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!

New Mexico Mountain Weekend....

It was a New Mexico mountain weekend filled with history, art, scenic panoramas and...go-karts.

A fun time and hopefully somewhat intellectually stimulating to young Jack who, if he had had things his way, would have spent the entire three day junket racing go-karts at the track in Ruidoso. We did do a fair amount of that, and Jack, the Mother and I had a great time. Jack, being under 16 years of age couldn't drive the super fast karts so Julie and I put in some lap times with him on the "fun track". It was fun...but Julie and I had to give the fast karts a go. And go we did. Julie did well and because I'm a tad heavier in weight I couldn't catch her, but I did catch a glimpse of her ahead, blonde hair pegged straight back by the blinding speed .

Julie and I are history buffs, so Sunday was mostly devoted to a tour of historical sites which abound in the area. Through the mountains we drove down to Capitan and by the Smokey the Bear museum, the original and factual bear cub, Smokey, having been rescued here in 1950. In a sad twist of irony, the picture of Jack and Smokey above was taken with a major forest fire as a backdrop in the same mountains where Smokey was rescued. The fires burned along the entire crest of the Capitan mountains fanned by 30+ mph winds. A fire so large that we could see the smoke overhead when we got home. A distance of over 270 miles.

Our history destination was Lincoln, New Mexico home of Billy the Kid and the famous Lincoln County War of 1878-1881. Lincoln is a great place for history and photography, having changed little since 1888. Many of the historic buildings are now museums with the old courthouse and jail where Billy the Kid was held being of special interest, especially to a ten year old boy. He got to have his picture made with a bullet hole left during Billy's escape...and stand on the exact spot where a deputy sheriff was slain during that episode. The homes in Lincoln range from the original old abode to the territorial style built in the 1870's, but perhaps one of the most interesting structures to us is a large circular adobe tower built in the 1850's as a place of refuge against attacks by the Apaches.

On our return trip we stopped at Ft. Stanton a military post built in 1855 to counter the Apache threat and serving on into the 20th century in a variety of capacities including a German POW camp and tuberculosis treatment center for the merchant marine. It was somber reminder for Memorial Day to see so many flags of various nations in the post graveyard. And then, of course, as a reward for Jack for cramming his head full of so much historical information we......once again raced go-karts before returning to our cottage for a great meal in the cool mountain air.

On the return trip to Midland we could not let opportunities pass for yet more history and art [much to Jack's chagrin......I told him he would thank me in later years]. On the way down from the mountains we stopped in at the Museum of the American West which has a good collection of antique wagons, guns and is now featuring the skelton of Sue, the T-Rex recently found in South Dakota. And a little further down the road in San Patricio we stopped at one of my art Mecca's.....the Sentinel Ranch of artist Peter Hurd. We had a nice chat with the curator of the Hurd Gallery,looked around the gallery and had a chance to nod a brief hell-o to noted artist Michael Hurd, son of Peter Hurd and grandson of N.C Wyeth. We also toured the ranch looking at the suberbly elegant guest homes in anticipation of a return visit this summer.

Then it was a push on to home once again through the flat lands and heat of West Texas. Really a nice short vacation combining all our interests; art, history and racing but most importantly just simple things like enjoying a quiet moment together on the streets of Lincoln.

Memorial Weekend....

We will be in the high mountains of New Mexico for the Memorial Day weekend. While we are gone talk amongst yourselves. And don't forget to remember all those who have paid the ultimate price for our freedom.

With us or against us...

Mohammed in Baghdad who has lived under Saddam offers some advice....

" The new enemy [Islamic terrorists] differs from all the previous ones in that he doesn’t have or even claim to have any constructive ideology. He doesn’t bring us anything other than the seeds of death and destruction “either you surrender to me or I kill you”. As for an alternative ideology, it doesn’t exist. Moreover the willingness to initiate a dialogue was never expressed or shown to be a possibility"
Read more >>>>>

The energy scholar...

Supposed nominee John Kerry has today come out with some specifics concerning his "energy policy". I suspect that the closest scrape that John has had with the energy markets is ordering his chauffeur to go fill up one of his "family's" SUV's. Some of his brilliance....

"Let's make sure our schools are focused on teaching our children, not heating the classrooms and paying for school bus diesel fuel."

Yes John, no matter what other weighty arguments might be delved into on the issue of energy, let's start out with this. Let's do it for the kids!

Kerry says he would spend $10 billion over 10 years on new plants to manufacture more fuel efficient vehicles

Clarify this please John, do you mean you and your wife's Heinz Pickle fortune are going to build plants, or do you mean that the Federal government is going to get into the hybrid car business. The way I understand a capitalist economy...when there is a viable market for hybrid cars, a private manufacturer will step forward and build a plant.

