The Guardian is pretty tough on Putin, at least for a European based publication. I'm pretty interested in what they've gotten from the FSB. Putin will deny all of it of course.

Michael, I assume you can't post it for copyright reasons? In any case this is it:

Yep. Even more so now with baby boomers aging. Anything anti-senior is political suicide.

I have to agree that most people, liberal and conservative, have missed the point. Bradley Cooper has also said he wasn't trying to make a movie about Iraq, but a movie about the nature of war. The basic premise could have been translated to the Gulf War or Vietnam, and the point of the film would still be the same.

You can't blame him for getting deployed in Iraq. He enlisted in response to 9/11, but the powers that be decided to send him to Iraq instead of Afghanistan.

Why would both armor and shore bombardment be useless?

Great photos. But I'm not sure how necessary it is for our forces to defend Japan, which happens to have one of the most capable militaries ("defense force") in the world. Their navy is probably the second best in the world.

Some B-52s only have original skin remaining.

While they are definitely outmoded in most military applications, there are definitely situations where a revolver is the best choice for a sidearm.

It's used mostly for big game hunting. Typically dangerous game like bear or hogs or African game.

.357 has much more knockdown power than 9mm. Revolvers are much more reliable in terms of misfires and jamming. They are more accurate than similar sized automatics in single action, and the lost accuracy in double action can be somewhat mitigated with regular training.

I grew up just across the river. I used to know quite a few kids whose dads were pilots or navigators. It also used to be much easier to get on base and watch the flight line.

Was it a full-size simulator? I've been in B-52 cockpits and I've flown the full-size, full-motion simulator at Barksdale (which is the entire first 30 feet or so of the fuselage). It's not that small of a cockpit. And there's an upper deck and a lower deck.

China is laughable. Russia is not. The Russians will continue to become more aggressive in an effort to stave off their approaching demise (due to demographic attrition).

Nobody is right now because they would have to answer to the US Navy if they tried. But that doesn't mean there aren't powers that might like to. And threatening trade doesn't necessarily mean sinking other nations' trading vessels. Simply harassing a competing power's commercial vessels will limit their trading…

It's all about trade. 90% of global commerce is traded by sea. The US Navy has guaranteed freedom of the seas since WWII, when it picked up where the Brits left off. Remember the Russian sub in Swedish waters? The Baltic is actually pretty tense. And yes Germany faces the Baltic but most of its trade goes through…

As we continue to slowly withdraw our military presence around the world, the world will begin to realize just how much stability that presence guaranteed. I think a slow drawback is inevitable at this point. North American energy independence means we no longer have to protect energy interests, and the retirement of…

Where are you from? The presence of the US Navy around your shores has done far more than you understand.

We are going to definitely agree to disagree. If you seriously think that Putin has achieved a spectacular victory, while his nation's currency is on the brink of collapse, we definitely disagree.