THE FOLLOWING IS A RESPONSE TO A USMC "FACT SHEET" SENT OUT AS SELF-SERVING PROPAGANDA

[Editors note: The usmc is fond of publishing empty talk of their so-called "virtues", the following is one of them in italics sent to me by a retired gunnery sergeant. Full of vague generalities that could apply to anything: your neighbor is "always ready" to pick up her newspaper each morning. When confronted with the facts of any mc failings he starts calling me names instead of fixing the mc so it can take names. The first paragraph is really special for it boasts--and admits that the mc has no strategic mission, it relies on public apathy and myth gullibility to keep soaking up the billions it consumes. Enjoy.]

"Strategic Concept If a service does not posses a well defined strategic concept the public and political leaders will be confused as to the role of the service, uncertain as to the necessity of its existence and apathetic or hostile to the claims made by the service upon the resource of society."

(In other words, if a service does not have a clearly defined "reason for being" it will forfeit its place in national defense, its claim to increasingly scarce resources, and ultimately, its own special identity. Marines don't worry about their strategic concept -- You've told us what it is -- through your elected officials in Congress.

This is why the mc is a "sacred cow"--it has no mission. Bragging about how the mc doesn't think about strategic issues explains why the mc has filled our navy amphibs up with soft-skin vehicles in puny penny-packets that are only capable of evacuations and rescues at a cost of BILLIONS of dollars. Those Navy ships could just as easily be filled with Army troops and real Spec ops helo pilots, armored vehicles, mobile artillery-cannon and rocket, as the invasion of Haiti proved. No special training was really required for the Army troops to do this. Ignoring strategic realities get you Panama, where the mc sat home and did nothing. Couldn't get there in time. The above statement is typical mc boneheadism. Its time we write our Congressman and demand the mc stables be cleaned or if they refuse vote the bums out who make excuses and waste our treasury on.

Strategic Concept for a Corps of Marines • "A versatile, expeditionary force in Readiness"

Ready only to do minor missions because of poor force structure and size. Another example of a vague brag with no specific application.

• "A balanced force for a Naval Campaign and a ground and air striking force."

Code words for taking advanced naval bases? Don't need this. Both ships and planes can refuel as they move. This is an obsolete mission. Seizing a beachhead? Not with a mere battalion MEU-SOC. By the time the mc loads enough men and collects all the navy amphibs to even get a MEB, the Army can already be there inland and won the war. The Army deploys faster than the mc, and in greater force. The only mc benefit is if it can be there already in a "float" but thanks to selfish force structure that avoids risks after Beirut (265 dead after truck bomb) the MEU-SOC even if it is there is irrelevent except for permissive evacuations and saber rattling. Thank HQMC for this.

"In reviewing these actions it is apparent that some military capabilities have been quite useful while others have assumed a much more modest role. In Panama, Haiti and Somalia the principal instrument of American power was its light infantry divisions. Secretary of State Warren Christopher noted that, despite the threat of air and naval attack, it was only when the Army's 82nd Airborne Division was in the air that the Haitian government of General Cedras stepped aside and agreed to the restoration of power to President Aristide."

"Needed: a Strategically relevent force" a Defense Report written by Colonel M. Thomas Davis, USA, who is currently serving as a Federal Executive Fellow at the Brookings Institute. A separate version of this paper appeared in the 20 October 1996 edition of the Los Angeles Times.)

• "Always at a high state of readiness"

Abandoning Jason Rother in the desert in 1988? Beirut in 1983? Where was the security there? The near disaster during the O'Grady rescue? Koh Tang in 1975? Helicopters getting shot out of the sky in the open daylight? Desert One, 1980--marines unqualified to fly SPECOPs missions insist they be used, as Vietnam AF pilots that flew into and out of Son Tay prison camp stayed home. 8 men dead when jarhead pilot collides with AF C-130.

• "Ready to suppress or contain international disturbances short of war"

Saber rattling? It didn't work in Haiti. See quote above. Who is 'suppressing" disturbances now in Haiti and Bosnia? No mc. U.S. Army 25th LID and 1st Armored Division, NOT the mc. More mindless mc braggadocio.

• "To be most ready when the nation is least ready" The above was influenced by US defeats early in the Korean War in 1952, this concept was as relevant then as it is today. Congress also notes that "In every war engaged in by the United States, Marines have served as a Nation Force in Readiness.

