41 Comments

• 1. aleke  |  March 30th, 2011 at 11:30 am

  AECOM Business Services:

  * A US$3-billion Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for the U.S. Air Force Center for Engineering and the Environment.[19]

  * A US$53-million IDIQ contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)to provide economic-consulting services to Iraq through the Iraq financial sector development Program.[21]

  * A US$50-million USAID task order task order under the Support Which Implements Fast Transitions III (SWIFT III) Indefinite Quantity Contract (IQC)for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID)Sudan peace program.[22]

  * One of four firms awarded contract worth up to US$60 million for planning and engineering services at U.S. Navy and Marine Corps facilities worldwide.[26]

  THEY sound so peaceful! Not like those desert Savages! Tents?? HA, we’ll liberate them good..

• 2. PT Barnum  |  March 30th, 2011 at 11:39 am

  The link to the news article is broken.

  You can delete this post, but please fix it!

• 3. postman  |  March 30th, 2011 at 11:40 am

  Dear War Nerd,

  Gaddhafi’s son in American internship?
  Right before all hell brakes loose at home?
  For me that spells CIA, I do not know what others will make of it…

• 4. postman  |  March 30th, 2011 at 11:57 am

  Dear War Nerd,

  Breaking news: I just read that the rebels created a new oil company to sell the Libyan oil instead of evil Gaddhafi…
  And they set up a brand new Libyan central bank…
  These camelhumpers on Technicals must be some really non-CIA/Mossad/Wall Street involved lot…

• 5. CB  |  March 30th, 2011 at 12:17 pm

  @ postman

  Glad someone is helping them get something together for if/when they take over. They’ll need those oil profits, and a bank for foreign investments. Hopefully they’re working on getting together a police force so we can have nice organized people in uniform cracking down on everyone from the wrong tribe^W^W^W^W suspected of working with Qaddafi. That’s much better than just anarchy in a power vacuum.

  @ The War Nerd

  He was a freaking intern? And they’re surprised he left when his dad was about to be rode out of town or killed if he didn’t leave? I read “hired” at first and assumed it was a full-time position and still thought “duh of course he left.” But an internship?

  Shiz, I’d ditch an internship if my dad got the flu.

  ‘Course engineering internships are usually paid (just a hella-lot less than the full-timers so from the company’s standpoint it’s still practically free labor). But honestly. That’s just stupid, thinking he might not leave.

• 6. Ezra Dunhill  |  March 30th, 2011 at 12:25 pm

  Just wanted to encourage you to keep up this daily blogging! Improved my quality of life for certain!

• 7. Mac  |  March 30th, 2011 at 12:33 pm

  Well, intern or employee really doesn’t matter much. I don’t think to a billionare son of a multi billionare the lack of a proper salary was what prompted him to return to daddy.

• 8. aleke  |  March 30th, 2011 at 12:36 pm

  Oh by the way: The rebels awarded Qatar the rights to oil-sales.

  Guess that Al-Jazeera disinformation campaign and their bit part in bombing Libya really paid off!

• 9. DerDer  |  March 30th, 2011 at 12:39 pm

  Fair play to Khamis, blood is thicker than printer toner.

• 10. bene  |  March 30th, 2011 at 12:41 pm

  That’s it, Gary? A meager twentysomething lines? I mean, come on.

  I gladly volunteer to give you some ideas; just look at this AJ video from one of these recent battles for Ras Lanuf/Bin Jawad/Sirta, whatever they call those dune hideouts:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwa8tfEiyDY

  I mean, isn’t that just glorious? When I saw those endless columns of pickups and cars, I just..I don’t know, it was awesome. They are just the latest in a proud line of ancestry from the Egyptian chariots that won (well, lost) the day in Kadesh, through Subotai’s hordes and then endless Panzer columns rolling over the steppe during the Case Blue offensive….right up to those scores of armored vehicles rolling on the Baghdad highway in the summer of ’03. Come on, don’t tell me you don’t feel kind of awed and at the same time, proud for mankind for producing such a fantastic spectacle…

  The first thing I had to think about here was “swarming”; as in, this weird post-blitzkrieg tactic for both conventional battlefields and anti-guerilla means. You know, somehow get military forces, mainly infatry, to act like a swarm of hornets disassembling a nest of bees (cool things, those hornets, they chew up like 20,000 honeybees per hour). Yeah, this whole strategy is pretty weird and abstract and hard-to-get, but also very fascinating; as our equipment-heavy western troops are concerned, the main problem seems to be logistics and intelligence.

