that intellect is not valued in our society , to the extent that cable and Fox have left it undone.
Bravo! A great self immolation by those that most stridently claim to be patriots!