He says his administration would demand that other oil-producing nations increase supply.

Demand away John, but keep in mind that your demands fall on the ears of a group of sellers who don't particuarly like us and don't mind the Great Satan paying top dollar for their petroleum. Personal note John: I'd put "demanding" more oil way down on my list. And by the way, isn't throwing the weight of the U.S. around and demanding that sovereign nations do things with their own assets in direct violation of the liberals credo?


Kerry planned to focus on the national security threat posed by dependence on Middle East oil.

Playing both sides, as he is wont to do, John suggests that we use less of the foreign oil that he is also demanding that we get more of.

John, I'm sure that there is a brilliant man in there somewhere, but perhaps if you had ever had a real job you might realize how utterly full of gibberish you are when it comes to the real world.

Sir Bubba, kinda'......

It's always nice to know a Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Now I do. Gen. Tommy Franks will be presented with the award tonight,though due to his lack of British citizenship he will not be entitled to be called Sir Tommy. I know this will matter not a whit to Tommy as he belongs to a higher order....he's a Texan. I hope this means he'll be bringing all his Knighthood pals to West Texas to participate in his favorite pasttime, quail hunting. I'd love to see Prince Chuck again after all these years.

Who We Fight....

During WWII there was a need to perpeputate in the citizenry of the United States a continuing reminder of why such a great national sacrifice was necessary. One of the most effective bits of propaganda that I recall was a documentary series produced by famed Hollywood director Frank Capra called, "Why We Fight". Today we need to know not only "Why We Fight" but "Who We Fight". Former Navy Secretary John Lehman tells us.

"We are at a juncture today that really is more of a threshold, even more of a watershed, than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was in 1941. We are currently in a war, but it is not a war on terrorism. In fact, that has been a great confusion, and the sooner we drop that term, the better. This would be like President Franklin Roosevelt saying in World War II, "We are engaged in a war against kamikazes and blitzkrieg." Like them, terrorism is a method, a tool, a weapon that has been used against us. And part of the reason we suffered such a horrific attack is that we were not prepared. Let's not kid ourselves. Some very smart people defeated every single defense this country had, and defeated them easily, with confidence and arrogance. There are many lessons we must learn from this.

We were not prepared intellectually. Those of us in the national security field still carried the baggage of the Cold War. We thought in concepts of coalition warfare and the Warsaw Pact. When we thought of terrorism, we thought only of state-sponsored terrorism, which is why the immediate reaction of many in our government agencies after 9/11 was: Which state did it? Saddam, it must have been Saddam. We had failed to grasp, for a variety of reasons, the new phenomenon that had emerged in the world. This was not state-sponsored terrorism. This was religious war.

This was the emergence of a transnational enemy driven by religious fervor and fanaticism. Our enemy is not terrorism. Our enemy is violent, Islamic fundamentalism. None of our government institutions was set up with receptors, or even vocabulary, to deal with this. So we left ourselves completely vulnerable to a concerted attack.

Where are we today? I'd like to say we have fixed these problems, but we haven't. We have very real vulnerabilities. We have not diminished in any way the fervor and ideology of our enemy. We are fighting them in many areas of the world, and I must say with much better awareness of the issues and their nature. We're fighting with better tools. But I cannot say we are now safe from the kind of attack we saw on 9/11. I think we are much safer than we were on 9/11; the ability of our enemies to launch a concerted, sophisticated attack is much less than it was then. Still, we're totally vulnerable to the kinds of attacks we've seen in Madrid, for instance. We face a very sophisticated and intelligent enemy who has been trained, in many cases, in our universities and gone to school on our methods, learned from their mistakes, and continued to use the very nature of our free society and its aversion to intrusion in privacy and discrimination to their benefit.

For example, today it is still a prohibited offense for an airline to have two people of the same ethnic background interviewed at one time, because that is discrimination. Our airline security is still full of holes. Our ability to carry out covert operations abroad is only marginally better than it was at the time of 9/11. A huge amount of fundamental cultural and institutional change must be carried out in the United States before we can effectively deal with the nature of the threat. Today, probably 50 or more states have schools that are teaching jihad, preaching, recruiting, and training. We have absolutely no successful programs even begun to remediate against those efforts.

It's very important that people understand the complexity of this threat. We have had to institute new approaches to protecting our civil liberties-the way we authorize surveillance, the way we conduct our immigration and naturalization policies, and the way we issue passports. That's only the beginning. The beginning of wisdom is to recognize the problem, to recognize that for every jihadist we kill or capture-as we carry out an aggressive and positive policy in Afghanistan and elsewhere-another 50 are being trained in schools and mosques around the world.

