by Mitch “Taco” Bell We called him “Pyro” after he ran around the Charleston O’Club, drunk as hell, butt-naked with a rolled-up newspaper stuck in the crack of his rear, on fire, and a green tee shirt over his head with two eyes cut out. Tonight, his in-flight emergency was …
Read More »Is the US Headed to Civil War? Here’s How to Tell
COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating My inbox is overflowing. In the wake of current events, some of my correspondents fear that the U.S. will implode. One reader, “Freaked Out,” writes: “I saw the story about you in The New Yorker magazine, and you talked about riots and civil war. Are we …
Read More »The Marine Who Saved Old Glory: July 4 With the British in Baghdad
by Kevin Cresswell Picture the scene: It was early hours on July 4, 2003, at Camp Slayer in Baghdad, Iraq. There were several hundred U.S. troops and a handful of odds and sods ‘Brits & Aussies.’ In the middle of the lake was a boathouse with a flagpole. During the …
Read More »I Went Looking for Smugglers on the Border – Here’s What I Found
by Heath Hansen It’s not often that the absence of a story makes my day, but today that’s exactly what happened. I had a free afternoon and decided to head Southeast, into the San Diego Mountains, looking for any indications of illegal entry, or drug smuggling, into the United States. …
Read More »The R4 Rising: South Africa’s Galil Evolution
by Austin Lee In the 1970s, Israel aided South Africa in obtaining Galil pattern rifles to replace South Africa’s FN-FAL/R1 battle rifle, which had been in service since the 1960s. The Israelis had just replaced their version of the FAL with the Galil platform after facing issues with the FAL …
Read More »Beretta’s Plastic Warrior: My 6-Year Torture Test on the ARX100
by Greg Chabot Back in the summer of 2019, I was looking to review an oddball type rifle. At my local shop I noticed a rifle that had been marked down a few times. Talking with the manager, he gave me the deal of a lifetime. I could have it …
Read More »Marines Play Hide-and-Shoot in the Philippines
by Jose Campos PALAWAN, Philippines -In the sweltering heat of Palawan, the defenders went to work, one palm frond at a time. Members of the U.S. Marine Corps and Philippine Marine Corps went to ground, to dig and disguise fighting positions ahead of a live-fire counter-landing drill at Quezon. The …
Read More »Built in Silence, Delivered in Fire: Israel’s ‘Rising Lion’ Will be Studied for Years to Come
COMMENTARY by Susan Katz Keating It was designed in the shadows and delivered in fire. Operation Rising Lion is more than a military strike – it’s also a case study in elite-level warfighting, a stunning demonstration of what happens when clandestine missions, surgical airpower, and special operations converge with precision and …
Read More »A Bomb in the Briefcase: When Iran Planned to Launch a Terror Attack in Paris
The plot involved members of an Iranian sleeper cell, authorities said. by Tom Squitieri There are some who believe nations of the world have been unfair to Iran, that the nation has been maligned, miscast, and put in a corner for economic and political reasons of others. Reading “Diplomatic Terrorism” …
Read More »An American Intel Soldier in East Berlin, Tailed by Secret Police
by Martin Kufus Excerpted from Plow the Dirt but Watch the Sky: True Tales of Manure, Media, Militaries, and More, by Martin Kufus. And the sign said YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR. Our Mercedes bus idled at Checkpoint Charlie, the tightly controlled Allied crossing through the Berlin Wall into the …
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