Winning in Iraq One Can of Silly String at a Time
(Editor’s Note: The following story is absolutely true.)
Necessity is the mother of invention, and so when U.S. troops in Iraq found that Silly String was an effective way to spot nearly invisible trip wires they asked their commanders to order up cases of the child’s toy.
No can do, they were told.
Not content with that answer, Army Specialist Todd Shriver, who is stationed in Ramadi, then asked his parents, Marcelle and Ronald Shriver of Stratford, a South Jersey suburb of Philadelphia, to send him some of the stuff.
The Shrivers published their son’s request in parish bulletins at two area Roman Catholic churches, triggering (pardon the term) a run on Silly String in area dollar stores.
Silly String is considered a hazardous material, so shipping it requires following certain guidelines. The Shrivers are working on that.
The churches are accepting donations of Silly String and money for shipping.
They are St. Luke’s RC Church, 55 Warwick Road, Stratford, NJ 08084-1732, and Our Lady of Grace RC Church, 35 White Horse Pike, Somerdale, NJ 08083-1796.
Share This
If the Pentagon were operated like a successful business it would have all kinds of methods for collecting useful ideas from the people on the front line, who do the work and take the risks.
Is it stated why they can’t get it? I remember hearing at least a year ago that they were using silly string for this purpose and I’d never have imagined they’d be denied it.
Paul, since when has the Pentagon ever operated in such a fashion in American history?
We’re still using as our primary infantry rifle a jam-prone, overly complicated 40+-year old design that fires a cartridge (a “hot” version of the 223 Remington varmit round, the 5.56 NATO) originally designed for dispatching gophers. Time and again, our primary infantry weapon fails to stop the enemy, to the point that those shot can absorb multiple rounds and still retain the capability to fire back. REad Michael Yon’s dispatch Gatesof Fire for a graphic account where an insurgent takes four rounds and is then able to engage in hand-to-hand combat.
If we can’t even get the military brass to get the job done on a well known decades-old issue that affects virtually everyone in uniform, what chance do you think there is that they can adopt isolated and quirky (even if effective) battlefield adaptations?
Our Pentagon often moves ploddingly slow, and if nothing else, Rusmfeld, for all his faults, was trying to change this culture. I have little faith that installing a realist like Robert Gates in the role of Sec Def will make this or similar issues any better.
If the Pentagon were operated like a successful business, people could quit whenever they wanted.
Some things should not be run like a business and the obsession with applying business practices to government is way overboard. Indeed, a lot of the problems in Iraq may be directly attributable to the very nature of private contractors and this government’s obsession with them.
Confederate Yankee makes an excellent point with an outstanding example. If you’re willing to let the enemy troops have superior weapons why should you do anything else right?
Confederate Yankee is more correct than he/she may realize. Beyond the chronic lack of body armor and other necessities because of Rumsfeld’s “war on the cheap” is the learning curve thing.
A reason why the insurgents have been able to stay a step ahead of American and other coalition troops is that they learn faster from their mistakes. This is to say that they adapt their tactics while coalition troops constantly rotate in fresh soldiers who have to learn the counterinsurgency ropes pretty much from scratch.
After all of the depleated uranium we’ve spread all over Iraq the US army is concerned about toxicity in silly string?????
Nucking Futs