Air Sho:Day 2.....

Preparations for the Air Sho begin in earnest on Friday. In the morning a special show is held for handicapped persons from all over the region. A big undertaking in itself it takes a dedicated group of over 200 volunteers to run. For the main two day air show we have in excess of 800 volunteers!

My task for the day was to round up several pickup trucks donated by our local Ford dealer and to get these out to the airport and matched with their trailers. Job completed...then my faithful assistant and business partner Del and I got to enjoy lunch in our local chapters hangar and visit with friends I hadn't seen in ages. I also enjoy visiting with the active duty military personnel who have brought their aviation assets to the show...and in particular with the German, British and Australians. While in the museum I got to say a quick hell-o to Gen. Paul Tibbets of Enola Gay fame who was signing his autobiography. Got mine several years ago when he was here. Friday's pictures: Air Sho Images

It's Show Time.....

As I plod along the highway of life, some weeks are berift of activity and some are fraught with all the action I can handle. This week has been one of those. Thus the dearth of posts, disappointing all three regular readers.

I have been absorded at the office, mostly mentally, putting together a rather large PowerPoint© presentation to be presented to board members of a Fortune 500 corporation that will be our partners in an exciting new gas project. It's big time for us poor boys in the oilfield, so we are doing a bang up job, and thusly having to develop a wealth of spreadsheets and data.

The other preoccupation here late in the week is the annual CAF Airsho, a truly large and time consuming event. Being the transportation committee chairperson I have to plan, organize, lead and control a plethora of equipment and personnel. Sounds big time.....but what it really means is that I supervise a bunch of trucks and drivers pulling trailers for people to ride upon. A fifth grader would probably fill the bill, but we can't find any fifth graders willing to do it. And being the third year I've held the job, I have the same people assisting and it's become cookie cutter.

So, we'll be at the Air Sho for 9 hours daily during the next three days. Well maybe 14 hours on Saturday as we'll stay late to see Jerry Jeff Walker. I will provide pictures updated daily for all at: The Air Sho!

They say it's your birthday...!

Today is a special day at the Bedford Drive estate...it's someone's birthday. Someone very special that I love very much. Although she's a year older she is still young and precious! Years younger than me and definetly more precious. We love you and Happy Birthday!

And a birthday gift for Julie is the news that Casey, lying wounded in Germany, has made it successfully through his first operations and his condition is notably improved. He should be evacuated back to the U.S. within days. I'd like to give a special thanks to the bloggers who have signed the "get well" card on his family's website. I've noticed you..! Thanks a million.

The war....closer to home

We have had several soldiers from the Midland area who have fallen in Iraq, which hurts but we have not known any personally. Now the war is coming closer to home. For more than a year we have been kept abreast of Marine LCPL. Casey Owens activities through forwarded emails and converstations with Casey's loving Aunt Mary, a very close friend of Julie's. That's why the news of his wounds hurt us so much.

Casey was seriously wounded when a rocket propelled grenade hit his vehicle on Wednesday, killing one of his crewmates. Casey is now at Ramstein AFB, Germany where he has lost part of one leg and has severe shrapnel wounds to the head which makes his prognosis touch and go. This was Casey's second tour in Iraq.

A heartbreaking addendum to this story is that Mary had just stood in line at Barnes and Nobles last weekend to have Midlander, Gen. Tommy Franks sign his autobiography personally for Casey. And what a good idea came of this at Julie's suggestion. I emailed Gen. Franks today, told him the story and asked if he would send a personal email note of support to Mary for their family. Within 15 minutes I had a reply from Tommy, saying it was done. God bless America and Gen. Franks. And say a prayer for Casey. LCpl Casey Owens Webpage

Buy a round....

There are many successful charitable operations run by bloggers to support our soldiers welfare and the war effort. Organizations offering everything from letter writing to soldiers, shoes for Afghani children to comfort packages for wounded soldiers in Germay. But I've run across a novel one recently. Beer for Soldiers let's you buy a round for soldiers on leave or returned from a combat zone. Check it out for yourself and decide if it's a worthwhile organization.

Having consumed more than my fair share of cold beverages through the years as a soldier and beyond, I know they'll appreciate the effort. But remember...."moderation in all things"....a lesson I learned a tad to late.

Passing Images....

I note with sadness today the passing of one of the truly great photographers of our era, Eddie Adams. Even the most notable photographers are usually not household names but as it should be Eddie's work speaks for itself.

Eddie started his career as a Marine Corps combat photographer and went on to photograph 13 wars, including Vietnam, where he accompanied troops on 150 operations. He was the recepient of over 500 individual awards for his work. Adams's photographs regularly graced the covers and front pages of magazines and newspapers around the world, including Time, Newsweek, Life, Paris Match, Parade, Penthouse, Vogue, The London Sunday Times Magazine, The New York Times, Stern and Vanity Fair.

Eddie was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for his unforgettable photograph of the street execution of a Viet Cong prisoner shown above. The photo helped change the sentiment about the war on the homefront....a result that Eddie did not intend nor like. Nor did Eddie take much joy from the Pulitzer Prize, for the image that he captured is the ruin of the lives of two people.

Because of my friendship with combat journalist Joe Galloway I have been fortunate to interact with several of the best photojournalists of the Vietnam War and actually work in a limited way with them on a few projects. Over the next weeks I'll direct you to their work.

"I'm not a great believer in the power of the moving image. A still image has greater lasting power. A still photographer has to show the whole freekin' movie in one picture. On the screen, it's over and back in the can in seconds. A still picture is going to be there forever."

Eddie Adams

Pardon Me.......

Excuse my absence from the political scene, but we've been busy here at the estate with chores, football games and today an afternoon at the polo matches. I haven't had time to follow the details of who is accusing who of being a shirker or a fraud when it comes to the candidates military records, but I just know the antics have gone on fine without me.

This whole election season, which by the the way has been a long season...3.75 years by my count, has worn me down. I'm even longing for the much calmer days of Bill Clinton. Days when partisan politics didn't seem so nasty. That's a hard comment to make, but it does seem true doesn't it? It was a more civilized hatred back then. And so since I really haven't checked the news in two days, I'll just refer you back to my CNN article written in 2001 as an example of how even a Republican like me could curry favor with the Clintons. My Presidential Pardon

Untruthful Texans....

In my extensive roamings around the Cyber Globe recently I ran across a new group calling itself, Texans For Truth. Mention was made of these "Texans" in such journals as CNN, USA Today and Fox News. How nice, I thought, since we Texans are a truthful lot by nature. The name evokes a nice website by down home Bubba's wanting to get to the facts of things in the upcoming elections. But the theme of the new organization is that G.W. Bush didn't serve well, nor finish his tour with the Texas Air National Guard. Strange, and coincidental I'm sure, that the new group was formed just as the RatherGate© Memos hit the press. Their mission statement taken verbatim from the website states...."Texans for Truth, an organization from Bush's home state, believe time has come for America to learn the truth about Bush's shadowy past". [editors note: guys, get a grammar checker].

But what I discovered with a little investigation is that this "grassroots" organization has very deep roots with the liberal hucksters of Drive Democracy which is heavily funded by MoveOn.Org. The little grassroots effort of Texans For Truth is run by a professional campaign organization in Austin by the name of Mercury Campaigns which seems to lean a little left in their clientele. Names like:

*John Kennedy for US Senate
*US Rep. Martin Frost
*Richard Morrison for US House of Representatives
*Texas Democratic Party
*Tony Sanchez for Texas Governor 2002
*Texas State Rep. Chuck Hopson
*Texas State Rep. David Farabee
*SaveTexasReps.com
*CleanUpTexasPolitics.com
*Dean for Texas

The Texans for Truth is such a Texas grassroots effort that the Inside Bay Area, Ca. weekly has a news story entitled, "Texans for Truth has local tie:
Offspring of Bay Area's MoveOn.org begins airing" in which they explain that noted screenwriter Daniel J. O'Keefe of Los Angeles wired Texans for Truth $100,000. So much for Texans......so much for truth, perhaps their campaign is based on the the Dan Rather model.

