The Men Who Stare at Goats

[Ski]

You have to go to the top to understand how all of this emerged. A guy named General Stubblebine was the INSCOM commander in the 80's, and there is all sorts of weird stuff associated with him. The First Earth Battalion is one of his projects, he also did a lot of weird stuff that can be read about in "The Hunt for Zero Point" book.

A very good friend of mine who retired as a CW3 and was a career MI NCO/Warrant said Stubblebine used to bend spoons with his mind, a la Uri Geller. My buddy is now a SES-level civilian in the MI world and I have zero reason to doubt him.

I'm looking forward to the movie, the book was wildly entertaining, even if there was some poetic license taken.

[Spud]

If you want his 1st Earth Battalion Field Manual OM-1 it is here

I am pretty sure that if you download it someone will notice though

Reading it makes you long for the day that doctrine becomes more like a graphic novel

[MikeF]

Selil will probably have a much better synopis, but here's my take.

The movie had so much potential if they had stuck to comedy particularly just the concept of a "hippie" batallion running around Fort Bragg; however, half way through the movie, it went serious. They tried to politicize issues of private contractors in Iraq shooting recklessly in Ramadi and PsychOps units going rogue and torturing prisoners. Not cool.

Other than that, if you're a non-military person into drugs, then you might really like it as a way to expand your mind.

Mike

[Van]

An alternate version of Earth First Manual online through Electronic Journals of Martial Arts and Sciences's mis-named "Journal of Non-lethal Combatives". This version includes some really groovy stuff that was dropped from the .pdf in the previous links. The commentary and endnotes by the EJMAS staff are also interesting.