Thank You, Gentlemen

There are 98 living Medal Of Honor recipients.  Today, March 25th, is the day Congress has declared as National Medal Of Honor Day.

Where do we find such men?

A Wonderful Tribute From Son To Father

I read this late last night, and wept. Godspeed, sir, to your reward; and to the son, you are so fortunate, to have a father worth honoring. Thank you for doing so.

===============================

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

My Father Asks For Nothing

(2006)My father asks me for nothing, really. Every three months or so, I take him to his doctor, who pokes about him wondering what keeps him animated, and that's about it. He's grown frail, and has discovered the joys of "Not Going." It takes a lot to get him to leave the comfort and safety of his house. I was really surprised when he called me on Saturday, because he asked me to take him somewhere.

My father was a ball gunner on a B-24J Liberator bomber in the Pacific during WW2. He rarely spoke about that. My father and his confreres considered themselves part of a thing greater than the sum of their parts in it --or so it seems to me -- and more or less did what was expected of them as a sort of unpleasant chore, kept themselves safe as much as was practicable, amused themselves when possible, and got back to being regular people as soon as they could.

As far as how practicable it was to keep safe hanging below a plane filled with four hundred pound bombs with nothing but the ocean beneath you to bore you and Japanese Zeros shooting at you to keep you interested in the trip, you can draw your own conclusions.

My father said that the last B-24 in flying condition was going to be at a little airshow nearby, and he wanted to go see it. Would I take him?

As I said, my father is very frail. His heart is big but not useful. His mind is sharp but not overused now. It takes quite a bit of effort for him to get down the hall and into a car. And there was nothing I could do to keep him from trying to climb in that plane when we got there.

I didn't try, actually; I just was sort of amazed, and wondered how I could help him. You entered the plane on a rickety jump ladder in the tail, walked through the fuselage filled with wooden ammo boxes and gun emplacemements, climbed around the retracted ball that was his home for forty missions, and then had to walk on a catwalk less than a foot wide between the bomb racks to get to the cockpit. All this for a man who needs a walker.

We went along the side of the plane, creeping along at the pace my father goes, my father assiduously avoiding walking between the fuselage and the props -- a habit sixty years old and more -- and he saw his chance. He ducked down and crept into the bomb bay.

Down came the hands. No one needed to be told who that man was, or why he was there. Everyone behind paused to wait patiently and respectfully, and everyone within reach helped me pick that old, frail, brave man up to look on the nuts and bolts of that totem of his distant life. And they thanked him, and they asked him questions, and marveled at him. A Brigadier General and a sailor and a J.A.G. and Vietnam vets by the handful pressed his hand for the piquant residue of that life that might be on it.

He just looked for one familiar face that he had not brought with him, but there were none.


My father asks for nothing.

(My father passed away on Sunday)

Mullen Visits Bit Of America In Heart Of Mexico

Office of the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs

Story by Jim Garamone
Date: 03.07.2009
Posted: 03.07.2009 01:46



MEXICO CITY - In the heart of this thoroughly Mexican metropolis, there is a little bit America.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, took time from a busy schedule of meetings with Mexican military and naval leaders yesterday to visit the Mexico City National Cemetery.

The American Battle Monuments Commission oversees the cemetery, where 1,563 Americans are buried. Mullen had finished a meeting with Mexican army Gen. Guillermo Galvan, secretary of national defense, and was on his way to meet with Mexican navy Adm. Mariano Francisco Saynez when he asked to visit the American shrine.

The cemetery contains the remains of 750 Americans killed in the Mexican-American War in 1846 and 1847. "I wanted to pay my respects and honor those who served," Mullen said. Leslie Bassett, charge d'affaires at the U.S. Embassy here, accompanied the admiral.

Superintendent Hector de Jesus led the admiral's party along the cemetery's paths, pointing out famous and not-so-famous names. He lamented the fact that the admiral wasn't visiting later in the spring, "when all the flowers will be out."

But purple bougainvillea blossoms add highlights to the trees, and a variety of flowers bloomed around the monument to those "known but to God." The grass is perfectly trimmed along the pathways, and hedges allow privacy from the busy city.

"This is reflective of how Americans take care of those who serve and sacrifice," Mullen said. "There are 24 military cemeteries overseas, and they are all beautifully maintained."

The cemetery was the first American military cemetery established outside the United States in 1851. Congress authorized $10,000 to buy the land and hired people to collect the remains of 750 American soldiers from shallow graves around Mexico City. There was no way at the time to identify the remains, and they all are buried under a white-marble monument.

A further 813 veterans, members of their families and members of the U.S. Diplomatic Service also are buried at the cemetery. The last burial was in 1924.

Peggy Noonan: A Tragedy Of Errors, And An Accounting

Until this column, Peggy Noonan and I were not in charity; she, a self-professed Catholic and conservative, was worshipping at the Altar of Zero. This is the first column in a long time where she has pulled her tongue off 0bama's boots and turned slightly away from the Altar, and back towards reality.

Now, she's no longer a fave read, but she has redeemed herself, a bit. Maybe the scales are falling from her eyes. And, of course, she says good things about the Marines, and I adore the Marines.

Yayy, Peggy.

=================================================================================================

It is late in the morning one day last December.

A plane is in distress, it's lost one engine and now two and it's going down, and people on the ground hear the sound, look up, say, "That's going awful low," and whip out their cellphones. You could see the pictures they took later on the news.