MemoGate....Tit for Tat

With the Dan Rather "memo" controversy hitting the fan for the CBS network, it is not surprising that new allegations about President George Bush's service are resurfacing. And now, not just about the quality of his service but whether he exaggerated his claim about being in the Air Force vs. the Air National Guard during his congressional run from Midland in 1978. This past history is being rehashed, as pointed out by Tim Blair, by some dweeb named David Corn which I'm sure is the name he signs his faked memos with.

But having sat on the sidelines to long it is time for us to let certain documents we have in our possession come to light. Read this document to see what the President of the United States, Gerald Ford, thought of young Lt. Bush's service record.

Disclaimer: although Julie worked for George Bush as his personal administrative assistant shortly after this memo was written and had access to his personal files and desk, we can't be sure of the true nature of how this document became public.

Business offer....

Wanting to do my part to keep the RatherGate© inquiries alive I have emailed CBS News offering my forgery services to them. Quite frankly I feel that I could do a much better and more professional job than the bozos who generated the "Killian" memos. Having been alive and typing in the 70's my skill level with typography and the machines of the era is highly proficient and as a former member of the Texas National Guard I can throw in the correct lingo and words of the time. And for a nominal extra fee I can guarantee them some "genuine" photos to go along with the text.

Here, through Tim Blair, is an example of someone else trying to cash in on the poetentially lucrative "genuine fake" documents business. Genuine Fake Memo

Being a realist, I know that the chances of CBS News reading my email are slight, so I also sent a note to our local CBS affiliate explaining that I would find it hard to watch their news programming knowing that their parent network profers forged documents as fact. CBS News does listen to their affiliates, and at least in this market, the affiliates listen to their viewers.

Superscript this.....

At the risk of being the only person in the Western DigiSphere not to comment on the CBS "now apparently forged documents" [NAFD's] I will do so now, hopefully with brevity and wisdom....OK, let's shoot for brevity.

I do, however, have some expert wisdom on the subject being the geriatric sort who spent decades typing on manual typewriters, some of it in the Texas National Guard, and later transitioning to digital wordprocessing. Apparently more expert wisdom than anyone at CBS.

Like most people of the Blog persuasion, I was truly amazed at the speed with which the story broke in the BlogWorld and made it to the general media arena, the MSM©. I found the story Thursday at mid morning on my office computer and by the time I watched the ABC Evening News with Peter Jenkins© mention had been made of the anamolies in the documents [kudos, for once to ABC]. By the time I did my at home evening perusal of my usual Blogs, the story was all over the web...and with 100's of helpful comments.

Now to my take of the documents...and in particular the main one in question, the LTC. Killian "CYA" memo.

Much has been said, and rightly so, about the fonts, kerning, spacing and so on...the formatting of the document. This is important, especially the superscripted "th" which was not available on any known typewriter of the early 70's and of course is an automatic feature [unless disabled] of modern day MS Word©. But my doubts were based on things more basic, things I know about and have experience with.

One of the first Blog articles I read had side by side comparisons of the NAFD memo and a newly created copy of the memo done on MS Word©. They were identical and what are the odds of that occuring by chance? Nil to zilch. Having written 100's of letters on a typewriter, the telling feature for me was the placement of the date, just to the right of center above the body of the text,exactly where MS Word© places it by default. To do this on a typewriter, the operator would have to either set a tab at that particular spot, release the carriage and move it over to that exact spot or use the space bar about 40 times to achieve that position. I can tell you as an ex manual typewriter user...we just didn't do that. We normally set the date at either the left or right margin...and more often the left margin, because that was were the carriage was by default.

Another basic and telling clue to me was the neatness of the CYA memo. I'm betting that LTC. Killian was in his mid to late 40's when he supposedly wrote the note. Back in the good old days, older guys didn't type, or if they did they were completely inept at it. Most did the "hunt and peck" technique although some like myself had taken typing in high school and were only partially inept. I can almost guarantee that even in a memo as short as this one, a guy would have had at least one mistake. And a mistake in those days, meant you left a reminder of that error on the page. In the early 70's one either used an old fashion eraser or the "high tech" strip of tape with white dust on the back that imprinted the correct letter over the old mistake. In either case, it was visible. And today my suspicions were confirmed by Killian's family who say that indeed he couldn't and didn't type.

Of course, one could suppose that the memo was typed by someone else such as the unit's clerk typist. Typically the unit clerk was a lower ranking soldier or airman and I don't believe that the commander, a Lieutenant Colonel, would want a 19 or 20 year old typing up personal correspondence designed to "cover his ass". There has been a hypothesis set forth that perhaps this Texas Air Guard unit had access to one of the latest super typewriters that did do some magic things with fonts and spacing, but to this I say Hooey. [I like the word hooey and don't get to use it enough]. No Regular Army or National Guard unit that I had contact with ever had the latest in office equipment or anything else for that matter. In fact, I remember in my National Guard unit, having to use a completely manual typewriter for our work. For younger readers that means even without electricity!

So as I write this, better scribes than I are further dissembling this story and CBS has called for an "internal investigation". But for me, the case is open and shut. I'm betting that some under 30ish demon of the Democratic Party is the author of these NAFD's and hadn't a naive clue that typewriters didn't function like computer word processors. To bad. This might have worked if he'd consulted a baby boomer.

The monument to.....me

I invite anyone who doubts my Scottish heritage to take a gander at the monument built to me by the good people of the highlands. ".....the 220 feet high Wallace Monument sits prominently on the Abbey Craig two miles north of the city of Stirling itself". As noted my monument sits high atop our family abbey.
The Wallace Monument

Sincerely yours,
Wallace Craig
Monumentee

Driveway Visitors....

After a flurry of politically oriented posts last week, it was with some welcome relief that I was occupied by visitors to the estate over the weekend and unable to muster the time to update Streams until now.

Our good friends Bruce and Arlene Crandall stopped by on their wanderings in their driveway filling RV. They are great driveway guests and it's always good to see them semi-annually and catch up. Their son Donovan is now residing in Houston where he is the managing director of energy banking for a large German bank and so Bruce wanted to learn more about the oil/gas business resulting in a trip to my office and later a lengthy tour of the Petroleum Museum. Bruce had the oil and gas 101 presentation, but I suspect he was more impressed by the Chaparral Racing wing of the museum. We also got the opportunity to take them to little Jack's first tackle football game, where they got to see little Jack get faced smashed in a bone jarring block. But he got up, shook it off, and went back to the game...so we were all proud of him.

Bruce is a lengendary Army aviator whose character was portrayed by Greg Kinnear in the film "We Were Soldiers". Bruce was also the aviation advisor on the film where Arlene and Bruce became so close to Greg that they are God Grandparents to the Kinnears first child, daughter Lily. And we always enjoy hearing more stories of his flying exploits around the world. This time it was about flying mapping missions in Libya in the early 60's. Interesting tales of seeing miles and miles of burned out German and British tanks from the great battles of WWII. And the German minefields that in some places were more than 17 miles wide, so thick in fact, that Bruce said they were afraid to land their helicopters in the desert.

I've known Bruce and Arlene only for 5 years or so, but it feels like much longer and we certainly see them more regularly than many people I've known for much longer. We'll probably see them again in Washington D.C. at the Ia Drang Veterans reunion in November, and then again in Febrauary when they stop on their way back to their home in Olympia Washington. And through pure serendipity, I'll see Bruce's banker son Donovan next week in Midland to talk about financing our new gas project. Friends are great.

Europe explained....

I've seen a very interesting and instructive Jerusalem Post article referenced around the web. Speaking of European, and in particular, French "attitudes" vs. "actions" the author explains....

....if you don't actually have to do something about your attitudes you're likelier to have more of them, and they are bound to be both more extravagant and more unrealistic. People who are in no position to end world hunger and bring about peace in the Middle East can endlessly carry on about ending world hunger and bringing peace to the Middle East. Doing so means only that they're declaring themselves the sorts of folk who deplore hunger and war. But statesmen who must actually wrestle with issues of cost, capacity, local difficulties and unintended consequences tend to have more realistic, and therefore restrained, attitudes.

And carrying this observation to American shores, one wonders what in John Kerry's personna makes him so hungry for European support and approval?

Zell........

In case you missed Democratic Senator Zell Miller's address to the Republican Convention tonight.....you missed one of the finest verbal ass whuppin's you'll ever have the chance to hear. I've been waiting for 10 years for a man of courage to pull no punches and just tell it like it is and this was it.