  But those Libyans? They don’t give a damn about that; they’re like the original swarm, or at least how a swarm looks to us humans, totally unorganized, chaotic, primeval. So a car breaks down or is shot up, so what? They jump up on some other pickup, desant-style. Tacticts? They don’t have any, they just drive to where the action is supposed to be and start firing wildly. Coolest stuff a 20-year-old in those parts of the world will ever have, like you never get tired of saying.

  One thing I hate about Al J, they seem to employ a lot of these brit-accented white farts. What really got me going was how he tells that proud Libyan rebel at the end “But they [your troops] are all running away!” I almost yelled “Yeah, just like you limey suckers did at Dunkirk!” at my computer screen. Damn brits, you can always count on them to totally spin everything around.

  Maybe you could also do a little speculation game here. Don’t know whether you kepp an eye on the hardware updates, but apparently they got A-10s as well as AC-130 gunships over there now. I mean, I’m not anti-war, hell no – even though our stupid German governement decided so – but escalating this whole thing…well, let’s just say I doubt Obama learned so much from his predecessor.

  So please, research a little bit there. Or just sum up your impressions from all these hours on Al Jazeera and give us some cynical insight into that world which we poor office drones will never get. I know you want to!

• 11. ggttt  |  March 30th, 2011 at 1:31 pm

  CB is disinfo

• 12. Michal  |  March 30th, 2011 at 2:00 pm

  Khamis is just fulfilling the dream of every corporate intern. I’m actually slightly jealous. He’s going on a bloody rampage full of death and destruction, at the head of his own brigade, while the rest of us have to fax more files tomorrow.

• 13. CB  |  March 30th, 2011 at 2:23 pm

  Sorry for agreeing with you. 😛

• 14. Erik  |  March 30th, 2011 at 2:29 pm

  That’s it, Gary? A meager twentysomething lines? I mean, come on.

  Good thing we’ve got you, then.

  Why don’t you write a blog or something?

• 15. What's the deal...  |  March 30th, 2011 at 2:36 pm

  …with A-10’s anyway? Can anyone fill me in on those?

  I’ve known a couple (lesser) war nerds in real life, and they just cannot agree on those planes. What I hear is either:

  -They’re ridiculous, obsolete, anti-Soviet machinery. Flying bricks, really, only still in use because they’re so cheap and admittedly durable.

  OR

  -They’re brilliant, smartly designed anti-armor machinery. Flying bricks, really, still in use because they’re so affordable, versatile, and durable. They could probably make life really miserable for attack helicopters, too, if that ever actually came up.

  Many of these comments end up in hardware-fetish territory anyway, soooo could any of you mini-nerds give me the straight dope on this?

• 16. w  |  March 30th, 2011 at 3:27 pm

  Why the fuck’s he an intern? If my daddy was a billionaire dictator I’d be impregnating bitches and pissing away money like I was George W in the 60’s/70’s.

• 17. Eddie  |  March 30th, 2011 at 3:58 pm

  He actually looks quite good compared to the background. Anyone knows if he is actually qualified or simply a favor for another favor?

• 18. solfish  |  March 30th, 2011 at 4:30 pm

  A-10’s are badass. I’m not going to google the confirmed kill stats for you, but they were and are the most effective killing machine in our arsenal. Due to the proliferation of RPG’s helicopters have become death traps. The real fast movers (F-15, F-16, F-22, F/A-18) move way too fast to be effective against small groups of enemies and even the US can’t afford to be dropping laser-guided bombs every time half a dozen teenagers decide to take potshots. They are too fragile and expensive to use on anything without strategic value. The A-10 on the other hand can circle slowly and spit 30mm uranium shells at anything that looks dangerous.

