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]]>This morning there is a column by Tom Chartier on the Lew Rockwell.com sight about a pathetically stupid Vietnam Vet who gave one of his purple hearts to George Bush. There is a picture of Bush proudly wearing it.
Read the article if you can stand being outraged one more time by our fearless leader.
Sorry, my laptop has a glitch, or else I do, and I cannot post a link.
It is a beautiful spring day in the Mountain West and I am so mad I could puke. My stomach feels like it did when I saw friend’s moments after they had just earned a purple heart. Some were still screaming, some would never scream again. Bush just keeps grinning as he demeans one more symbol of honor.
In the past I have stupidly taken the position that impeachment was a bad idea at this time. Impeach Bush, the lives saved will number in the thousands.
]]>Terrorists in the United States built a very effective bomb out of fertilizer and diesel fuel. Large ships, called bulk carriers, carry, among other things, fertilizer. There are about 7000 of them in service worldwide. They are powered by diesel engines. For a bulk carrier to take on a load of fertilizer and then a large amount of diesel fuel would not raise eyebrows anywhere. If they went to another port for more fuel, who would notice?
Bulk carriers carry from 10,000 to 100,000 DWT [dead weight tons] of fertilizer. This is a LOT more than a Ryder Rental truck carries. We all saw what that Oklahoma City bomb did. An entire ship could be turned into one humungous bomb. These ships arrive at U.S. ports every day.
Would current procedures stop this kind of attack?.
]]>It’s been five years and this is likely of no importance, but I find it interesting. Maybe you will too.
The attack on the World Trade Center has been characterized as taking years of planning, a big organization, and a great deal of money to carry out. I think its execution was much simpler than we’ve been told and than most people believe.
The main tenet of this false impression is a belief that it took a great deal of skill and training to fly the airliners into the buildings. Consider the following. If you can steer a go-cart you can steer a Honda, or a Cadillac, or a semi-truck and trailer. Flying [most] aircraft is much the same. Let me explain.
Getting from A to B in an airplane requires that you be able to do three things, take of, fly in the correct direction, and land. In correct order of skill required, landing is hardest, taking off is next, and flying in the desired direction is not just the easiest but is quite easy.
This is the disclaimer paragraph. Airline piloting requires a lot of skill and a lot of training and experience. For instance, they must be able to take off, fly to point B, and land the aircraft by instruments in all kinds of weather, and in total darkness. This is a huge jump from the ability to guide an aircraft which is already in the air. Flying an aircraft in clear air with a view of the horizon is relatively easy and intuitive.
Years ago I owned an Aeronca L-3, a small two seater similar to a Piper Cub. I had a trip planned with a friend to fly to a lake about 80 miles away. As it turned out, I had to work a 16 hour shift ending at eight in the morning of the day we were to leave. I took off, gave my friend, who had never been at the controls of a plane, or even in a small plane, about ten minutes of instruction, and he followed the highway to our destination while I slept. He woke me up to land the plane and we spent a pleasant day sailing on Texoma. That afternoon I took us off and he flew us back. I talked him through the flight pattern, it was a non-controlled country airport, and I took over well into the final approach and landed. I believe that my friend could have, with only a little more experience, done what the terrorists did on 9-11.
Shortly after 9-11 I discussed this idea with the pilots I know, including two who flew military aircraft, and they all agreed with me. Know too, that there are computer flight simulation programs on the market that simulate approaches to many of this countries major airports, including those in N.Y.C. and Washington D.C. They give headings and a visual depiction coming from any direction. I have seen one which has a picture of the Twin Towers featured prominently on the box. They are designed to familiarize a pilot and make him comfortable and competent to fly to those airports.
This then is how I see the problems the terrorist teams solved. They had to have one minimally qualified pilot for each team. Each team had to call a travel agent and book flights on aircraft leaving about the same time on a cross country trip heading West during daylight hours, they had to take over the aircraft in flight, which was easy if they were willing to be brutal, which they were, and then they had to turn around and go East. They could then pick up the right heading and fly visually to their targets. There targets were very distinctive. The terrorists did not have to take off or land, just aim the aircraft. The second one did show some skill in making a fairly hard banking turn near the end to hit his target squarely. This all took some planning, some money, some expertise, but not a lot and certainly not any diabolical geniuses.
In this particular case probably all that would have been necessary to foil the plot was secure cockpit doors, which, I believe, had been suggested and decided against, but then you didn’t really expect the
government to tell you that it would have been easy to prevent the tragedy of 9-11, did you?