I doubt that Senator Miller will be much welcome anymore in Massachusetts or at the Democratic Mens Club but he's welcome in our Republican home any time. Thanks Senator for being a man of conscience.

Takin' it to the streets...

I just wanted to take a moment to heartily thank all the protestors in the streets of New York City. Thanks extreme environmentalists, gay rights activists, transgender activists, anti-war activists, anti-globalizaton activists, anti-Christian activists, anti-Semetic activists and all those who are activists but haven't really figured out what they're so active about.¶ Thanks, because every time I see you on the TeeVee I think.."good job, thanks to you somewhere out there in middle America another undecided voter has made the choice to vote for George Bush".

I know, logically, that all you active sorts are not really for John Kerry. You are more likely to be in favor of electing Ralph Nader, John Dean or Karl Marx and you are linked only by one common philosophy. After in depth study of the serious issues of the day you have decided to pursue the most pressing; you hate George Bush because he's stupid. I think that in the main you could care less about John Kerry, but by default when the great middle of the American public sees your face, your mispelled poster or your juvenile papier-mâché caricature masks on the TeeVee, whether it is conscious thought or a subliminal suggestion, you are to them activists for John Kerry and the Democratic Party. The Repbulican party could not buy better advertising.

Thankfully, and to the protestors credit, most of the demonstrations have been fairly peaceful, but a few broken windows, cherry bombs and burning tires might be forthcoming and we thank you in advance for these, God forbid, should they occur. Papier-mâché masks are good for only so many swing voters. Violent anarchists rampant in the streets could really bring in the votes for Bush.

So once again thank you, have a great time, ACTUP!, and keep those votes for Bush coming. And a special thanks to the large numbers of environmentalists from the Pacific Northwest who in getting to New York had to burn up huge quantities of fossils fuels in order to protest the burning of so much fossil fuel.

¶Disclaimer and statement of political correctness:
Not that there is anything wrong with these. I tend to be an environmental advocate. I have several very close friends who are gay. I have friends who opposed the war in Iraq. I myself am undecided on Globalization. I know people who disagree with Christian religous tenets. I know people who disagree with Jewish canons. I am working hard to befriend any transgendered person I come upon and finally, my own Mother is a liberal Democrat.

The times they are a changin'......

In a prior life I used to spend some time in Minnesota. I like the place. It's mostly a pretty place, clean and the citizens are a nice bunch of hard working Germanic and Scandanavian folks. But living in such a nice place away from most of the worlds real problems they tended to be of an idealistic nature and a liberal persuasion. And so I was somewhat surprised to read this in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune...

The Outpost is a working man's bar in a bellwether piece of a battleground state. These are the voters who elected Jesse Ventura governor and who helped deter him from running for a second term when they fell out of love with him. But if John Kerry had dropped in to seek votes Thursday, he would've run into a wall.

In a place full of carpenters, plumbers, auto mechanics, factory workers and other blue-collar guys who used to vote for Democrats almost as devoutly as they used to drink beer (most were sipping soft drinks), I could only turn up one John Kerry voter. The rest plan to vote for George W. Bush. "This is basically a Democratic place, but everybody seems to be going for the Republican," Hartinger said. "That's what I hear over the bar. Kerry's just too soft and a lot of the guys just don't like his wife. They weren't too impressed when she started speaking all those foreign languages at the Democratic convention. She's not American."

Glad to hear it and it starts on the road to confirming the gut feeling I've had about the election results in November; that the average American has gotten a good glimpse of John Kerry's altered biography, elitist demeanor and below average performance as a national leader and they don't like what they see. And I don't like, nor much trust, his wife either.

Thanks to The Discerning Texan for the tip on this story.

The mysteries of life.....

Even in this advanced technological civilization of ours many unanswered mysteries abound. How can we prove that there is a God? Why can't we more accurately predict hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes? Do ghosts really exist? Is time travel possible?

But perhaps no mystery is more intriguing than the plumbing and electricity in an older home. A home such as ours. Not old really since it is about as old as I am...I meant to say "gracefully aged". The mystery of plumbing and electrical malfunctions reminds us that we are mere mortals and is why plumbers and electricians are some of the wealthiest people I know. They would have been the Shamans and Medicine Men in Native American tribes....the respected elders who "knew" the secrets of life...or plumbing.

Another of those mystery moments came for us tonight. After a superb, but late, supper Julie was washing a few things in the sink while I attended to important matters in another room. I think I was racing Formula One on the PlayStation2. At some point I heard a scream and the clanking of implements from the kitchen. Upon investigation I found that the sink was stopped up and that Julie had tried to turn on the disposal to clear the drain whereupon she received a significant, but thankfully not fatal, dosage of voltage through her disposal-turning-on finger.

Thinking that probably since she was jolted so quickly that the disposal didn't have time to do it's duty in clearing the sink, I used a towel to again run the In-Sink-a-Rator© hoping to solve the clog problem. No dice. We had a major clog sitution on our hands, peeving me greatly as we had just paid one of the aforementioned rich plumbers to clean the line out. Doubly peeved because this line also drains the dishwasher and so now it was fast filling up with soapy scum water too.

While pondering my options I remembered...."AHA"....that we have a drain cleanout valve for this area of the house outside. I also quickly remembered another axiom of home repair. "The easier the apparent solution.....the harder it is to find the right tool". Most guys have been here. This is a simple screw valve with a hexagonal nut type head. But a nut that would in the Army be called a GP Large version [General Purpose-Large]. To make matters even more difficult the GP Large nut is located in a little tunnel in the side of the house surrounded by the cedar shake shingles that coat our Mission Style estate.

Not to be detered, I went through all five of my tool boxes. Yes, I said five....complete ones too. I've had one forever, then my brother apparently forgot and gave me versions of the same high quality 300 pc. German tool set for two Christmases running and recently my Dad cleaned out his garage and gave me two more sets. I looked in his first, as he had some GP Large tools. To shorten the story, let me say that I went from tool box to valve and back many times in about 45 minutes, even finding a ancient tool in my Dad's box that I think was made for this exact purpose. It had a GP Large hex head and a stem with a hole in it for inserting a turning device. Great, except that it wouldn't fit into the tunnel housing the valve. And so do you think that I gave up after this close call? You betcha' I did.

So as Julie was putting Jack to bed, I went to the kitchen to clean up what I could and to plot my strategy for tomorrow. That being either to construct a tool for the valve or more likely just take the drain line under the sink apart and run a "snake" thru it. And here, as I ruminated over my options, is where the mystery of plumbing rears it's head, for the standing water in both sinks and the dishwasher was simply gone. Vanished....poof! An hour+ of consternation solved by doing nothing.

I know that there are logical explanations for this event, though I'm not sure logic is the correct discipline to describe man's relationship to plumbing and electricity. This is my point. It's more aptly described in the realms of the occult or the mystical. And so here is my final and most important axiom regarding plumbing and electricity. "Those things that you think that if simply left alone will get better....won't. Those things that you spend hours busting your knuckles on....will".

The Silver Star....

The Silver Star is awarded for gallantry in action, and as the regulation states, "The required gallantry, while of a lesser degree than that required for the Distinguished Service Cross, must nevertheless have been performed with marked distinction." I know many fine individuals who wear the Silver Star, and from what I know of their actions they certainly were deeds of marked distinction. John Kerry wears the Silver Star and asks voters to believe that he is worthy of the office of The President because his deeds were of a marked distinction also. I ask you to compare his deeds against another Silver Star recepient, my good friend Will Parish.

John Kerry's Silver Star:

While in command of a three-boat mission, his Swift boat was ambushed; he ordered his men to beach the boat so he could pursue the attacking Vietcong; a teenager with a grenade launcher popped out of a hole a few feet away; one of Kerry's men shot and wounded him in the leg, but he ran; Kerry, fearing the youth was trying to get far enough away to fire a grenade, chased him and shot him dead. Kery was awarded the Silver Star for valor.