• 19. Jesse the Scout  |  March 30th, 2011 at 6:49 pm

  I think we’ve all had a few jobs where being shipped to Africa to fight in a civil war would sound like the lesser punishment.

• 20. BlottoBonVismarck  |  March 30th, 2011 at 6:52 pm

  # 10

  Wrong on so many counts.

  > One thing I hate about Al J, they seem to employ a lot of these brit-accented white farts.

  They employ a lot of Brit-educated, Brit-accented non-British non-whitey, ER, non-caucasian, excellent reporters. And non-snivelling-USUK_MSM-hack-reporters.

  Reporters like the excellent Riz Khan and the Rattansi brothers, Afshin and Shahid. All of whom can interview the best spokesmen of the Empire and slice and dice them and reveal them to be the lying sacks of Empire-shill-filth that they are in two minutes flat. Which a lot of the world rather enjoys.

  In fact, the entire world, apart from the deluded mushrooms of the USUK, Australia and Harper’s Reich-wing Neo-Con Canadian Nazis. And the rest of the imaginary coalition of the unwilling, consisting as it does, of the US, UK Elites, plus assorted Neo-Con stooges — Harper, Howard, Rudd, Gilliard, Berlusconi and Sarzkozy, — Whores of Empire all, — detested by the majorities of their own populations.

  For those with their heads not up the US Empire’s butt, we say “And good fucking luck to them, too. At least they’re not Fucking USUK Empire shill @rseholes. !!!”

  Having said which, Al-Jazeera as an independent source of unbiased information has been revealed to be as bent as a nine bob note, or at least as bent as the BBC. –

  ‘Al Jazeera: An Island of Pro-Empire Intrigue,’ by Sukant Chandran, – MR Zine –

  – http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/chandan260311.html

  Why are the US mushrooms so deluded? Noam Chomsky on why some countries, and some groups, ‘get it’ and others have a much harder time. “The Irish Sea is a Chasm (of understanding). It just depends who has been holding the whip for eight hundred years and who has been under it for eight hundred years and the same is true everywhere else in the world.” –

  – Noam Chomsky @ 51:00 – ‘Rebel Without A Pause’ – Google Video –

  – http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4366784807223792419#

• 21. CB  |  March 30th, 2011 at 7:39 pm

  I’ll admit I’m biased because I think they’re simply awesome, but objectively the A-10 is good at what it does, which is providing the kind of CAS that laughs at any armor in existence. They’ve killed a lot of tanks, and they’ve come back after being shot to hell.

  I do notice that they didn’t send in the A-10s or AC-130s, which they were obviously itching to use against those armor columns, until after the fighters had run plenty of sorties against AA and SAM sites*. Call that the weakness of the A-10, that it’s only great in the absence of serious anti-aircraft.

  And hey, that kinda implies that the ideal way to use it is as a defense against that fabled massed tank invasion of the Soviets. So maybe that means it’s “obsolete”. It still seems to be useful.

  * I guess I’m not sure if this could have been because of logistics, .eg. the planes just hadn’t arrived yet or approval was still pending. I’m guessing they didn’t want their slow-moving planes shot down, though. A few A-10s have been taken down by RPGs in Iraq.

• 22. Mark  |  March 30th, 2011 at 8:10 pm

  I was wondering how the A-10s got to Libya. Flying from a European air base?

• 23. my talkative ringpiece  |  March 30th, 2011 at 9:41 pm

  I was an intern. I got $5 an hour (it was the 80s) and only got that, I’m convinced, because the State gave the company that much to create a job for a student.

  I believed in being worth my money. I saw the company go from a few people to well, huge. Most of you use their products just about daily. I assembled the prototypes of a good number of them.

  I did stuff. I repaired stuff, did bug reports on stuff, built test rigs and documented it, an unheard of skill around there. I did all-nighters to get working units assembled and working for trade shows. Since I couldn’t do it all alone, I eggs other students on and got enough work out of ’em to get ‘er done.