Not in Panama, sir. Only token mc participation. Haiti----Army again. Somalia--Army again. Bosnia----Army yet again. Where was the mc in the war for independance? Didn't do squat. Nor the Civil and Indian Wars. Most of WWI and WWII was fought and won by the ARMY not the mc. MC historians can work overtime to try to twist the facts to say differently, but the truth is without the ARMY there would be no AMERICA. Without a mc? Still would be an America.

And its from this Strategic Concept that springs our institutional ethos -- an ethos marked by five unique attributes that distinguish the Corps from the other services.

Like "trash talk" and arrogance. Boy, we get a real bargain for the billions$$$ we spend to keep 174,000 loud mouths that do little as the U.S. Army does the real work.

Marine Corps Attributes • Combined Arms in three dimensions

Only in irrelevent penny packets. The ground part in humongous AAVs and poorly armored LAVs is otherwise foot-sloggers with low levels of skill that the enemy runs circles around...as they are bled, ambushed and turned into "heroes" for media consumption.

• Every Marine a rifleman

But can they fight? How about think? Can they shoot at MOVING TARGETS? How when the ranges are known distance and not pop-up targets? How about not shooting at innocent people? When triiger happy marines shot a sheep herder on the Texas border for no other reason than for kicks??? NRA members are rifleman, shoot better than marines, too.

"• Task Organized"

Code word for "ad hoc". Ad hoc is a recipe for disaster. If you do not have a permanent relationship with elements in a combined arms team, you are asking for disaster, whuich is what the mc got when it jumped onto USAF helos and chose to land in un-reconned beaches at Koh Tang island in 1975. After they crawled from the flaming helos and desperately clung together, they were almost annihilated had it not been for AF pilots risking it all to get the jarheads out.

• Soldiers of the Sea

Is this like "chicken of the sea?" You know, Starkist etc. Big deal. Soldiers of the earth. Army Soldiers can be Soldiers of the Sea"...by walking onboard a helo or landing craft and not walking into the tail rotor. Big deal. No skill there. In fact, T?he U.S. Army has more and bigger amphib assaults than the mc has done (ever hear of D-Day?). TODAY, not just 1944, the U.S. Army has more landing craft than either the Navy or the mc. Didn't know that, did you?

"Most Ready" when nation is Least Ready

We fight wars with the military, not the nation. Beirut, Koh Tang, and Desert One show that the mc is only ready for what it wants wars to be, not what they really are. Another trash-talk brag here. What has the mc done lately? Not much.

First and foremost the Corps is the only service tasked by Congress to be able to operate combined arms in three dimensions: Air, Land & Sea.

HMMMM. Did this writer have a brain? Every service has aircraft. The Army has Air, Land and SEA craft---not the mc. The Navy provides the latter. The U.S. Army is the only service that has it all. Without Congressmen who are pushing a mc agenda, where would the mc be? Where will it be when they die off as the American public grows sick of mc abuses and screw ups?

The Marine Corps mission has been to be ever-ready to respond to the international brush fires of disaster, emergency, crisis and when necessary, war. The Marine Corps does not win wars, but do play an important part whenever our nation commits itself to war. But winning war is the primary responsibility of the Army, Air Force, and the Navy.

The mc did not respond to Panama, Haiti or Bosnia...the Army did. It played no important parts in any of those operations. Read Secretary of State Christopher's comments above again. The mc has no mission now thanks to its own trash talk. The only benefit a mc force has resides in the Navy amphibious ships as a logistics platform. These can be filled with BETTER ARMY TROOPS just as easily as marines. Then we'd have humbler, harder working forces that CAN fight/win wars not just saber-rattle and trash talk.

Pursuant to our crisis response role, we have been called "Teufel Hunden" -- Devil Dogs -- by German defenders at Belleau Wood in World War I, "Faresta -- Sea Angels -- by Bangladeshi flood victims in 1991; or simply "Heroes" by Captain Scott O'Grady, the Air Force pilot who was shot down in 1995 and then rescued in the early morning hours from deep inside Bosnia by United States Marines.