Will Parish's Silver Star:

Specialist 4 Willard Parish, 24, of Bristow, Okla., was a Charlie Company mortarman, but this morning [at LZ Xray] he manned a machine gun. "I looked to the front, and it seemed like the North Vietnamese were growing out of the weeds," he remembers. "The training took over. I just fired that weapon, totally unaware of the time, the conditions. I remember a lot of noise, a lot of yelling, air strikes. Then quiet." When he ran out of machine-gun ammunition Parish stood up with a .45-caliber automatic pistol in each hand and kept shooting. Later, they counted more than 100 enemy dead in front of his machine gun. Parish was awarded the Silver Star for valor***.

Which of the two awards do you think should be called a "deed of marked distinction"? Just asking.

***Account from "We Were Soldiers Once...and Young" by Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway

The Band of Brothers.......

I have refrained from writing publically about John Kerry's Vietnam service for a variety of reasons. He did, after all, serve when so many did not. However, I do have strong opinons about Kerry's motives, his actions and his subsequent betrayal of those he now so proudly calls his "band of brothers". The band of brothers from whom he chose to cut and run using an obscure regulation and three minor scratches. In the band of brothers I know, this would be unthinkable.

Among the band of brothers I know well are those men of the 1st Cavalry Division who fought in the horrendous battles in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965. Some of their units lost more than half their troops killed outright over a five day period with many more of the remainder wounded. Many of the wounded [some grievously] heroes, of my band of brothers chose not to pursue the road back to home and safety to which they were rightly entitled, but instead defied orders by doctors and superior officers and simply left the hospital in their bandages to go back to their units where they were desperately needed. Back to their brothers. Other brothers I know personally from my time suffered guilt beyond reckoning when the time came for their allotted 365 day tour of duty to end. The guilt and grief born of leaving their brothers still in harms way while they went home to safety, family and loved ones.

Whether John Kerry pulled a man from the water under fire, whether he was in Cambodia or not, whether his purple hearts were deserved or not....these are secondary to me. What matters and is a matter of record without a doubt is that John Kerry abandoned his brothers in Vietnam and then again in Washington with his public outcry against them. He has lost the right to be included in the "brotherhood". Period.

Kudos.......

CNN reports that President Bush has decided to bring home at least 10,000 troops from overseas non-combat stations, mainly in Europe and most particularly Germany. This would mean that an estimated 100,000 American troops, families and support personnel would be coming back to US bases. With German unemployment hovering at around 10% this will undoubtedly create further severe economic hardships on the Reich. Tough Noogies!

Update: Read more from Davids Medienkritik German [conservative] perspective. A, soon to be, new additon to my list of fine reading references.

Profile this.....

Several weeks ago in order to leave a comment on someones blog site, I filled out the Blogger "profile" information on myself. My thought is that this is a little teenagerish, but here it is. The info is the run of the mill drivel of my likes and dislikes, favorites and hobbies. The hardest entry to complete was the "favorite movie" section. I'm not a big movie goer, at least I don't self-generate the interest to go, but there are many films I do like once someone else coerces me into going. Or, as it is in modern life, once the bride and child bring home a DVD. A recent case in point being "Second Hand Lions" which I thoroughly enjoyed. How could I not like a film about crusty old Texans sitting on their front porch shooting shotguns and chewin' Redman. I could have played the part. And, of course, any film that contains a pack of dogs in it's cast is top rate with me.

But concerning the "profile", the interesting thing I noticed is the word counter displayed on the page that shows just exactly how many of the Queen's own nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions and dangling participles one has written in the life of the Blog. In my case, as of this very moment [excluding these words] I have set to digital paper the grand sum of 132,011 words. Now I have been at this, a proud Blogger, since June of 2001 and in those 3+ years all I've come up with is a tad over 132k of words. I wasn't counting as I went but I would have thought that it would have been more...something along the lines of 133k. However, come to think of it, if the average word typed was 5 letters in length that would mean that my fingers have tapped the keyboard over one-half million times setting Streams to digital print. That sounds better! Doing something one-half million times sounds a lot more impressive than writing 132,000 measly words.

A Thing of Beauty....

I made a short day long business trip to Houston on Monday and as I returned home from the airport I phoned Julie from the car to tell her that I was on my way to her loving arms. "Whatever" she said, but added that I'd had a phone call just minutes before saying that an old college frat brother was in town and would like to stop by. You could have knocked me down when she told me his name. Jeremy, a.k.a. "Butch", a.k.a. "The Troll" Cooper. Butch, as I'll always think of him, was an older guy, a senior when I was a freshman, a mean taskmaster when I was a frat pledge and a cool guy to us youngsters. He drove a humongous '58 black Chrysler New Yorker knicknamed, "The Pig". That about says it all.

Adding to his mystique, we knew that he had raced cars and motorcycles and had crashed his fair share of both. He drove The Pig at breakneck speeds around San Antonio, usually with a gaggle of terrified frat pledges as passengers. With all this stuff of masculine legend, what I learned later was that Butch was a terrific, very intelligent and very sensitive guy. I saw him rarely until just this last decade when I learned more about him.

He was born in England where his dad was a senior banker and advisor to the government and had, during WWII, been on the team that cracked the super secret German "Enigma" code. At an early age his family moved to Canada where his dad ran the North American offices of Westminster Bank. Butch had an aptitude for things mechanical and financial and went into banking in New York while building cars and motorcycles as a hobby. He later relocated back to San Antonio in banking but at some point in life decided to follow his heart and worked full time building cars and cycles.

Which brings me to the image of the Chaparral 2H in the photo above. Knowing that Butch would be interested in seeing our new museum dedicated to Midland's Chaparral racing history we paid a visit on Tuesday morning. What I hadn't known about Butch was that for several seasons after college he had worked with McLaren Racing...the prinicple competitor of the Chaparrals in the glory days of Can-Am Series sports car racing. Butch regaled me with first hand racing stories of the Chaparrals along with the awe and respect they were accorded.

The Chaparral 2H is a thing of pure beauty built in 1968 and looking to us to be ahead of it's time still, 36 years later. For all it's beauty however, the car never did perform well and the driver hired by Chaparral to pilot it, John Surtees, refused to race it. I knew the basics of the story, but Butch filled me in on the details of the mismatched front and rear airflow, braking and visibility problems.

What a pleasure to see Butch again, get reacquainted and to have a visitor to our fair city who truly appreciated one of our new attractions!

Ben Stein....on what matters

I've always liked Ben Stein. His dry wit, humor and intelligence are like an oasis in the desert of the gliterazzi entertainment world. I like him even more after reading his farewell article for E-Online Magazine. I hope Whoppi reads it..

The "Real" Stars
By Ben Stein:

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "e-online FINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started.

I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end. It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars.

I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie.

But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again .

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world. A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him. A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament. The police men and womenwho go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive. The orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery. The teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children. The kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse.

Now you have my idea of a real hero.

We are not responsible for the operation of the universe, and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human.

I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin--or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me.

This came to be my main task in life.

I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Ho Hum.....!

I believe that I've run into the summer doldrums of blogging. I've just not been inspired to post any snide comments, interesting news or stories from the past to take up space here.

Actually we've been busy too. I helped Julie put special effort into a burst of housecleaning late last week for her "church ladies" meeting, party and gambling extravagnza which was, I understand, a rousing success. I got the information second hand as I was summarily thrown out of the house for the duration of the event. At the same time my sister and her family from Philadelphia arrived for a visit so when I was asked to remove myself from my residence, I got to spend the evening with them playing miniature golf. Where.....I'm proud to say, I got my name once again on the low score board by shooting a 38. I was good that night, but also it's my home course, it having not changed since I started playing there in 1962.

Friday evening we had my folks and sister, with family, over for a wonderful meal and then the next morning Julie and I left for Comfort, Texas and a birthday party/family reunion centered around her Dad. A nice trip at a lovely B&B and I got to meet many of her multitude of cousins who I'd known by name only. Nice folks....even the black sheep portion of the family...the Democrats.

Sunday evening upon arriving back from the whirlwind trip we immediately started in again visiting with my sister before their departure back to Pennsylvania. Jack had been away for two weeks so he got to meet my 14 year old nephew for the first time and Julie and I got to entertain the lads until 10:30. Today it was back to work, the regular schedule and trying to convince Jack to start studying his cirriculum for the Duke University gifted student program he was selected for. He watched TV all day. What's new.

That's about it, but here are a few, very few, pictures from Comfort. I was in the photographic doldrums also. Comfort Trip

Global Warming...

