Flit

In case you were wondering...

Michael Yon still hasn't actually made that apology to Canadians he said he was going to make for his entirely false "you were all watching hockey instead of guarding the camp" allegations last week. Presumably it's because he's too busy beating up on... the Spanish. Sigh. Really, the Taliban couldn't get more value from this guy these days in terms of helping break up the Afghan coalition if they WERE paying him. Hey, maybe the Spanish deserved it (although the Canadian hockey experience should be at least cautionary) but it should be clear now that left unchecked it appears he's just going to continue to bounce around the AO sharing confidential U.S. soldiers' gripes with the world until nobody's talking to anybody else, or it's an all-U.S. mission. Which would suit his fanbase just fine, I suspect. Not a lot of liberal internationalists in those comments sections.

Today's essential marksmanship reading

Tip to Herschel for finding this, which all rifle-toting Canadian personnel should probably read. The points about optimal M16 weapon lubrication, magazine testing, and 50-metre zeroing's superiority over 25m apply to our weapon as well, and are worth hoisting in.

Miscellaneous updates

If it isn't obvious by now, the Pakistani crackdown on Taliban members seems to only extend to those members they catch outside Quetta and Baluchistan. Now, since the number of detained is too large by this point for defections or happenstance to account for it, you have to assume some deliberate intent on the Pak government's part, which leads to only one of two explanations: either Pakistan is signalling to the Afghan insurgents to stop any suggestion of raising hell in the rest of their country and stay where they are permitted to (ie, Quetta), or it's removing a targetted group of people that either it or another Taliban faction views as no longer useful, as this piece suggests. (Or both.)

Also, in the Globe today, a letter-writer gives Canada the credit for introducing Afghan soldiers to volleyball. Um, no. I don't know where their unholy passion for the game came from, but it certainly long predates our stay.