Michael Fumento has been "over there" and in a review of the series in Tech Central Station doesn't think much of Over There. Excerpt:
If "Over There" has a true military advisor, he deserves the firing squad. In the first episode a squad is pinned down while besieging a terrorist-filled mosque. The unit remains for about 36 hours with no air support, because "Air is dedicated to another area." Never mind that air cover from jets or helicopters is always available within minutes. They also request artillery, again to no avail. There's no armor. Until near the end of the siege the only guys with a mortar are the enemy.In order to include women, two females from a transportation unit just happen to join the siege. In fact, they just happen to tag along for the rest of the series! Reality is sacrificed to the God of Diversity.
Towards the end of the show a troop transport pulls off to the side of the road, an idiot thing to do since that's where improvised explosive devices (IED) are almost always buried. Naturally they roll over a powerful IED, even though the bad guys have conveniently marked it with little white flags! A horribly wounded soldier is then evacuated in a type of chopper not used in Iraq.
Clearly this is a military that can't even tie its bootlaces and in the immortal words of Pogo: We have met the enemy and he is us.
I wondered about the little white flag thing. Damn nice of the insurgents to put a little "Don't tread on this!" sign up for us, but of course our military were just too dumb to read it. Another thing that bugged me (one of many) concerned the lengthy roadblock sequence in the second episode. The insurgents supposedly sent several suicide vehicles and decoys before getting around to smuggling out their high value target, who was apparently the only guy who knew where the Stinger Missiles were hidden. So why didn't the smugglers just go around the checkpoint? It's pretty much rural unfenced desert so why would they be limitted to the road? Granted, you probably have to use roads or tracks to move material, or to get somewhere really fast... but if there's an obvious checkpoint that you are aware of enough to diddle around for hours sending decoys and stuff you presumably aren't pressed for time.
The whole series is like that. It's not so much that it's biased (although it is that, in spades), as that it's not remotely realistic even as a fantasy war. Harry Potter is more authentic.
(Cross-posted by Demosophist to Demosophia and The Jawa Report)
Posted by Demosophist at August 14, 2005 11:56 PM | TrackBack