  The other students fucked off. They were smart. I was the stupid fucking idiot.

  My reward was: Going on to work as a repair tech making less than the guys in the warehouse. Success would have been learning to drive a forklift. Forklifts look so damn much FUN anyway. I’d have had a fucking gas. Frankly, I like big powerful machines that you can get into a lot of trouble in. Yes, I’ve gotten into the trouble, plenty of it. I heal up and go back for more. I think having no depth perception helps. I’d be a helo pilot if the FAA would let me. Boo, square ol’ FAA.

  Blessed are the fuckoffs, for hard work won’t get you much of anywhere. Blessed also are the born-with-connections. Blessed most of all are the well-connected fuckoffs.

• 24. postman  |  March 30th, 2011 at 9:59 pm

  CB,

  I am glad, too.
  Now that Gaddhafi’s financial assets are freezed, so the international bankers can send the money back to the poor Libyan widows and give every pro-democracy Libyan a welfare check out of that money, they have to think of the future.
  Without proper banking, those camelhumpers would piss away the oil money on blond white-trash whores and on snorting coke. Better to keep them from temptation, and take care of their money for them.

• 25. BlottoBonVismarck  |  March 30th, 2011 at 11:20 pm

  # 10

  > I almost yelled “Yeah, just like you limey suckers did at Dunkirk!” at my computer screen.

  And USans wonder why they are now as popular as the Nazis (Gore Vidal’s line) after the eight years of the Cheney junta and the genocide of 1.6m Iraqis and of 3m Afghans (mostly by starvation).

  > Damn brits, you can always count on them to totally spin everything around.

  Brecher covered this rather well. The US Empire couldn’t organize a piss up in a brewery. The Nazi’s were heavy-metal-@rseholes whose thousand year Reich was over by year twelve.

  But for a murderous, genocidal Empire that lasted 300 years and ruled a third of the wold, you need a slimy Brit colonial governor moaning about the natives, while his civil servants arrange for one faction to slaughter the other, while the Brits trouser the resources every time. No change there, then. At least, not based on the news coming from Libya.

  “But they did it smart, not like the idiot boastful Nazis y’all love to obsess on. I bet every one on the planet can name the Nazi death camps, but I’d be surprised if more than, say, a half dozen people outside Sri Lanka can name the policy the Brits used to destroy the Sinhala for good.”

  “Anybody? Didn’t think so. See, here’s another little tip for up’n’coming genocidaires out there: always pick the most boring name possible. Those fucking Nazis, with their heavy-metal jewelry and titles! Dopes! You want extermination programs with names that put everybody to sleep.”

  “And that’s why in 1818 Britain brought “the wasteland policy” to Kandy. They could have called it what that Liberian wacko called his campaign: “Operation No Living Thing.” That’s what it meant: Brit-led troops “draining the sea” the Sinhala irregulars swam in by burning every hut, every field, and killing every animal in every village they suspected of harboring “rebels.” –

  from ‘When Pigs Fly – and Scold: Brits Lecturing Sri Lanka!’ by The War Nerd, May 22nd 2008 – The Exiled – http://exiledonline.com/when-pigs-fly-and-scold-brits-lecturing-sri-lanka/

  Aka the US ‘Strategic Hamlet’ policy from Vietnam and now of Afghan fame, well known to you. Previously used by the British in Malaya. And, apparently, Sri Lanka. Since forever.

  “God, I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” – Col. Brecher encourages his Exiled readers. In Spanish for the new ‘Neo-Con-Financially-Imploded-/-Economically-Volunteered’ army.

  Which is how you’ll hear it … When you join up in order to eat.

  – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUDShxRWniw#t=00m02s

  Fade out – The Doors – Apocalypse Now –

  – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4WJlLNIsyY#t=01m11s

  Ah, nightmares, nightmares. That could never happen. Though reading Brecher is always a rush, because he breaks the chains of our inner psycho, lets him out for a run and reports back on his ‘fun’.