Well sign me up as a proponent of global warming if that phenomenon produces the weather it has here in parched and arid West Texas. The high today was 65° F. The average normal high should be at least 95° and it wouldn't be strange for it to be 105°. In July of 1994 it reached the all time record high of 119°. Though not offical, I believe that this is the coolest day I've seen in the middle of the summer since my family moved here in 1960. Sure, after a good thunderstorm we can cool down to the 60's but it quickly heats back up. This 60° weather was an all day event and we've had goodly rains this season to boot.

The day reminded me of late summer in Northern Michigan where we and other family have had lake homes. Just down right pleasant. And it's not often, that with all the windows open on a July evening, that the Bride complains of being cold! Hope she remembers that in late August.

Berger-larized

Sure Sandy, we believe you. You just happened to inadvertently stick classified documents in your pockets. On, not one, but two occasions. And not just any documents, but one's that pertained to your tenure as the head honcho of National Security. Documents that would make you and your boss, the Clinton formerly known as President, look mighty ineffective or perhaps derelict in the war on terror.

I'm sure it could happen to the best of us. We go into a building housing state secrets, with security warnings plastered all over the walls, with armed security guards reminding us of the nature of the data stored therein and the rules of admittance explained to us in detail before we enter and we stick a few documents stamped "SECRET" in our pants. I can see it. While serving on the Grand Jury I used to get home with Legal Writs and Criminal Complaints stuffed like kleenex in my trousers. I just could not remember to stop picking that stuff up and putting it in my pants. Funny thing too because most of it was transcribed on "legal" sized paper and was quite bulky. I just didn't notice it until it was reported missing by the authorities. Funny how that works.

News Flashes....
 
Gleaned from today's CNN Online news reports:
 
Bunker busters' may grow to 30,000 pounds and FDA OKs Botox to curb severe sweating.
 
Makes you you wonder if Botox sales will be increasing in the caves and holes of Afghanistan?

Dishonesty Restored......
 
I just had to comment on a little tidbit I perused over at Tim Blair's place. Seems there is a website, Restore Honesty.Com, created by just an ordinary citizen by the name of Joe Wilson who describes himself as someone who is "not a politician and not a political partisan". Joe just wants to tell you the truth about the way he feels about the upcoming elections, just the plain honest truth with no political strings attached. And by the way, this is the same ordinary citizen and part time whack-o whose CIA wife had him sent to Niger to look into uranium sales.

Problem is here is who owns and registered the website:

Registrant:
John Kerry for President, Inc.
519 C St. NE
Washington, District of Columbia 20002
United States

This sure restores my faith in honesty.

Michael Moore...a criminal mind?

While over at Slatts News perusing some comments about Michael Moore and his "style" of documentary presentation I made a connection to experiences of some years ago.

After the unfortunate drunken period in my life, I decided to use my experience, strength and hope to help others out of the life of addiction that I had been trapped in. I went back to school for 6 months taking classes that allowed me to do drug and alcohol counseling. I ended up working for a friend at a facility that contracted with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice [TDCJ] to handle convicted felons whose offenses were drug or alcohol related in a program that offered them one last chance to prove themselves capable of reform or to fail and actually serve their prison terms. A good program, by the way, for well over 50% did make a decision to change their lives. Several I have seen recently are doing well, own succesful companies and have done work on our home as I have chronicled before.

How does this relate to Michael Moore? Well, the felons who failed our program and Mr. Moore, it seems to me, have one thing in common. Namely, an almost pathological aversion to the truth especially when it comes to improving their lot in life. In a period of over 3 years, I talked in depth to hundreds of these felons with the ones who were a success in the program being able to honestly admit their mistakes, while those unsuccessful would go to any lengths to cover up the truth about their wrong doing, no matter how small the offense. And quite often I would catch them in a lie about something that didn't even matter. Pathological in the sense that I'm firmly convinced that some of these people actually believed the fantastic stories they would foist upon me.

What is also remarkably similar between the criminals and Mr. Moore is that their stories, on the surface, were wholly believable. Full of actual facts, their sagas would meander from "Fact A" to "Fact B" to "Fact C" to Fact "D" which was designed to prove "Fact A"....the more fact filled and convoluted the better. The problem was that on actually checking all the facts one could deduce that none of the facts had anything to do with each other, or might be related but occured in different times or locales other than the time and/or locale in question. I'll have to admit that these people were pretty good, and honestly I rather enjoyed listening to these wild tales. Just like Michael Moore, my friends the criminals, were offering up only the bits and pieces of the truth that they thought would support their thesis...that they were innocent.

I was being paid to be a "doubter" and having offered up a fair share of tall tales myself in order to keep out of trouble, I usually dismantled the culprits stories, the result being that many of those unable to change their lifestlyes are actually serving time in TDCJ-Huntsville as I write. Michael Moore on the other hand is enjoying life as the Far Left Media Mogul. What's wrong with this picture? And it makes me wonder...are convicted felons just latent "documentary" film producers or perhaps, does Michael Moore possess a criminal mind?

Our Leaders Speak...

A compendium of thoughts from our leadership.....Democratic Party leadership.

"One way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to deliver them. That is our bottom line."
- President Clinton, Feb. 4, 1998

"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
- President Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

"Iraq is a long way from [here], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risks that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face."
- Madeline Albright, Feb 18, 1998

"He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983."
- Sandy Berger, Clinton National Security Adviser, Feb, 18, 1998

"We urge you, after consulting with Congress, and consistent with the U.S. Constitution and laws, to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs."
- Letter to President Clinton, signed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI), Tom Daschle (D-SD), John Kerry ( D - MA), and others Oct. 9, 1998

"Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process."
- Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Dec. 16, 1998

"Hussein has ... chosen to spend his money on building! weapons of mass destruction and palaces for his cronies."
- Madeline Albright, Clinton Secretary of State, Nov. 10, 1999

"There is no doubt that ... Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf War status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies."
- Letter to President Bush, Signed by Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL,) and others, December 5, 2001

"We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them."
- Sen. Carl Levin (D, MI), Sept. 1! 9, 2002

"We know that he has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002


"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power."
- Al Gore, Sept. 23, 2002

"We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Ted Kennedy (D, MA), Sept. 27, 2002

"The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons..."
- Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV), Oct. 3, 2002

"I will be voting to give the President! of the United States the authority to use force-- if necessary-- to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Oct. 9, 2002

"There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years .... We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D, WV), Oct 10, 2002

"He has systematically violated, over the course of the past 11 years, every significant UN resolution that has demanded that he disarm and destroy his chemical and biological weapons, and an! y nuclear capacity. This he has refused to do."
- Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA), Oct. 10, 2002

"In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapon stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, NY), Oct 10, 2002

"We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction."
- Sen. Bob Graham (D, FL), Dec. 8, 2002

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real."
- Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003

The Lesson Learned....

I was scrubbing a pan in the kitchen tonight, finishing up the work Julie had started, when it all came back to me. Julie had done a good job on a baking rack and pan, but when I looked at the chrome finish I saw small stains, brownish discoloration and some grease spots. Nothing really, done well by anyones standards, but I knew the pan wasn't quite finished. There is something about an even slightly spotted pot or pan that takes me back and reminds me of one of the best lessons that I've ever had.

During the summer of 1969 I was in Army ROTC basic training at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma and one fateful day my turn came up on the KP roster. Kitchen Police. Slave labor. 24 hours in the mess hall with maybe a chance to catch 3 hours sleep on the 50 lb. potato sacks. Supervised by mess NCO's who were nothing to be trifled with. In that older army the mess NCO's were a class to themselves. Mean, surly and hard working. Few officers tried to pull rank on them. They did their jobs and they were left alone...a tough bunch who served some pretty damn good chow. But here I learned a lesson as valuable as any I have ever had.

One of my chores was to scrub and wash all the major pots and pans after the dinner meal. Not an insignificant amount of metal implements, large metal implements. Late into the night I scrubbed and when I declared myself finished I thought I had done a fairly good job. However when the Assistant Mess Sergeant did a cursory inspection he looked me right in the eye and said, "Private, that's the worse bunch of horsexxxx I've ever seen in my life, that's a half-ass job and you're a sorry piece of xxxx, do them all over again". Hot, exhausted and grimy, I was about to offer a "But Sergeant.....", when I took a look at his face, took a look at my work and said nothing. I did them all over again.