This problem goes back a long way. We have been asleep. Just by chance about six months ago, I picked up a book by V. S. Naipaul, one of the great English prose writers. I love to read his short stories and travelogues. The book was titled Among the Believers (New York: Vintage, 1982) and was an account of his travels in Indonesia, where he found that Saudi-funded schools and mosques were transforming Indonesian society from a very relaxed, syncretist Islam to a jihadist fundamentalist fanatical society, all paid for with Saudi Arabian funding. Nobody paid attention. Presidents in four administrations put their arms around Saudi ambassadors, ignored the Wahhabi jihadism, and said these are our eternal friends.

We have seen throughout the last 20 years a kind of head-in-the-sand approach to national security in the Pentagon. We were comfortable with the existing concept of what the threat was, what threat analysis was, and how we derived our requirements, still using the same old tools we all grew up with. We paid no attention to the real nature of this emerging threat, even though there were warning signs.

Many will recall with pain what we went through in the Reagan administration in 1983, when the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut-241 Marines and Navy corpsmen were killed. We immediately got an intercept from NSA [National Security Agency], a total smoking gun from the foreign ministry of Iran, ordering the murder of our Marines. Nothing was done to retaliate. Instead, we did exactly what the terrorists wanted us to do, which was to withdraw. Osama bin Laden has cited this as one of his dawning moments. The vaunted United States is a paper tiger; Americans are afraid of casualties; they run like cowards when attacked; and they don't even bother to take their dead with them. This was a seminal moment for Osama.

After that, we had our CIA station chief kidnapped and tortured to death. Nothing was done. Then, we had our Marine Colonel [William R.] Higgins kidnapped and publicly hanged. Nothing was done. We fueled and made these people aware of the tremendous effectiveness of terrorism as a tool of jihad. It worked. They chased us out of one place after another, because we would not retaliate".

Address by Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman
The U.S. Naval Institute 130th Annual Meeting and Annapolis Naval History Symposium (2004)

>Book 'em Dano....Murder One! It's my sad duty to inform you that Kono played by Zulu is dead. Or is that Zulu played by Kono? Kono was the crime fighting protege of Kam Fong played by Chin Ho.....or is that Chin Ho played by Kam Fong?

Actually actor Zulu, who played Kono, was really named Gilbert Francis Lani Damian Kauhi and he died May 3rd at the age of 66. I found this out tonight while following some inane link from James Lileks to the very bowels of the Internet. I was shocked, I had not heard. But I suppose that other events took precedence, though why I won't conjecture. Suffice it to say I'll miss Kono, Zulu and Gilbert; we were all close. I took the photo above in Hawaii in 1974. while Zulu, Kono, Gilbert and I were watching Prince Charles play polo on the North Shore of Oahu. People of a certain age will remember that this was at the height of popularity of the TeeVee show "Hawaii 50" and occasionally we used to see the stars around the island. Zulu played Jack Lord's sidekick. I used to see Jack at the supermarket in Hawaii Kai. He looked exactly like he did on TeeVee, except worse. Zulu looked exactly the same, except better. Will miss you Brah, Geev 'um!

High octane B.S......

I've heard it all now. I caught just about 4 minutes of the big network news lead story before I headed out to little league baseball tonight. And this was about 3 minutes too long.

The story was this, "Democrats blame Bush for high gas prices...." I thought that perhaps my tinnitus ridden ears were deceiving me, but no, there was talking head Kerry, lips moving on that horse face, spewing out something blah, blah, blah about the Republicans being at fault for $2 gas. My question to you is this. Have they gone completely insane? Do they really think that they're talking to morons? Even the common folk who send mass emails about vetoing "big oil", I suspect, remember it was the liberal Democrats who have consistantly voted against a national energy policy that would give a few more incentives to us energy producers here in the heartland to develop more Amerkan oil and gas. And wasn't it the liberal Democrats who led the fight against drilling in ANWAR, the artic oil fields, to develop more Amerkan oil? And am I wrong or wasn't it John Kerry hissownself who has a chip in his platform suggesting that we raise the gasoline tax by the small sum of 50 cents per gallon. Payable by you the voter who is assumed to be so stupid as not to remember just who proposed this tariff when it comes time to pay at the pump. The same John Kerry who uses more than his share of fuel powering a fleet of SUV's and a plethora of mansions that "his family" owns.

Have I been living in an alternate parallel universe these last several years or have the Democrats gone completely whacko? This was the most bizarre utterance I've heard from them yet. Or perhaps in turning off the TV I missed the meat of this well thought out arguement. Perhaps their theory now is that since they believed that the war in Iraq was promulgated for the sole reason of obtaining cheap Iraqi oil, Dubya ought to now be delivering the goods. How tragic that oil is at an all time high. I'm going to think about this further as I drive my big car around to empty the tank. I'm going to be filling it up on May 19th.