Scare Tactics Scare Tactics - Why are Liberian soldiers wearing fright wigs?

slate.com ^ | 8/1/03 | Mark Scheffler

[Oorang]

No offense taken! I guess I should stay off the computer when I haven't had much sleep! "In your face" logical meant that, to me, it is so obvious, why don't these people get it.

Think I'll try to go take a nap.

[Riley]

I'm going the other way- I need some weapons-grade coffee. :-)

[Oorang]

Excellent post.

[Oorang]

Great comparison.

I cannot claim to be a vet. Even so, Apocalypse Now is one of my favorite movies (despite Martin Sheen). When people ask me why, I tell them it seems to not be so much of a war movie as a psycology of war movie. My brother, who is a Vietnam Vet, was amazed that I thought A.Now was a great movie (not that he didn't). Great comparison with Liberia.

[archy]

Another question about African weapons, is it true that most of the various warlords try to buy M-16s because of the higher rate of fire and the increased damage a 5.56 x 45mm round does?

The *Klashkof* [African attempt at pronunciation of *Kalishnikova*] is generally preferred for simplicity and availability of ammunition. But the M16 is sometimes a status symbol, and the Russians found to their horror that some Africans found the M16 to be more desirable because it's finish and the colour of the plastic stocks and foreend was black. More Juju.

Accordingly, the Russians reworked the plum-rustred pistol grips and foreends of early synthetic stocked AKM and AK74 rifles to a black polyvinyl-nylon composition. Hey, whatever the customer wants!

[archy]

As a combat vet, this is why I thought Apocalypse Now despite all it's sureality, was one of the most realistic war movies ever made. It captured the unbelievable, upside down insanity of war.

So far as capturing the wierdness and irony, you're spot-on. The inaccuracy results when, for the storytelling's sake, they compress all the oddities of a tear-long tour or career experience into a couple of days, making them into a routine happening.

I did indeed see more than a few wild-o things take place, and heard of quite a few more. But for the most part, we recognized them at the time as abberations, and not the usual way things were, or should be.

It's when such things frequently take place and aren't recognized as unusual that your sanity begins to suffer.

And I swear, those stories about frequent cannibalism were untrue, despite the Cambodian bodies with the livers missing. Most of the stories, anyway.

-archy-/-

[archy]

(2) The primary weapons dealers in Africa are either Chinese, Ukranian or Serbian. Their wares are almost exclusively former Soviet weapons, or their modern counterparts.

There are also quite a few Czechs from the old communist days *Omnipol* trade group days still around, and there's a lot of flogging of Romanian AKs, easily spotted by their distinctive forward pistol grip not unlike that of the old Thompson SMG but reshaped to accomodate the AK's folding buttstock.

Those things turned up quite a bit in news footage of the festivities in Iraq, as well as in the Palestinian areas of Israel and elsewhere, and likely will continue to do so.

[Seydlitz]

Another thing to remember about "Apocalypse Now" is that it is based on the Joseph Conrad novel "Heart of Darkness". It is just that book retold in the Vietnam War.