About 2 A.M. as I remember, the senior Mess Sergeant, an E-8, stopped by and asked why I was still at the pots and pans. I told him my sad tale. This grizzled veteran of Korea and two tours in Vietnam sat down with me and said this: "Son, you are training to be a United States Army officer. Probably you are going to be leading men into combat. Their lives depend on your skill, integrity and judgement. If you're willing to do a half-assed job on something as simple as scrubbing a pot, you're setting yourself up to do a half-assed job on the more important things, things that could get people killed. I hope you'll remember this".

And you know what Sergeant...to this day, 35 years later, I do.

Hangin' with the Doobies....the full story

Julie and me with Doobie Pat Simmons

The Doobie Brothers were in town and we were there. Wouldn't have missed it. And as you may have read several weeks ago, we were provided backstage passes by Cris Simmons, wife of co-head Doobie Pat Simmons. We wouldn't have missed it even without this special invitation.

The concert was magnificent, especially in a smaller venue which allows an upclose experience. The darkened stage was awakened by the gut wrenching rumble of a Harley and when the lights came up, there were the Doobies into the first chords of "Rockin' down the highway"

Got those highway blues, can't you hear my motor runnin', Flyin' down the road with my foot on the floor

The crowd went bonkers as they transitioned into "Jesus is just alright with me.." Non-stop hits for about 30 minutes and then somewhat of a respite as they performed some of their more recent cuts including Pat Simmons on a Hawaiian slack key guitar number and some blues. Great stuff.

The final half an hour was filled with some of their biggest hits, and as the beer and hard rock n' roll worked it's magic on the crowd people started edging towards the stage. And so did we as the time had come for us to worry about getting backstage after the frenzy. So for 15 minutes or so, we stood about 25 feet in front of the Doobies, but very near the backstage entrance.

I had prepared myself for a throng of perhaps 100 people backstage and probably just the chance to say a quick hell-o to Pat Simmons and tell him the "We Were Soldiers" photos I had sent to Cris and him were on the way to his home. And maybe get one quick photo with him. We had met the Doobies road manager a few moments earlier and he quickly ushered us back without much of a wait.

What we found backstage had us dumbstruck. Instead of a hoarde of wellwishers, Julie and I basically found ourselves alone with the Doobies and only three or four other VIP's including the kid who had bought the Doobies signed guitar at the auction before the show. We walked into the room and there were my rock n' roll heroes all eating dinner. I introduced myself to Cris Simmons and then we decided to give the guys some privacy while they finished their steaks.

As we stepped out of the room back towards the stage, I spied drummer Mike Hossack and introduced myself. After explaining who I was we got into a friendly conversation about the military [he is a Vietnam Vet..Navy] and the subject of the movie "We Were Soldiers" came up [I had my WWS movie hat on]. Turns out he has seen the movie 6 or 7 times and when I told him that I would be glad to get him an autographed book and photo similar to the one I gave to Pat Simmons, he was so overjoyed he gave me his home mailing address...with instructions that he'd kill me if it got into the hands of groupies.

Mike, Julie and I walked back into the performers lounge and had a nice chat with Cris Simmons who led us over to hubby Pat with the comment, "this is Wallace, the one who's sending the WWS photos". This intitiated the start of a great talk with Pat, photos all around and my mentioning that the We Were Soldiers survivors have a reunion in Washington every year, and how would the Doobies like to attend sometime. And knock me down....but Pat said, "We'd like to try and come, when is it, let me check our schedule and please email me with the details."

While I was talking to Pat, Julie had made her way over to the groups super bass player, "Sky", a name aptly applied to the big guy. As I made my way into the conversation with him I found out that he also has a military connection, his Dad was a career Air Force NCO.

The night turning late and with the Doobies off for Ft. Worth early in the morning we decided to take our leave after another round of thank you's and autographs. Our trip home had us talking about what a great group of people these were, and I'm still agog about the experience. After being on the road for days and having just finished playing a knock down concert I wouldn't have blamed Pat, Mike, Sky or the other Doobies for being polite, saying "hi" to us and then, "sorry we gotta' go". But they stayed as long as we cared to talk. Hope I get to see them again in Washington soon. Here are some photos of the evening...Hangin' with the Doobies

Guantanamo......

Julie directed my attention to this NY Times article via The Drudge Report. I was interested in perusing it mainly because my good friend Gen. Tom Hill [photo] is quoted several times. Tom is the commander of SouthCom, the major command for Central and South America and under which the Guantanamo Prison falls.

The article is worth a read, though lengthy, and for the most part lays out the facts and both sides of the opinion about the prison facility. But...being the NY Times, one gets the feeling that the opinions of choice are those on the negative side. The report cites a litany of evidence from the lack of useful intelligence information that some say comes from the prison, to abuse, to the innocents being held.

However, as the authors lay out their negative comments, the facts keep shooting them in the feet. Such as the fact that at least 5 of the 57 Afghan detainees released have returned to the battlefield as Taliban commanders or fighters. One is now a notable commander known to be responsible for 13 deaths in Afghanistan including two aid workers. Or the fact that for all of the purported lack of intelligence, the so called 20th hijacker, Mr. Kahtani, was finally smoked out after lengthy interrogation. And one of the abuse cases cited is comical. A poor detainee was abused by being questioned for 20 hours in front of an air conditioner. Horrible. I'll bet any U.S. soldier serving in the heat of summer in the Iraqi desert would volunteer for such abuse.

As Tom Hill sums it up...."We weren't sure in the beginning what we had; we're not sure today what we have," said Gen. James T. Hill, the head of the Army's Southern Command. "There are still people who do not talk to us. We could have the keys to the kingdom and not know it."

So why is there any discussion? Perhaps the real debate should be, "do we shoot ten of these criminals for every American murdered in Iraq"?

Bubba goes to space....

Congragulations to Burt Rutan and the StarShipOne. These forward thinkers are not really Bubba's, but certainly they are first "regular" folks to fly to the official edge of space and for a total cost that probably is less than one of John Kerry's family homes.

The "mother ship" and the actual "space ship", StarShipOne, look like something out of a 1930's comic book or the drawings from a 12 year olds fantasy. In fact they looked a tad flimsy to be going to such heights and speeds particularly when compared to the massive proprortions we are used to in NASA vehicles. This made the attempt all the more exciting in my thinking. And, frankly, they made it look somewhat too easy, not withstanding that I realize that they've been working on this for years.

It was an historic event in aviation and truthfully one of my first thoughts was this. Here in the U.S. the government has been launching humans into space since the early 1960's and now we also have private citizens building spacecraft and leaving the planet. I wonder why the superior cultures of Europe have never put one, not one, person in space? While we are pushing the envelope of exploration, I wonder why the morally superior Imams and Potentates in the Middle East can't even provide most of their citizens with shoes or clean drinking water? Well no, I don't really wonder, I know. I hope they think about this too.

Clinton defends successor's push for war...

That headline on CNN online grabbed my attention. Here's CNN reporting on Bill Clinton doing the right thing and supporting the country and it's present leader in time of crisis. Speaking up because while in office he suspected full well, just as President Bush did at the time, that in all likelihood Saddam possesed WMD or had the means to produce them quickly. For once I praise Bill Clinton's honesty for speaking up. But one has only to read a few short sentences down in the article to let CNN's true colors shine through.

CNN) -- Former President Clinton has revealed that he continues to support President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq but chastised the administration over the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.

If you read the article you'll note that Clinton did not utter these phrases as one statement. They are taken from an extensive interview in Time Magazine next week. Clinton supports the war in Iraq. Clinton abhors the prison abuse. Clinton did not link the two events. CNN does that. No, CNN could not just print the story that the mentor of the liberal Democrats supports the war in Iraq without dredging up references to the prison abuse affair and making them one and the same. A liberal leader speaking up for the war effort...let's negate that by adding that somewhere else he mentions the nasty affair at Abu Ghraib prison.

But CNN, we are probably smarter than you think we are. We're really sorry that some misguided juvenile perverts acted out at the prison....but this is what we'll remember from your article.

Clinton, who was interviewed Thursday, said he did not believe that Bush went to war in Iraq over oil or for imperialist reasons but out of a genuine belief that large quantities of weapons of mass destruction remained unaccounted for.