After putting over 40+ men's lives at risk in broad daylight when a single ship could have gone in WHEN O'GRADY REQUESTED IT, only the mc would be desperate enough to use this minor mission (divine providence the cause) as a reason to exist. The Army Paratroopers at Salerno were called "those Devils in Baggy pants". Big deal. The WWI German Army was nothing compared to the WWII Wermacht which the mc did not even fight. The U.S. Army defeated the most powwrful army in the world, not the mc.

Considering the broad range of capabilities that the Marine Corps offers the nation -- both as a naval service and as the tip of a joint spear -- no other force offers more "BANG FOR THE BUCK." The Marine Corps organizational costs are among the most cost-effective in the Department of Defense. Right now, 6% of the Defense Budget allotted to the Corps buys 12% of active U.S. forces, 23% of active ground divisions, and 14% of all available tactical aircraft! Consider this to be one of the best kept secrets of the Defense budget.

Numbers do not add up. We spend billions on a 3 division mc that goes nowhere, but sits in CONUS as the Army goes to fight. The mc is a paper tiger. The Army can send an entire DIVISION to a war zone (Bosnia) and keep it there, where is the mc? In battalion size penny packets swimming in circle only 3 at a time. By the time the mc can get itself to a war zone, the Army will have already been there and won the war with greater size, quality and force. Those marine aircraft are crashing at an alarming rate, the worse rate of any services. So the mc is crashing and burning our nation's treasury so they can trash talk and hot dog as they slice cable cars and kill innocent NATO ally civilians. The mc delivers the most TRASH TALK for the buck...not results. Its no secret, its a big lie.

This broad-based global crisis response capability was exactly what the 82nd Congress had in mind when it legislated the role of the Marine Corps. No other nation on earth possesses the politically and operationally flexible rheostat of national response capabilities offered by Marines embarked on Navy shipping. Whoever said this was smoking drugs. If the mc cannot get there, its worthless. This is what is happening as U.S. Army Light Infantry Divisions have become the nations first to fight. What Congress are we in now? 1947 is old history, and the mc has let its time pass by. If the mc was so great, we wouldn't have the U.S. Army doing everything all over the world today. MC BS can be laid on thick, can't it!!!!

Compare that to the other services. The Air Force, for example, has only four enlisted airmen for each officer. Since officers are paid, on average, much higher than enlisted servicemen and service women, this means that the comparative Marine Corps rank structure is much cheaper than any of the four service.

• Air Force 1 to 4 • Army 1 to 5 • Navy 1 to 5 • Marines 1 to 9

Not if the mc does nothing. Officer ratios are misleading, AF pilots FLY WAR PLANES. The mc is stupid, low skill light infantry and doesn't need as many officers because it does less. It doesn't take much to be a silent drill team or play in a band. Thats what the mc likes to do is trash-talk the other services, until the mirror is brought up to its face then its: "jointness! We fight as one!!!"

"In summary, then, the Marine Corps is cost effective in the: --way organized, train, and equip forces --operate forces --man forces --support forces" More generalities not backed by facts. The mc isn't "cost effective" if its a showcase force that can't go anywhere is it?

"Truly, the Marine Corps is, and will remain, the nation's "force of economy," both now and in the future."

You get what we pay for. We waste money on trash talkers that are land-locked, that are constantly crashing planes, the mc is the nation's trailer-trash-jerry springer "K-Mart force" that gives you a cheap pair of jeans that split at the seams when pressure is brought to bear.

To the American people, that means Marines are the nation's MOST READY at the LEAST COST and with the BEST VALUES -- now and in the future.

Most vocal, undefendable cost, MOST EGOTISTICAL, not best values. Ever hear of humility? Or is that one not listed in the Guidebook for Marines>? The American people are not experts in war-fighting, only by propagandizing these gullible people can the mc hope to exist.

History Past to Present

"In the 1920's and 1930's, the Marine Corps developed amphibious doctrine, key to winning the war in the Pacific and in western Europe."

WOW!! HORSEY!!!! The U.S. Army won most of the Pacific campaigns/battles AT LESS COST than the mc by smarter STRATEGIC and OPERATIONAL art (what you brag at the top about). The mc didn't do crap in Europe in WWII. It was Mechanized warfare, not amphibious warfare that with AIRBORNE warfare that defeated the Germans. Whoever said the statement above is a biased mc bigot, willingly perhaps, but ignorant nonetheless.

