If there’s anything I like more in politics than shills, it’s sockpuppets. The latter, thankfully, are only ever heard (or heard from), but not seen. The former, alas, are so very often both seen and heard. As luck would have it, there’s an official term for semi-professional shills at political events – Rally Squads.
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Danger Room recently discussed possible squirrel spies in Iran, as reported by a few media outlets. Like the (real and verified) cat and pigeon stories that have come before, I have my doubts about the usefulness of such schemes, because they all have major flaws.
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Personally, I think the whole “hooah” thing is a much overrated, though far from trivial, part of contemporary Army culture. Whatever the origin, I’m unconvinced of the true usefulness of a word with a virtually endless and occasionally contradictory set of definitions, and suspect it’s symptomatic of a certain “do now, think later” mentality that is pervasive in many parts of the military. (The correct attitude, of course, is do now, let others at higher pay-grades do the thinking later.)
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