• 26. BlottoBonVismarck  |  March 30th, 2011 at 11:36 pm

  > I don’t know, Qaddafi seems to come off almost clean by comparison. At least he’s trying to add some fun to the world, jumping around in weird outfits and talking crazy ever-changing gibberish and sending up plumes of smoke from the desert. Y’ask me, it beats life in the Dilbert world any day. And as for sleaze–nooooo comparison.

  He certainly does seem almost clean. Gaddafi still carries the mantle of hero of his 1969 revolution, for the Arab people and against the colonial powers – Italy, Britain, France and, not least, the Wank, ER, Yanks. He still carries that magic, says Johann Galtung, who sees the US Empire going down the plug-hole in double quick time.

  “And Thank Christ,” you might think.

  And there are many who would agree with you. Ninety nine percent of those living outside the US, naturally. And most of those who voted for Obummer (?) Who will be a one term loser, according to Galtung. “You can’t betray your base.”

  – Johan Galtung on Wide Awake Radio – March 24, 2011 – Youtube –

  – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI-S7Iguh0o

  Peter Dale Scott wonders who is behind the Benghazi rent-a-mob – Al-CIA-Bung-Khazi – ‘Who are the Libyan Freedom Fighters and their Patrons,’ March 28, 2011 – Information Clearing House –

  – http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27776.htm

• 27. furioso  |  March 31st, 2011 at 12:28 am

  hans ulrich rudel-buster of over 1000 t34s and a battleship-late war when stuka was obsolete and there was no german air cover (memoirs:stuka pilot) was involved in the design and making of the best plane the us has ever had-the a-10

• 28. Patrice Lumumba  |  March 31st, 2011 at 12:35 am

  Fuck all you myopic hardware propellerheads! A-10 this, F-69 that, blah blah blah. During all the recent play in the sandbox, you’ve all missed the most significant chunk of iron that ever humped up one side of a dune, only to schlep down the other side.

  Not the Hummer, not the GAZ-2330, not the PAK Land Rover knockoff, or Ghandi’s ex-NYC Checker Cab. Not even the PLA’s clone of the Pontiac Aztec.

  The clear winner is THE TOYOTA TACOMA, choice of raghead warriors everywhere. The biggest arms exporters are the US, Russia, Germany, France, and . . . TOYOTA! Got that? TOYOTA!

  >>>===> http://www.longotoyota.com El Monte

  Give the marque its due.

• 29. foog  |  March 31st, 2011 at 2:17 am

  @postman

  “Without proper banking, those camelhumpers would piss away the oil money on blond white-trash whores and on snorting coke.”

  You say that like it’s a bad thing.

• 30. crumbs  |  March 31st, 2011 at 3:12 am

  These Libya columns really stink, they seldom say anything about libya and when they do- it seems that whoever wrote them hasn’t read a newspaper, they don’t address events. John is the whole Brecher concept getting too tiring for you?
  It’s kind of funny tho’ despite all the ‘bad ass’ firepower arrayed against him, Kaddaffi is winning militarily, and well. It’s the rebels, those son’s of liberty, who are playing victim. More mirth is provided by the fact that people’s enthusiasm for air power way out strips it’s decisiveness. Final lesson kiddies- fourth generation war theory- proved nonsense, again.

• 31. Carpenter  |  March 31st, 2011 at 7:05 am

  Internship is not the cornerstone of the economy, although I admit it sounds funny, so all right.

  Internship is actually a good way of getting experience, which looks good in your CV, IF you are wise and choose the right company. A friend recommended choosing a Western company in Hong Kong; the girls there throw themselves at Western men. Geeky men too, they don’t care – Westerners are exciting to these girls, and they are brought up geeky, doing nothing but study. It’s like Geek Heaven. (Don’t pick expensive Japan.)

