Here I Stand...

... I can do no other.

A little background first.

I'm what my Southron neighbors would, most politely, call a "DamnYankee". And yes, it's all one word.

Stubborn. Opinionated. Educated through my own research.

My father fought the Nazis through France and into Germany. He saw the camps, and described them to me in most graphic and distressing detail.

I didn't really believe him until I did my own research.

Two of my high school classmates had parents with numbers tatooed on their arms. (To my other classmates - You don't remember? Or you never noticed? Or you ignored? Or you deny? Pick a place, and make your stand.)

So, here it is.

I stand with Israel. I stand against Hamas.

I stand with "Never Again". I stand against "Off the map".

I stand with the only functioning democracy in the Middle East. I stand against the gangbangers of "Palestine".

I say "Israel - From The River To The Sea".

If you don't like how I stand, tough beans.

Here I stand - I can do no other.

A Visit Home

Kevin showed up today. Flew in on the Great Iron Bird.

From the 'Stan.

In one piece.

For the next two weeks, we (all of us) shall treasure "The Pleasure of His Company".

Until then we'll sweat bricks until this USN "Box Kicker" comes home to stay.

In five minutes we talked about hide-out guns, Afghan Army troops, K9 dogs & Handlers, mortars, close air support, and artillery. And .. other stuff.

On this Day...

This is what the Boys (including my Dad) saw.

Thanks, guys.....

Holocaust Remembrance Day

During the time that I was growing up, and through my young adult-hood, the 1st of May meant the day that all of the Iron Curtain countries "celebrated" the Victory of The Masses over the Czars.

Now, it's a little different.

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The day where I, an American citizen, a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP), get up on my hind legs and say, "Never Again".

You think I'm kidding you?

Just remember, all you haters, just remember who the greatest killers in the history of the world really are.

We really did flash Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Had we deemed it necessary, Berlin and Munich would have met the same fate.

So, Damascus and Tehran, do you really want to get frisky?

Do you?

And yeah, I'm feeling very cranky this evening. It's been a long week so far...

Peace-time Military

I don't know why I'm surprised by THIS:

Many people in the military now perceive a "generation gap" that is marked by a specific date; September 11, 2001. Those who joined after that day, were more likely to have done so for patriotic reasons and were in to fight. The pre-911 troops had served in a peacetime military. The 1991 Gulf War lasted only four days. The Balkans peacekeeping operations of the 1990s involved very little combat. In other words, the pre-2001 troops had seen very little action. A lot of the pre-2001 officers and NCOs had a hard time adapting to wartime.

There are people in the military who aren't really comfortable with the military's prime mission, which is to kill people and break things.

This shouldn't surprise me.

Ten years after I left the Navy, I ran into a couple of peace-time sailors who were still in the Navy, as a career, who hated going to sea, and resented the Navy for sending them to a ship that by definition, goes to sea!

The peace-time military acts much like a large corporation. You follow the peace-time rules and sing the company song, and you get promoted, especially if all of your paperwork is in order and your subordinates don't pee in the potted palms.

In wartime, all of a sudden the rules change, and the "routine" that you've been following, the simulated "war games" that you've been doing, the immaculate paperwork that you thought were the "real reason" you joined, are supposed to be actually put into real mud and blood practice.

And so, some of the peace-time military gets moved aside, and is "encouraged" to find something else to do.

And the newspapers, who are not staffed by war-time vets, "view with alarm" the number of mid-level officers and NCOs who are leaving the services.

Of course, once the war is over, the guys who do the heavy lifting, and are good combat leaders make the politicians uncomfortable. They are shuffled aside as quickly as can be arranged, because after all, we have to be "politically correct" while we're "preparing our military for the next "humanitarian mission" in Kosovo or wherever...

Pearl Harbor Day

As I was once in the US Navy, I should probably post a photo of a ship burning in Pearl, or of the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay.

Nahhh....

My Dad was an infantryman in Europe. I think he'd appreciate this one a little more...


"Know any good Moslem prayers? I don't wanna miss any bets."