]]>I have been in agreement with those impressed by Al Gore recently and think he would be a good choice to be President. Sunday, June 4, on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” I saw why he wouldn’t be a good candidate. He was there to talk about global warming and his movie on the subject but had to have known that he would be questioned about the current world [Iraq war] situation and about whether he would run for President. His response to the question of what he would do now about Iraq if he was in charge was so incredibly weak that it could probably be the only political ad against him during the campaign and be enough to defeat him. If his plan really was to set himself up for a run you would have to think he would have had a better answer ready, he should have had one ready anyway. His answer to the question about pursuing the presidency made me believe he would only do it if the right circumstances developed, that he really did believe that he might have a better chance of having more positive effect working as he is doing now. Then came the panel discussion and I was already disappointed that the comments were all about the horse race and ignored the substance of what Gore had said when it came time for Claire Shipman to speak. She was dressed in the appropriate bright red. I don’t know who is pimping her, but she is certainly whorin’ for someone. She said that she was sick of hearing about the new Gore, we had just seen the same old Gore as ever and “just look at his face, how could we believe anything he said“. That’s when I threw the remote at the screen and went outside to mow my yard.
Here is the daydream I had while mowing. Sen. Fiengold For pres. He has been, IMO, on the right side of the major issues and has shown some of the political courage that we all seem to want. John Edwards for VP. Maybe you can’t run for the number two spot twice, and maybe he wouldn’t, but if he did and was allowed to campaign on his own domestic message he would bring in many people. Now the kicker. These two get together early along with Gore and campaign as a team starting in the primaries. Feingold would say if he was elected that he would push for a cabinet level agency, headed by Gore, to implement a major effort to make our country more energy efficient and to develop alternate sources. Gore might accept this because he would have a position of real power to persue his cause if all this was successful and also a great soapbox during the campaign. The attention given him might actually be to the point.
This could all be sold as the bold, optimistic, forward thinking plan to keep America strong, prosperous, and secure that it actually could be. They could be promising more than platitudes, they could be promising something that Americans are coming to see that they need and that could be done.
]]>Highly recommended!
]]>We hear a constant refrain about inadequate teachers and bad schools as the cause of an educational crisis in the USA. In the past we more often heard that the kids themselves may be a big part of the problem. The influence of television was debated to the point that the myriad of good reasons not to let young kids grow up on TV became clichés which took them out of the debate.
It seems obvious to me that curiosity is pretty a important factor in the learning process. Young kids have that curiosity filled by the nothing of TV before they learn to look outward for something in the real world. The smart ones learn to read but don’t. Advertisement aimed at them from a young age teach them that style is everything. They are not just sold on style over substance, they are largely unaware that there is such a thing as substance which might be more important than style. The mediocrity of peer pressure becomes a factor.
It seems that far fewer kids take up music with a passion. Young boys don’t build model airplanes, they buy video games. Young men don’t overhaul and soup up their cars, they buy body kits and spoilers to make them look cool. In school, the ones with parental support and pressure to do well aren’t interested in learning, just in making good grades, which a smart kid can do in a setting of mediocrity without learning much.
Of course there are other factors and there are exceptions to the rule but the question is; can we pay teachers enough and build fancy enough schools to make educated, as opposed to trained, adults out of a reasonably high percentage of these kids coming from this culture? And, is there anythig we can do about it?
]]>Imagining Iraq
I have heard that some wars, or at least some battles within wars, have been fought with some semblance of chivalry. That seems strange to me but possibly true. I don’t believe, however, that that has ever, or could ever, be the case with a gorilla war. I believe that the present war in Iraq, at least the part of it that is between the U.S. and whoever the hell we are fighting there, and who ever is a fighting us [I’m not sure they are always the same] is a gorilla war. Debate the reasons for invading the sovereign state of Iraq somewhere else and recognize that here I am talking about the nature of the conflict between the actual combatants, the people pulling triggers, how the combatants come to respond to each other, and how that forms a feedback loop that kills the possibility, or at least the reasonable likelihood, that the U.S. military can determine, through force, a good outcome in Iraq.
First this. When I see a blog challenged the challenge often comes in the form of; where’s your proof, where’s your link, where’s your documentation? I offer none, this is just my own speculation and interpretation for what ever it is worth. Take it or leave it, my feelings can’t be hurt on this subject.
I imagine here what I think is a fair picture of a generic infantryman who has spent some time in the trigger pulling position in a gorilla war. I don’t see this as necessarily describing only an American soldier but instead more the the universal soldier. He could be the young man of any nation, a young man who is sometimes brave, often scared, sometimes terrified, has developed an attitude, sometimes feels rage, and has seen the closest friends he has yet known die senselessly or be hideously injured at the hand of some unidentified person who looks like everyone else in the strange land he has been sent to. This young man has an M-16 in his hand, artillery and more available through the radio he carries. He has a license to kill, and the will to win and live. When a tense situation comes up, this young soldier, whatever his training, is not prepared, or in the right frame of mind, to be an ambassador of good will. He is more likely to start shooting. Someone is very likely to die.
