All the Ways We Kill and Die
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209 Their remains were so intermingled: You can see a photo at the macabre but very useful findagrave.com: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=pv&GRid=10540884&PIpi=3168943 (retrieved on September 29, 2015).
211 Killing him would be the easy part, it was finding him that was hard: A sentiment shared by the Special Forces soldiers in Linda Robinson’s One Hundred Victories (see page 25).
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213 Gary Shroen had been professionally attached: For the full story, see Gary Shroen, First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (New York: Presidio Press, 2005).
215 a Predator pilot finished a cup of coffee and did just that: Peter Singer explores this new idea of “going to war” in the age of drones in P. W. Singer, Wired For War: The Robotics Revolutions and Conflict in the 21st Century (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), page 327.
216 Drone was a term used by those who don’t like them: “A remotely piloted aircraft—a Predator or a Reaper—is not a drone, Air Force officers will tell you, and to call it that is practically like spitting on their shoes.” Aram Roston, “The ‘D’ Word: What to Call a UAV,” DefenseNews.com, March 26, 2013.
224 Good pilots practice identifying what will kill them first: In The Right Stuff, Wolfe explains this phenomenon with Saint-Exupéry (“The field of consciousness is very small”) and notes the comfort it brings. “I’ve been here before! And I am immune! I don’t get into corners I can’t get out of!” See Wolfe, page 270.
226 This is why it was better to be deployed: Even Matt Martin, whose book serves as a consistent pitch for Predators, celebrates being closer to the war. “Pilots or mission commanders at Nellis lacked the capability to drive across base and personally interact with army teams, QRFs [quick reaction forces], JTACs, and other commanders.” (See page 230 of Matt Martin, Predator: The Remote-Control Air War over Iraq and Afghanistan: A Pilot’s Story (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2010).)
227 They were blurring, bad now: In a 2013 study, researchers found that drone pilots experienced anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress rates equal to those of pilots of manned aircraft, and that the source of the stress was a combination of battlefield influences and scheduling/workflow dynamics, the constant compartmentalization and dissonance between flying and home life. Jean Otto and Bryant Weber, “Mental Health Diagnosis and Counseling among Pilots of Remotely Piloted Aircraft in the United States Air Force,” Medical Surveillance Monthly Report, Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center 20, no. 3 (March 2013).
228 Slim Pickens in a B-52: Stanley Kubrick (Director), Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, United States: Columbia Pictures, 1964.
228 Saddam actually shot down a Predator the morning of 9/11: This story ran at 7:50 a.m. on 9/11: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2001/09/11/iraq.htm (retrieved on September 29, 2015).
231 Prayer is better than sleep: From the Muslim Call to Prayer, during fajar, the first prayer of the day.
231 He just could not update it regularly enough: According to Stenersen (“‘Bomb-making for Beginners’: Inside an Al-Qaeda E-Learning Course”), most jihadist online electronics courses fail because of “their reliance on one or very few online instructors who are not always able to contribute on a regular basis, causing the interest to ebb away.”
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233 FREEDOM, ALPHA ROMEO, do you have visual on the Objective: Nearly all military communications via radio use the same format: Receiver, Sender, Message. For example, in this case, ALPHA ROMEO is asking FREEDOM whether they can see the objective.
241 Task Force 373: For more on TF 373, see Nick Davies, “Afghanistan War Logs: Task Force 373—Special Forces Hunting Top Taliban,” The Guardian, July 25, 2010.
242 l’as Adolphe Pégoud: The first-ever fighter ace, Pégoud had at least six air-to-air kills in World War I. In 1915, at the age of twenty-six, he was shot down by a German pilot and killed. He had an incredible moustache.
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260 A 2010 study by George Washington University: See Steven L. Schooner and Collin D. Swan, “Dead Contractors: The Un-Examined Effect of Surrogates on the Public’s Casualty Sensitivity,” Journal of National Security Law & Policy, April 2012.
261 A 2013 study by the RAND Corporation: See Molly Dunigan, et al, Out of the Shadows: The Health and Well-Being of Private Contractors Working in Conflict Environments (Washington: RAND Corporation, 2013).
264 Be polite, be professional, have a plan to kill everybody you meet: See page 313 of Tom Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin, 2006).
271 The Armed Forces of the United States are here to seek justice for our dead: For the full leaflet verbiage, see http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/10/18/ret.flyers/ (retrieved on September 29, 2015).
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281 scholarship at her alma mater: “On Sept. 8 … Soliman created a $25,000 endowment in honor of her former mentor, Dr. Wils Cooley, professor emeritus in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. The endowment will provide scholarship assistance to engineering students interested in studying abroad.” See http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2011/09/09/finding-a-way-to-make-the-best-better-endowed-scholarship-honors-former-mentor (retrieved on September 30, 2015).
283 The computer doesn’t need practice, so the safer system is put aside for humans to hand fly: During the Mercury program, the new astronauts, all former fighter pilots, colluded to refer to the capsule as a “spacecraft” in the hopes that NASA would let them, rather than the computer, fly the machine. See Wolfe, page 152.
293 Alive Day: In the modern military, an Alive Day is the day one is blown up but lives.
293 John rolls himself into a stall: John’s name has been changed to protect his privacy.
297 there were 184 names on the wall: All EOD casualty statistics available via the EOD Warrior Foundation (www.eodwarriorfoundation.org).
302 Major General Timothy Byers: Full biography available here: http://www.af.mil/AboutUs/Biographies/Display/tabid/225/Article/108036/major-general-timothy-a-byers.aspx (retrieved on October 1, 2015).
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