The US Navy welcomed the latest member of its fleet today. Pictured above: the USS William Jefferson Clinton CVS1 set sail today from its home port of Vancouver, BC.
The ship is the first of its kind in the Navy and is a standing legacy to President Clinton and his foresight in military budget cuts. The ship is constructed nearly entirely from recycled aluminum and is completely solar powered with a top speed of 5 knots. It boasts an arsenal comprised of one F14 Tomcat or F18 Hornet aircraft, which although they cannot be launched or captured on the 100 foot flight deck, form a very menacing presence.
As a standing order there are no firearms allowed on board. The 20 person crew is completely diversified and includes members of all races, creeds, sex, and sexual orientation.
The ship's purpose is not defined so much as a unit of national defense - in fact in times of conflict its orders are to remain in hiding in Canada, but will be used extensively for social experimentation and whatever worthless jobs the ex-commander in chief and his wife can think of.
War Slang
Past U.S. conflicts have inspired lingo ideal for our forces in Iraq.
Confederate Disease n.
diarrhea
[Civil War]
“I’ll risk Confederate disease for
one more tasty helping of Cookie’s goat ’n’ shrapnel goulash.”
Cunt Hair n.
a unit of measurement smaller than a millimeter
[WWII]
“That British friendly fire missed my femoral artery by a cunt hair!”
Six-and-Twenty Tootsie n.
a dangerous temptress
[WWII]
“That six-and-twenty tootsie just flashed me her ankle!”
The Day the Eagle Shits n.
payday
[Vietnam]
“Sorry, Abib—I can’t pay you for the floating carpet till the day the eagle shits.”
Zorch interj.
excellent
[Korean War]
“My superiors are going to make me a scapegoat for prisoner torture that they authorized? Zorch!”
Cognacked adj.
drunk [WWI]
“I’m so cognacked I’d hump a camel!”
Short-arm Inspection n.
a check for venereal disease [WWII]
“My short-arm inspection came out positive. Damn those Navy broads.”
Slicky Boy n.
thief [Korean War]
“OK, who’s the slicky boy who stole my brand-new copy of Maxim?”
Needing to learn how to speak Iraqi? Start with these new town names:
Spoiling For A Fight? Pick On One Of These Guys ...
The World's least powerful Armies
Jamaica
With an army of only 3,200, this island nation has more catch-a-fire power than firepower. Its air force, the Air Wing, possesses neither combat aircraft nor armed helicopters, and the naval armada has just eight patrol vehicles. Tragically, the army's most regular deployment is against gang warfare and rioting.
Costa Rica
Central America's most peaceable nation abolished its army in 1949, but a cuddly paramilitary police force of 8,400 remains. Its principal conflict strategy is to look the other way - the paramilitary didn't blink when Panamanian troops invaded Costa Rica from the west, briefly capturing a government minister.
Bhutan
This Himalayan spiritual nation maintains an army 10,000 strong - that is, if you include border and toll guards. In the last three decades, they've demonstrated military might by forcibly expelling 15% of the country's 800,000 citizens for not being ethnically Bhutanese.
Belize
Located just off the Gulf of Mexico's lucrative drug corridor, Belize has no coast guard and fewer than 1,000 soldiers - leaving this former UK commonwealth completely incapable of repelling cocaine-cartel cowboys or incursions by enemy armies. In 1999, Guatemala revived a 140-year-old claim to Belizean hinterlands, occasionally kidnapping Belizean troops.
Canada
Proving size doesn't matter, Canada's army is big but bad: during the Gulf War, their soldiers were deemed unready for combat and relegated to guard duty. In 2000, $250 million in Canadian Army weapons, ammunition and vehicles - not to mention three soldiers - were "hijacked" aboard an American cargo ship, whose owners refused to release the materiel until the government paid up.
The Swiss have an interesting army.
Five hundred years without a war. Pretty impressive. Also pretty lucky for them. Ever see that little Swiss Army knife they have to fight with? Not much of a weapon there. Corkscrews. Bottle openers. "Come on, buddy, let's go. You get past me, the guy in back of me, he's got a spoon. Back off. I've got the toe clippers right here!"
They can hold all the peace talks they want, but there will never be peace in the Middle East. Billions of years from now, when Earth is hurtling toward the Sun and there is nothing left alive on the planet except a few microorganisms, the microorganisms living in the Middle East will be bitter enemies.
Fight Simulator
Wanna know what it's like to be stationed in Iraq? Keep these tips circulating on the Net, maggot.