Maybe you can imagine the psychology of this soldier. Now, try to empathize with the people of the city he occupies and relate to their feelings. When he first entered the city, let’s say Baghdad, the strategy was to crush the traditional military defenses in a campaign so powerful and brutal that it would shock and awe the population and convince them that resistance was pointless. For a while it looked like it worked, at least to our short sighted non-planners. Bush was so thrilled and confident that he high-fived his way all the way to a carrier full of non-combat support troops excited to be coming home and ready to cheer in the spirit of the hero welcome they were already getting. There Bush famously said “Mission accomplished”. He, unfortunately, just didn’t understand the folks in Iraq. These people are as human as you and I. They have foreign soldiers occupying their homeland which is deeply offensive and humiliating to people of any land. They have had their homes destroyed and seen their parents, spouses, children and friends killed in the conflict started by these foreigners. They know that many of their friends and family who have had the courage to act on the completely natural and understandable human instinct to fight back have been killed or captured . They know that many of those captured have been tortured. They hate the people who have done this. They would hate them regardless of where they came from or how they felt about them before the war began. They will hate them until they die and their children will grow up hating them. Some of them will act on this hate.
Now, reader, try to mentally place yourself in Baghdad. You are the soldier described above. The city contains many people who both want to, and are willing, to try to kill you. Most of the other people are at least sympathetic to them and will help them if they can. Some just wish someone, anyone, would win and take over so things would calm down and life could go on. A very few actually support the invaders but are afraid to say so or to overtly help them. Every single one of these people looks just like every other one to you. Every single one of them can spot you from a mile away.
OK, soldier, the stage is set. Your job today is to go out and do something constructive. Maybe you should drive around and look for signs that say something like “insurgent inside” or “terrorist headquarters“. Maybe you will get a less than friendly look from someone that will tip you off. Maybe you should just kick in doors until you find something suspicious. Maybe you decide not to be so pushy and just drive around until the opportunity presents itself to someone and they shoot you. That is really all you can do, isn’t it, just be a target and then respond because you are in a gorilla war in a city and you are the guy wearing a uniform/target. When you hit the ground bleeding your buddies will suddenly want to kill something, anything. They might open fire on the house that they think the fire might have come from, they can call in artillery on that block while reinforcements are coming, then they can round up anybody they can catch and haven’t shot in an adrenalin rush of rage and send them to the local interrogators where they will be questioned, maybe with the “gloves off“, until that person comes up with some damn name that the interpreter likely can’t understand anyway, and your surviving buddies can go looking for him the next day. They might come to call their daily patrol a cakewalk. If their daily patrol consists of twenty men, maybe they can think of how it would be more effective with forty men. Of course the reality is they will only have nineteen until your replacement arrives, and maybe now your limbs only number three. Maybe those nineteen can do something tomorrow that will improve life in the city though, and maybe things will get better, but I can’t imagine what, can you? I can only imagine making more enemies.
Now reader, you may think I imagine Iraqi cities wrongly, and maybe I do. After all I’ve never been to one. Here’s something else to think about though. Here is how I imagine the use of an IED. The kind I am thinking of is a command detonated explosive like is used to attack American troops, usually in vehicles. They are usually set up next to the road or even buried in the middle of the road Think of the pictures you’ve seen. These things are used in crowded urban areas. Do you think no one notices when they are being placed? They are along normal transit routes that they can expect their target to use. The person who detonates the mine must stay in a place with the road in view and the detonator in his hand until the target comes along so that he can push the trigger at exactly the right time. Again, do you think none of the locals notice. One reason for these attacks to take place in congested areas is so the attacker can run and melt into the local population. Have you ever heard of one of them being caught? Do you think, though, that the American soldiers don’t respond? I think they do, but I don’t think it is always appropriately. Hell, there is rarely an appropriate response possible. What would it be? If they respond, as you would, or your kid would, or your neighbor would, and that response is not appropriate, then we can assume that they often respond inappropriately. What I am getting at is that traumatic injuries are ugly, traumatic death is ugly, killing is ugly, and when these things happen there is normally someone left around who is real pissed off. Pissed off people with guns in their hands look for something to shoot. For them it is war, not an abstraction. Not something to blog about and refer to in Latin phrases. It becomes about killing. The circle is joined. The killing continues.
Back home, you hear someone say bring it on and you throw the remote at the tv, but you miss. Your not so good yet with your left hand.
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