  Gaddhafi’s son in American internship?
  Right before all hell brakes loose at home?
  For me that spells CIA, I do not know what others will make of it…

  Well, we know that Qaddafi has been working with the CIA against Islamists like al-Qaeda since 2004. Surprised me that they turned on him; no doubt they needed an opportunity to cozy up to the Arab revolutionary movements, which are otherwise anti-Israel and therefore anti-Washington.

• 32. pmx?  |  March 31st, 2011 at 7:55 am

  GARY, WOULD YOU PLEASE WRITE A BOOK ON WARFARE, PLEASE?!!!

• 33. Ganryu  |  March 31st, 2011 at 10:09 am

  @32 pmx
  Yup, I’d love a Brecher book. Heck, I’d love him as a “color commentator” for Jane’s. (Geez, can Ames get Ratigan to give Gary a couple of minutes). But can you imagine him making a deadline? Can you imagine the abuse that literary agent would be taking? It’d be like the love child of Hunter S. Thompson and Thomas Pynchon.

• 34. War Whore  |  March 31st, 2011 at 10:13 am

  Nobody wanted this, but you nobodies deserve it. I just returned from 3 weeks on the shifting Libyan front. Bullets flying everywhere. Heaps of camel guts. The sands
  moved inexorably as the wind blew from the west and sucked from the east.

  Which reminds me of my sainted ma, who once whored for the Koch Bros Matador Cattle Co in Montana. She herded cows with an F-22, super-tuned by Heriberto Lazcana’s Zetas. Norm’s Rod Shop did the body and paint. Ma never got to go to Libya. But me and my Coolpix did.

  Well, that’s my war report for today. Tomorrow’s installment will be about
  war and war shit. C-U-L8R.

• 35. par4  |  March 31st, 2011 at 10:30 am

  Speaking of moral compasses has anyone studied U.S. Foreign Policy for the last say 200+ years?

• 36. Jack Boot  |  March 31st, 2011 at 10:31 am

  @ Partice Lumumba
  Quite so; does anyone remember a 1960s TV series called “The Rat Patrol”?
  Set in N. Africa circa 1942, it starred 4 Allied dudes (one of them a Brit, mirabile dictu!) riding 2 Jeeps, each armed with a Browning M2 .50 cal.
  It goes without saying that they single-handedly defeated the entire Afrika Korps.

  I suspect that quite a few Africans have watched Rat Patrol re-runs.
  Of course, they’ve updated the concept with dead-nuts reliable Toyota diesel 4×4 pickups;
  armed with good, solid, sand-tolerant Russian hardware (12.7mm & 14.5mm machine guns, 23mm ZSU automatic cannons, ATGMs, etc). The Somali term for them is the rather euphemistic “Technicals”.

  Apparently, Khaddafi’s lads have abandoned their tanks (mobile crematoria, don’t you know) in favour of their own Technicals – unmarked, of course.
  That way, NATO pilots can’t tell ‘tother from which.

  So now it’s Tech vs. Tech – a fair fight, in a “Mad Max” sort of way…

• 37. par4  |  March 31st, 2011 at 10:31 am

  P.S. You can add Domestic Policy to that question also,too.

• 38. Karel  |  March 31st, 2011 at 12:11 pm

  Domestic policy is Government of the corporation, for the corporation, by the corpotaion…

  Foreign policy is subvert anyone that crosses the corporation.

  Libya was much better off and safe under sanctions. Just ask Cuba.

  As soon as you open up to Direct Foreign Investment, in moves Soros’ NGO like national Endowment for Democracy and start subverting you social contract

• 39. yossarian  |  March 31st, 2011 at 1:05 pm

  Hey Gary can you do a book recommendation post at some point?

• 40. brian  |  April 1st, 2011 at 7:12 am

  http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/03/25/unpaid-jobs-the-new-normal/

  I’d leave an internship in a heartbeat.

• 41. Jay W  |  June 16th, 2013 at 4:27 am

  “4. postman | March 30th, 2011 at 11:57 am

  Dear War Nerd,

  … These camelhumpers on Technicals must be some really non-CIA/Mossad/Wall Street involved lot…”

  There is no need to be racist by calling them “camelhumpers”, dude.

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