Commander Cody...

A short note of congratulations are in order for my good friend and old army pal Dick Cody. That's General Dick Cody, now wearing four stars and named by SecDef Rumsfeld to be the new Vice Chief of Staff of the Army. For people without a military background that means that Dick is now second in the chain of command of the army. And a note. The "commander" refered to above was never Dick's rank, nor an ego trip of some kind for him. The knickname was given to him by us in reference to Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, a band of some repute at the time. But the name has stuck; I understand his troops over the years have called him thus, and Dick himself signs his mail that way.

Dick and I go back to 1972 when he and I were lieutenants together in the 25th Infantry Division. Dick and I ran in the same young officer crowd, both had Corvettes and became quite good friends over the years. The photo above is one I took when Dick and I went fishing in Hawaii about 1973. We caught a 200 lb. marlin that day...that photo lost to posterity. And, of course, I had purchased a bed from Dick in '72 that remained with me until last year as chronicled here

Dick had been in the Transportation Corps. when we were in the 25th Div. while I was in the Infantry. He commanded trucks, I commanded infantrymen. So I was surprised some years later when he phoned me in Dallas saying that he was passing through town ferrying Cobra gunships from point A to point B. Dick had yearned for a little more excitement than trucks had to offer and had become a helicopter pilot. And he became a noted one at that.

During the first Iraqi War, Desert Storm, it was Dick's Apache gunships that fired the first shots of the conflict, slipping in at sand dune top level to take out Iraqi radar sites prior to the unleashing of the air war the next day. Dick later went on to command the 101st Airborne Division and most recently has been Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army for operations, the G-3.

It is interesting that in the international aviation hall of fame organization, A Gathering of Eagles, two of the seven modern army aviators enshrined are good friends of mine. Dick Cody and Bruce Crandall.

Also interesting, and noteworthy, is the fact that my only two good friends still on active duty in the army are now both of four star rank. Gen. Tom Hill, commander of SouthCom, and now Dick. I think the only conclusion one might draw is that they both took to heart the leadership example I set for them all those years ago.

Who would you rather have quarterbacking America?

Gentleman, Start your engines...!

If you are a motor sports fan, this weekend is for you with all forms of auto racing happening and on the air!

We started off today by watching qualifing for the Formula One Grand Prix of Canada, where amazingly my man Ralf Schumacher has won the pole position for Sunday's race. Ralf is the driver I use on our amazingly great PlayStation2 Formula 1 game so I'm glad to see him finally overshadowing his brother Michael. We are glad to see Formula 1 finally get to the Americas. No more getting up at 6 A.M. to watch the race live.

Next we switched to the 24 Hours of LeMans and the sports car scene, my favorite. You have to be a true aficionado of the sport to follow this one. The coverage gets confusing unless you know the car classes and can follow drifting, lilting reports from track and the pits. As I write late Saturday night, two Audi teams were leading. It's always interesting to get up in the morning and see how things have changed in the preceeding hours. Sorry to say, our buddies at Panoz had "abandoned" with gear box failure.

The other races I'm not so excited about, but we'll try and catch some of those too. The Indy Racing League event should be fun, though Indy Car racing has done great injury to their fan base by the division of the series into two seperate leagues. Funny how big money will ruin things. But....since Julie wants to go to racing school at the Texas Motor Speedway next fall, this will give her a chance to size up the track!

Lastly there is NASCAR from Pocono. I know that NASCAR is by far the most popular form of auto racing with the general public, and I do watch, but I was taught proper English and it just galls me listening to the commentators. "Whee doggies, he don't know it but his engine just blowed up". Besides I can't identify with many of the young drivers are more media stars than good ol' boys. Still it's racing and I'm for it.

So Sunday will be a big day. The nice thing about the Formula 1 races are that young Jack and I drive the courses on the PlayStation so we're pro's at knowing the course. Though I'm a little more sophisticated in my cornering and braking points, Jack is coming along just fine.

The Final Farewell.....

It was a truly remarkable day, from morning in the East till Sunset in the West, as I'm sure most Americans who saw any part of the final ceremonies for President Reagan will agree. Julie, Jack and I caught significant portions of the final day of remembrance as we went about our day in and out of the house.

We, all three together, started watching the services from the National Cathedral and when I had to go to the office, I concluded by listening on Internet radio and then from my car as I went to meet them for lunch. I turned on the car radio just in time to hear the hymn "Mansions of the Lord" from the film We Were Soldiers being played at the cathedral. It was a personal connection to the services for me....having met the song writer [movie producer Randy Wallace] and knowing what the hymn means to many of my friends whom the film was about. Very special.

Julie and I have just turned off the TV tonight after watching the burial services from the Reagan Presidential library in California. A sunset ceremony just as the President himself had planned. And one with a more personal character which was a fitting way to end the week after all the state affairs had been concluded. It was just beautiful and a little strange with heads of state mixed with the likes of Bo Derek and Scott Baio. But I'm very glad that we got to hear the words spoken by the Presidents children; it put a nice personal finishing touch on the week and to be honest, my first true feelings of genuine sadness about his passing.

What I really want to comment on was the TV coverage. For all it's legions of faults, this is one thing that television is still good at far above all other media. And of which there is far too little. Involving the nation in a live event that both entranced and educated viewers without the need for debate or political correctness is something that is almost non-existant today..how sad.

And if you didn't watch the coverage of the ceremonies on Fox News, I offer that you were watching the wrong channel. It was so astounding that I made a comment to Julie about it this morning. I watched at least an hour of the ceremonies in Washington before I left for work and what I noticed was that there was no commentary, no talking heads blathering on with the assumption that the public was just to stupid to grasp the details. Fox was just letting us watch the events in real time without explanation.

I found no need to switch channels to the other big networks, but I can only imagine what they were offering. Peter Jennings feeling inadequate if there was more than 30 seconds of silence, Peter abhorbs silence. Peter telling us what kind of tires are on the hearse, Peter explaining who Lady Thatcher is and why she is important. I can just hear Tom Brokaw droning on about why Ronnie Reagan, from the Greatest Generation, was born to be a leader.

What Fox News did was just to lend us their cameras, allow us to be there and to think our own thoughts without distraction. For this I thank them. Is it any wonder why their ratings are high. Perhaps it's because they don't assume that we're morons incapable of viewing the boob tube without a constant flow of explanation.

A memorable day and week indeed and apparently others thought so too. After the services were concluded several of the commentators agreed that this could be compared to the Kennedy funeral so many years ago. I concur and have to, for once, thank television for it's coverage...or rather the Fox News Network.

Well doggonnit!!

"Thanks to the researchers who've proven that people who talk to their dogs are cutting-edge communicators, not just a bunch of eccentrics."

Yes thanks indeed, I'm glad to know I'm not just a kook, a complete kook that is. A new German study cited here says that most dogs understand language at a rate the scientists said was equivalent to that of a 3-year-old child...or an ape or dolphin. I'd prefer to communicate with an ape or dolphin more than with most 3 year olds, but that's another story.

I've always known that dogs have an innate ability to understand, and I've always talked to them. I guess that's why I love dogs so much and we've always gotten along. I've only been bitten by one dog in my life....my brother's French poodle. The reason for the bite is quite obvious; he didn't understand what I was saying.

My Golden Retreivers have been amazing in their grasp of the English language however. Ranger, my dear comrade of the late 80's and 90's had quite a range of vocabulary. When I would say "Duck" [as in a waterfowl] he would immediately look up and start searching the sky for a stray gaggle of mallards. He was a retreiver yes, but I had never ever taken him duck hunting nor been around lakes with ducks. Where he got that trait I don't know, genetics maybe. And we had to spell out C-A-T, for if we uttered "CAT" he was at the front door barking furiously for 20 minutes. The same with "SQUIRREL", only this would send him out the back door trying to climb the mulberry tree. If we were, by chance, to utter the word "BATH" in his presence he would slowly start to slink away and if we made a move in his direction he would shift from "slink" to "haul ass" in a nanosecond.

Ranger was also adept in automotive language. Like most Golden Retreivers he relished being in the family bed. My mean and evil Ex Wife did not relish nor allow a 95 lb. dog in the bed. So whenever she would leave in the morning, into bed he would hop. If I came home first drving my Blazer, he would still be in full repose. However if the mean evil EX came home in her Volvo he was out of the linen in a flash. He knew the sound of a Swedish engine better than most humans I know.