Invite all your neighbors—especially ones you don’t like—to visit for a few weeks.
Sleep everyone on canvas cots.
Set an alarm clock to go off at intervals throughout the night.
Mount a garden hose at chest level for a shower. Leave a minimum of four inches of cold water on the shower floor at all times.
Urinate everywhere except in the toilet. For a more realistic deployed-latrine experience, use the shitter of a neighbor who lives at least a quarter-mile away. Don’t flush.
Replace your windows and garage door with green plastic sheets.
Occasionally take apart every major appliance you own and then put it back together.
Leave the lawn mower running 24/7 for proper noise level.
Get a haircut from the paperboy.
Raise the doorway’s threshold so you trip when you pass through.
Leave wet, freshly laundered clothes in a ball in the corner where the cat pees. After a week, unroll them and proudly wear to work and family gatherings. Pretend you don’t know what you look or smell like.
Shoot bullet holes in walls for proper ambience.
Spread gravel throughout your house.
Sandbag the floor of your car to protect it from IED mine blasts and fragmentation.
Decide the family dog is a disease vector, then shoot it. Throw the dog in a burn pit dug in your neighbor’s yard.
A 21-Gun Salute to War-Winning Weapons
The longbow
The regular old bow had been around for thousands of years, but it was the medieval English who turned it into a weapon feared throughout Europe. Six feet long and made of strong yew wood, their skillfully crafted longbows had a killing range of 200 yards.
A longbowman could fire 12 arrows per minute, slaughtering the enemy from a safe distance. In 1415, a force of just 9,000 Englishmen defeated 30,000 Frenchmen
at Agincourt in France, all thanks to the longbow. This is less impressive, being that they were French.
The pike
Think fearless mercenaries and the Swiss probably don’t spring to mind. But in the 15th century, Swiss pikemen were feared throughout Europe. The pike was a long pole with a blade on one end that could be used to stab, chop and hook the enemy. A massed rank of pikemen could stop a cavalry charge in its tracks. The pope’s famous Swiss Guard still carries pikes. So enough with those Catholic jokes.
Gunpowder
The Chinese are believed to have invented gunpowder around the 10th century. But it was the crafty Europeans who discovered you could put it in tubes and fire projectiles. They started with cannons in 1326, and primitive guns followed in 1388. At first, these weapons had a habit of blowing up the gunmen rather than the enemy. Then, in 1450, the French ironed out the design flaws and came up with the mother of all cannons, which they used to blast great big holes in English castles and splat their Anglo archers. Payback for that whole longbow thing.
The matchlock
Your average AK-47-toting schoolyard tot won’t give it a thought, but the matchlock musket was his weapon’s great granddaddy. Invented in 1460, it was the first real rifle, and at 18 pounds, it took so long to fire and load that you were probably better off just hitting your enemy over the head with it. But it evolved into the wheel lock and then the flintlock around 1660. A regular Davy Crockett could load and fire every 20 seconds, with an accuracy of up to 80 yards. A musket ball had greater penetration force than an arrow, and the impact put a man or horse straight down.
The Iklwa
In 19th-century southern Africa, tribes had a civilized way of waging war. They’d line up opposite one another, shout a few insults, hurl some spears, then go home for dinner. Shaka, a fearsome Zulu leader, ruined all that. He came up with the iklwa, a short-handled spear with a long blade designed for disemboweling the enemy in hand-to-hand fighting. The next fight Shaka’s guys got into, they waited for the other tribe to throw all its spears, then spilled their guts in the dirt. The iklwa made Shaka the only leader in southern Africa worthy of an eventual American TV movie.
The breech-loading rifle
The Prussian Dreyse bolt-action needle-gun rifle, invented in 1840, was the first modern rifle. You slipped a cartridge into the breech and a firing pin struck the primer in its base, which fired the round. Two decades later, rifles were mass-produced-accurate and reliable—at last giving fans of the Second Amendment something to hoot and holler about. The rifles had a range of up to 1,000 yards and a magazine that held up to10 bullets. A soldier could fire 15 shots in a minute and became a force to be reckoned with. A young Chuck Heston rejoiced.
The rocket
The ancestor of today’s precision-guided missiles, the German V-2 of WWII was a pilotless drone loaded with a ton of high explosives. Nowadays, cruise missiles can be loaded with chemical, explosive or nuclear warheads to knock out an enemy on another continent-beaming back video all the way. They aren’t the most accurate weapons, but that makes them even scarier.
The nuclear bomb
The best damn weapon to have—because once you have it, you never have to use it.