Late Vet's Day Post

Just found this courtesy of the Grouchy Old Cripple in Atlanta (Hi There, Denny!)

On behalf of Mikey, Tommy, Butch, Dan, Xavier, and Poor Dumb Randy (aka PDR), I'm shoutin' out "Amen! Deal the cards, Brotha!"

Royko was a Great Man...

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday. They all said the same thing: working. Me, too. There is something else we share. We are all military veterans. And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school. If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off. Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday. The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans. So how does this country honor them? By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing. As my friend Harry put it: "First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week. "Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk. "When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me. "But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific. "When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a ----head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie. "So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work. "You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state. "And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school. "Now, is that a raw deal or what?" Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following: - All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists. Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: "Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road," is entitled. - Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs. - All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual. - It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: "What time will you be home tonight?" - Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD. - Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day. Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments. Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila. - Mike Royko

September 11th

Today has been One Of Those Days.

Firstly, at 8:46AM I took a minute.

Went outside, and reflected on the happenings of September 11th, 2001.

Over the past five years, I have done this every September 11th.

My conclusions remain the same: The Islamfascisti have made War upon us. We shall continue to make War right back at 'em. Even if some future adminisitration should choose to "forget" that the Jihadis hate us, I, an individual American, shall not choose to "forget". And I'm gonna hate 'em right back.

I shall remember our dead civilians. I shall remember our dead military men and women. I shall remember, every day, to say a little prayer for our people who are in harm's way.

I shall also remember those who say "this is too hard", who say "we must give up", who say "we must 'redeploy' our forces".

I say to them: "I remember you. You called me 'baby killer'. You called me a 'tool of American aggression'. You said that I am like 'Jengis Khan'.

Oh yes. I shall remember. I shall remember all that you have said and done.

On this day, I remember our dead. I most especially raise my hat to the firefighters of September 11th. When the Twin Towers came crashing down, FDNY Fire Fighters were still going up.

I remember the heroes of Flight 93 - those heroes succeeded in their mission: The ordinary Americans of Flight 93 prevented the Islamofascisti from completing their plan, at a most terrible cost. Indeed, "Let's Roll".

Today has been One of Those Days.

From Out of the Past

'Way back there, when I was young, immortal, and fairly good looking, I was in the US Navy, stationed aboard ships that were home-ported in San Diego, California. For the whole time I was there, the San Diego Union had a box, on the front page, counting the number of days that the USS Pueblo had been in the hands of North Korea.

Today I saw, buried on the inside of the Florida Times-Union (Georgia edition)a little blurb about the Pueblo. I can't find it in the on-line edition, so I did a little google, and found THIS. Then I looked at an on-line chart. Guess what? To get from Wonsan to Pyongyang requires a little trip in international waters, which was done in 1999, during the administration of Mr. Clinton.

Now, I'm not gonna snivel too much at Mr. Clinton's in-action - after all, many previous presidents completely ignored the status of the USS Pueblo.

But it looks like the Navy hasn't forgotten - the USS Pueblo is still carried as an active ship of the US Navy.

Of course, now that that's been drawn to the attention of the wusses in the State Department, there will be much hand-wringing as to how "provocative" we're now being...

Beauchamp Admits to Lying

The "Baghdad Diarist", Pvt. Scott Beachamp, has now admitted in a sworn statement that the articles submitted to the New Republic were fabrications. From Fox News:

The Weekly Standard has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp -- author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns -- signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods -- fabrications containing only "a smidgen of truth," in the words of our source. Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad: "An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims." According to the military source, Beauchamp's recantation was volunteered on the first day of the military's investigation. So as Beauchamp was in Iraq signing an affidavit denying the truth of his stories, the New Republic was publishing a statement from him on its website on July 26, in which Beauchamp said, "I'm willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name."

In other words, the SOB flat-out lied about his comrades.

In case this sounds a little familiar to those of you of a certain age, this link will take you to the "Jengis Khan" quote.

They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

John Kerry. Scott Beauchamp.

Lying SOS's, the both of them.

Contemptible little twerps, the both of them.

Bah.