Military Officer - November 2008 - (Page 14)

yourviews MILIT ARY SEPTEMBER 2008 THE OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF MOAA | ONE POWERFUL VOICE® W W W. M O A A . O R G OFFICER Taking Aim at IEDs CUTS WON’T DIE Medicare fix won’t solve 21% cut in 2010 31 PLUS: MOAA’s Fall Retirement Guide helps you look ahead to your future 53 Sept_ cover.indd 1 “Thanks for your information process to keep … our defense system strong for our country.” —Maj. Jay W. Bagley, USAF-Ret. tary with similar products with key phrases in Farsi, Pashto, and Dari, for Afghanistan. We also have products in Kurdish, Somali, Spanish, French, and other languages and can provide visual language translators and visual user guides with content in any language. —J. Larry Golfer Kwikpoint Alexandria, Va. Traveling in China In reference to Cork Millner’s story, “Slow Boat Through China,” … admittedly what he saw is probably the most important and must-see sights, but oh, there is so much more! As interesting as his trip was, perhaps a few days’ less cruising and more indepth time seeing other parts would have been vastly rewarding. My late husband, Cmdr. Charles F. Harding Jr., USN, and I participated in a People-to-People … trip to China in 1984. We not only saw the cities of Beijing and Xian, plus its terra-cotta army, but we took a ﬁve-day cruise on the Yangtze from Chongqing to Wuhan on a 144-passenger Chinese vessel. This boat carried 70 elderly Chinese survivors of Mao’s “Long March,” plus our group and other travelers, on a six-hour trip through the beautiful gorges. We spent nights on the moored vessel and had daytime to climb mountainous terrain to visit ancient villages. … We also visited Shanghai, Kweilin, and Canton, but most important, we visited with the Chinese people, ate real Chinese food, saw schools and churches, and entered byways. We experienced the real China, where past and present coexist. China has changed dramatically during the [24 years since] our trip, [as] has most travel in the country. On A new joint organization is working to neutralize terrorists’ favorite weapon 90 Defeating IEDs I think that “modern IEDs” may have actually predated Chicago’s 1886 Haymarket riots, cited as the ﬁrst occurrence of IEDs in the “Reducing the Threat” article of the September 2008 issue. In fact, Brig. Gen. Gabriel J. Rains, CSA, originally of New Bern, N.C., demonstrated the technique near Williamsburg, Va., on or about May 6, 1862. Rains ordered four 10inch shells to be buried in a road near some felled trees, with triplines attached to the fuses. Rains [said his] intent was “mainly to have a moral effect in checking the advance of the enemy.” Federal troops did trip the explosives, and their advance was necessarily delayed with a search for more. At the time, both subterranean and ﬂoating mines were referred to as “torpedoes.” On May 11, Gen. James Longstreet, Rains’ superior, learned of Rains’ act and forbade his placing ad14 MILITARY OFFICER NOVEMBER 2008 ditional subterranean torpedoes as they “are not a proper or effective method of war.” Finally, Confederate Secretary of War George W. Randolph decided that the weapons could not be used to kill enemy pickets but could be used to delay pursuit, in front of the lines to repel attack, and in rivers to damage enemy warships. Rains moved to the river war and developed dedicated fuses for gunpowder mines. Ultimately, Rains’ so-called “Keg torpedoes” caused the majority of the 43 sinkings or ship damage to the Union ﬂeet. —Lt. Col. T.F. McGraw, USAF-Ret. via e-mail 8/6/08 8:51:32 PM [The] September 2008 cover story, “Reducing the Threat,” [praises] JIEDDO’s “Iraq Visual Language Translator for IED Detection” as breaking codes and bridging gaps, but the key phrases contained in that card are in fact in English and Iraqi Arabic, not Farsi. Farsi (otherwise known as Persian) is the ofﬁcial language of Iran. As the developer of these unique communication tools, Kwikpoint provides the mili- http://WWW.MOAA.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - November 2008

Military Officer - November 2008 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Chapters in Action Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Financial Guidebook Out of the Red 7 Year-End Tax Strategies Cover Story: Memory Survives Something to Say MOAA Scholarship Recipients Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange Member Books Advertising Index MOAA Member Services MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - November 2008

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