"In the 1930's and 1940's, the Marine Corps were the first to perfect close air support; now no one fights without it."

HMMM. Do I smell bullshit? Ever hear of Army Air Corps General Billy Mitchell? What kind of close air support do you think he was doing in the trenches of WWI in 1918? What about the battleships sunk in 1921? Any marines here? Where was mc air power in WWI? HMMM??? This boast is like the Russians claiming they invented baseball.

"In the 1950's the Marine Corps pioneered the use of the helicopter, which revolutionized battlefield tactical mobility and operations."

Negative. The Army was the first to use helicopters in the Pacific in WWII. When the mc stopped tinkering in the 50s, the ARMY under the Howze Board perfected the Air Assault Division that went to war in Vietnam with helicopter gunships, transports to move artillery pieces etc. while THE MARINE CORPS FOOT-SLOGGED THROUGH MOST OF VIETNAM. When the low-grad mc pilots fly a mission we get Koh Tang island and Desert One-----flaming debacles. This is why the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment and AFSOC does the serious flying. The mc pilots are mere ferry pilots for the daylight from ship to shore.

In the 1970's the Marine Corps pioneered the use of Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing Aircraft to provide quick response close air support to font-line troops.

The Harrier cannot carry a useful bombload without a rolling take-off. Its a BRITISH plane, and it was the Brits who pioneered it, not the mc. While the mc was crashing every single "A" model except the one on display outside the gate at Cherry Point NAS, the Brits were fighting and winning the Falklands war with Harriers and Ski-jump equipped ships. If the mc was serious about V/STOL theyd have the Navy put ski jumps on the end of their amphibs. If the Harrier is getting shot down by shoulder-fired SA-16s because its exhaust nozzles are co-located next to the fuselage fuel tank, there ain't gonna be no close air support. The AF A-10 is a better plane, carries a better bombload from short landing strips, and is more survivable. The F-117 with "stealth" is a greater innovation, that really comes from the AF, not stolen from another. More mc bs!!!!

In the 1980's and 1990's, the Marine Corps introduced global propositioning of equipment on ships, allowing response more quickly to crisis around the world.

Pre-Po only helped when the enemy was stupid enough to give us 6 months to force deploy. This is an aberration, don't expect it again. You fight and win with what you got already in the first 72 hours--this means forces that move by AIR not sea. Pre-Po is not really an innovation--its desperation because the mc has been ignoring amphib ship construction in favor of expanding its own budget share. Thus, today our amphib war capability is kaput. The Army can do pre-po better with REAL WAR WINNING ARMORED BRIGADES not the low-grade light infantry non sense the mc put in the MPS ships.

"And at the dawn of the 21st Century, the Marine Corps are ushering in tiltrotor aircraft, advanced amphibious vehicles and landing craft which will allow the Marine Corps to revolutionize amphibious warfare."

Revolutionize amphib warfare? Are you on crack? A plane that costs billions that cannot even carry a HMMWV??? It means we will have a foot slog force left out to dry ashore unable to be linked up with, with no vehicle firepower at a 150 knots faster than we can go now. Big deal. What a waste of money. Who was thinking when they designed the Osprey???? Let me hear how Iraqi Republican Guard troops in Brigades and Divisions are going to be defeated 12 men at a time from an Osprey?

Below was written by LtCol T.R. Fehrenbach (USA)

The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in jungle and mountain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made. His pride is his colors and his regiment, his training hard and thorough and coldly realistic, to fit him for what he must face, and his obedience is to his orders. As a legionary, he held the gates of civilization for the classical world...He has been called UNITED STATES MARINE

Utter ego bullshit. A simple-minded robot who gets blown up in a building because he cannot think...ever hear of the middle east car bomb?????? ....by choice doesn't think. He is too busy "obeying" and being a moron who trash talks. The events of the past two decades exposes the lie of Fehrenback who should have known better. His emotional Korean war rhetoric no longer applies today, and the mc is fading when the time comes to do real world missions. The National Command authorities can FLY in Army troops faster and in better quantity/quality than the mc can set sail in a rapidly dwindling supply of amphibs. The mc is dying. Only an egotistical worshipper of it would be unable to see this.

Where did you get such trash-talk mc bs?????

WAKE UP AND LOOK AROUND !!!!