The present Big Gold Dog, Tres, is less communicative than Ranger but in a way, smarter about his understanding of language. Tres knows all the words, but he also has me figured out. His dog notes on me read something like:

Owner: soft touch, easy, pushover; don't have to do a thing he says. Important words to respond to: "Chow", "Ride", "Walk", "Treat". Ingore all else.

Actually Tres is more of a talker than a good listener. Thankfully for us, he's the only dog I've ever had that will tell you precisely when he needs to go out and do his duty so we never worry about him. He will go to the back door and utter one single muffled "woof". That's it..."woof", I need to go. If by chance we don't resond quickly enough, there is a second and very loud "Bark". We know then he really has to go. The same procedure applies when he wants to come back in.

Daphne, Julie and Jack's dog, is another matter entirely. Daphne is an Abyssinian Squirrelhound....aka "Mutt". Mutt's are genetically smarter than most other dogs since they most typically are the strays of the world and have had to fend for themselves over the eons. Daphne is as smart as they come, and like a precocious child is generally a wise ass when it comes to language. She understands everything we say, but does not comply with anything we wish, unless she wants to do it. She learned "sit", "lie down" and "roll over", I'm told, after only one or two training sessions. She knows not to dig, bark at squirrels and to stay out of the flower beds. Her reaction to a command to do, or not do, any of these is to run out of leash range and smirk. A very perturbing and frustrating trait in a dog. And when it comes time to scold her with the old favorite "Bad Dog!"....well she just looks the other way like we are talking to some imaginary other dog.

Ranger: good listener.
Tres: good talker.
Daphne: poor communication skills all around.

The Doobies...dreams do come true...

Several days ago I wrote here about my excitement that The Doobie Brothers were coming to town for a benefit concert. Since then things have happened that lift my level of excitement until it knows no bounds!

While catching up on the history of the band I reviewed The Doobies website. Deep within I found a contact email address which cheerfully stated that, "We try and respond to all mail". So I thought that I would drop an electronic note to them, telling them that I was a veteran and expressing my appreciation for all the good music over the years and for their aid and assistance to veterans organizations.

Last night I found out that they do indeed answer their email. I received the following email...

From: doobiemail@xxxxxx.net [mailto:doobiemail@xxxxxx.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 10:04 PM
To: WCraig


Would you like two passes to the backstage Meet & Greet after this show? We can't give you tickets, but we can offer these (which you can't buy!).
Thanks,

Cris Simmons, for the Doobies

My response, of course, in so many words was, "Hell Yes, I worship the very ground you walk on...thank you, thank you!"

And so Cris wrote back.....

From: doobiemail@exxxxxx.net [mailto:doobiemail@xxxxxx.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 2004 10:19 PM
To: WCraig

Wallace

We will leave your 2 backstage passes, in your name, at the Box Office, or Will Call in some cases. Pick them up before the show. Then, right after the show ask security where you should go. See you there!

Cris

Cris is the wife of Pat Simmons, lead guitarist. Pat and Tom Johnson are the two original founders of the Doobies and have been the heart, soul and continuing musical talent that has kept the band alive and well. Needless to say, I await June 23rd in breathless anticipation!

Why did the Chicken cross the Iraqi road......?

Coalition Provisional Authority:
The fact that the Iraqi chicken crossed the road affirmatively demonstrates that decision-making authority has been transferred to the chicken well in advance of the scheduled June 30th transition of power. From now on the chicken is responsible for its own decisions.

Halliburton:
We were asked to help the chicken cross the road. Given the inherent risk of road crossing and the rarity of chickens, this operation will only cost the US government $326,004.

Muqtada al-Sadr:
The chicken was a tool of the evil Coalition and will be killed.

US Army Military Police:
We were directed to prepare the chicken to cross the road. As part of these preparations, individual soldiers ran over the chicken repeatedly and then plucked the chicken. We deeply regret the occurrence of any chicken rights violations.

Peshmerga:
The chicken crossed the road, and will continue to cross the road, to show its independence and to transport the weapons it needs to defend itself. However, in future, to avoid problems, the chicken will be called a duck, and will wear a plastic bill.

1st Cavalry Division:
The chicken was not authorized to cross the road without displaying two forms of picture identification. Thus, the chicken was appropriately detained and searched in accordance with current SOP's. We apologize for any embarrassment to the chicken. As a result of this unfortunate incident, the command has instituted a gender sensitivity training program and all future chicken searches will be conducted by female soldiers.

Al Jazeera:
The chicken was stripped and forced to cross the road multiple times at gunpoint by a large group of occupation soldiers, according to eye-witnesses. The chicken was then fired upon intentionally, in yet another example of the abuse of innocent Iraqi chickens.

Blackwater:
We cannot confirm any involvement in the chicken-road-crossing incident.

Translators:
Chicken he cross street because bad she tangle regulation. Future chicken table against my request.

U.S. Marine Corps:
The chicken is dead!

Doobie Doobie Doo....!

With so much strife, ill feelings and heartache abounding in the country today it's nice to know that there is a very bright spot looming on the horizon for Julie and Me...especially Me. A trip down memory lane.

The Doobie Brothers are coming to town. I'm ecstatic. They are my group from the dim past. Beach Boys, Beatles, Doobies. This dates me of course, but that's OK, facts is facts and chronologically these were the groups that saw me through the awkward teenage years and into young manhood. By the time The Doobies came along, The Beach Boys and Beatles had morphed into quasi- psychedelic existentialism [you can quote me on that] that may have been "art" but didn't hit the mood of the majority of us teens moving into our 20's. The Doobies filled the void for me. Great music, beautiful harmony combined with some hard hitting Rock and Roll licks.

My love affair with the Doobies began in 1971 when I was in the Army and headed so far West it became East. A new Lieutenant, I had to take my brand new Triumph TR-6 to Oakland to be shipped to Hawaii, my eventual destination after a stop across the Pacific, to await my arrival months later. The trip, taking a couple of weeks, was a grand loitering, roaming trip around the West ala Route 66 style. Just me, the new sports car and the road. I ended up in San Francisco for 3 days and with top down, drove aimlessly around the city and the bay area. The real treat was that I had an FM-Stereo radio! You had to have listened to AM radio, one speaker cars all your previous life to know what this meant. FM stereo was new then and it was heaven. Especially cruising the streets of San Francisco, home of the Doobies, and listening to one of their first big hits, "Listen to the Music". I was hooked.

As time passed the Doobies evolved, many times for the better, with additions like Michael McDonald. While many groups simply fade away the Doobies music stayed above par and did so until they decided to move on to other things as individuals. In 1987 the Doobies decided to re-form the band for a series of benefit concerts. Concerts not to support left-wing 60's ideologies, but instead to become sponsors of Veterans of The Vietnam War, a non-profit group which has evolved into the The National Veterans Foundation of which the Doobies are major benefactors. Great music, great memories, great guys. What can I say, I'm excited.

Short and sweet...

Many things to think about today...and so to me here's the gist of the matter.

D-Day: God Bless all those who sacrificed so much on this day 60 years ago. I've often wondered what must have been going through the minds of those gallant souls as they approached the beach or prepared to jump into the darkness of the French night, knowing full well the perils that would surely face them. Having made numerous night parachute drops myself, I know firsthand the normal jitters one gets....doing so under the worst of combat conditions, I can only imagine and marvel at the bravery and sense of duty of those men of my Dad's generation.

Ronald Reagan: Simply put he was the right man for his times. More than anything else, he turned the spirit of the country around after the abyssmal decade of gloom following the Vietnam War. His politics were direct, to the point and done, generally without being mean spirited. We need more like him today.

The Real Deal....

If you watch, listen to or read most of the mainsteam media you might think that things in Iraq are all death, destruction and abuse. You also would be missing most of the truth about day to day life in the major portion of the country. Here are some photos from Iraq taken by the "Stryker Brigade" on the ground that somehow Peter Jennings seems to miss. Take a look at these photos of U.S. soldiers raping and pillaging! Take a look at the hate filled Iraqis! Thanks to The Mudville Gazette for the tip on this site!