It sounds like Chesley Sullenburger and US Airways Flight 1549, but that was five weeks later. This was the military jet that went down in San Diego; this was the story that ended badly.

Then this week it took a turn. And looked at a certain way, the San Diego story is every bit as big, and elements of it just as deserving of emulation, as Sully saving all souls when he put down in the Hudson.

It's Dec. 8, 2008, 11:11 a.m., and a young Marine pilot takes off from an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, on a routine training flight. The carrier is maybe 90 miles southwest of San Diego. Lt. Dan Neubauer is flying an F/A-18 Hornet. Minutes into the flight, he notices low oil pressure in one of the two engines. He shuts it down. Then the light shows low fuel for the other engine. He's talking to air traffic control and given options and suggestions on where to make an emergency landing. He can go to the naval air station at North Island, the route to which takes him over San Diego Bay, or he can go to the Marine air station at Miramar, with which he is more familiar, but which takes him over heavily populated land. He goes for Miramar. The second engine flames out. About three miles from the runway, the electrical system dies. Lt. Neubauer tries to aim the jet toward a canyon, and ejects at what all seem to agree is the last possible moment.

AP

Dong Yun Yoon arrives with his minister the Rev. Daniel Shin at the crash site where his wife, two daughters and mother-in-law were killed.

The jet crashed nose down in the University City neighborhood of San Diego, hitting two homes and damaging three. Four people, all members of a Korean immigrant family, were killed—36-year-old Youngmi Lee; her daughters, Grace, 15 months, and Rachel, 2 months, and her 60-year-old mother, Seokim Kim.

Lee's husband, a grocer named Dong Yun Yoon, was at work. The day after he'd lost his family, he humbled and awed San Diego by publicly forgiving the pilot—"I know he did everything he could"—and speaking of his faith—"I know God is taking care of my family."

His grace and generosity were staggering, but there was growing local anger at the military. Why was the disabled plane over land? The Marines launched an investigation—of themselves. This Wednesday the results were announced.

They could not have been tougher, or more damning. The crash, said Maj. Gen. Randolph Alles, the assistant wing commander for the Third Marine Aircraft Wing, was "clearly avoidable," the result of "a chain of wrong decisions." Mechanics had known since July of a glitch in the jet's fuel-transfer system; the Hornet should have been removed from service and fixed, and was not. The young pilot failed to read the safety checklist. He relied on guidance from Marines at Miramar who did not have complete knowledge or understanding of his situation. He should have been ordered to land at North Island. He took an unusual approach to Miramar, taking a long left loop instead of a shorter turn to the right, which ate up time and fuel.

Twelve Marines were disciplined; four senior officers, including the squadron commander, were removed from duty. Their military careers are, essentially, over. The pilot is grounded while a board reviews his future.

Residents told the San Diego Union-Tribune that they were taken aback by the report. Bob Johnson, who lived behind the Yoons and barely escaped the crash, said, "The Marines aren't trying to hide from it or duck it. They took it on the chin." A retired Navy pilot who lives less than a block from the crash and had formed, with neighbors, a group to push the Marines for an investigation, and for limiting flights over University City, said after the briefing, "I think we're out of business." In a later story the paper quoted a retired general, Bob Butcher, chairman of a society of former Marine aviators, calling the report "as open and frank a discussion of an accident as I've seen." "It was a lot more candid than many people expected."

This wasn't damage control, it was taking honest responsibility. And as such, in any modern American institution, it was stunning.

The day after the report I heard from a young Naval aviator in predeployment training north of San Diego. He flies a Super Hornet, sister ship to the plane that went down. He said the Marine investigation "kept me up last night" because of how it contrasted with "the buck-passing we see" in the government and on Wall Street. He and his squadron was in range of San Diego television stations when they carried the report's conclusions live. He'd never seen "our entire wardroom crowded around a television" before. They watched "with bated breath." At the end they were impressed with the public nature of the criticism, and its candor: "There are still elements within the government that take personal responsibility seriously." He found himself wondering if the Marines had been "too hard on themselves." "But they are, after all, Marines."

By contrast, he says, when the economy came crashing down, "nowhere did we see a board come out and say: 'This is what happened, these are the decisions these particular people made, and this was the result. They are no longer a part of our organization.' There was no timeline of events or laymen's explanation of how a credit derivative was actually derived. We did not see congressmen get on television with charts and eviscerate their organization and say, 'These were the men who in 2003 allowed Freddie and Fannie unlimited rein over mortgage securities.' Instead we saw . . . everybody against everybody else with no one stepping forth and saying, 'We screwed up…'" There is no one in national leadership who could convincingly "assign blame," and no one "who could or would accept it."

This of course is true, but somehow more stinging when said by a serviceman.

The White House this week was consumed by extreme interest in a celebrated radio critic, reportedly coordinating an attack line with antic Clinton-era political operatives who don't know what time it is. For them it's always the bouncy '90s and anything goes, it's all just a game. President Obama himself contributes to an atmosphere of fear grown to panic as he takes a historic crisis and turns it into what he imagines is a grand opportunity for sweeping change. What we need is stabilization—an undergirding, a restrengthening so things can settle and then rise. What we're given is multiple schemes, and the beginning of a reordering of financial realities between the individual and the state.

The Obama people think they are playing big ball, not small ball, and they no doubt like the feeling of it: "We're making history." But that, ironically, was precisely the preoccupation of the last administration—doing it big, being "consequential," showing history. Watch: Within six months, the Obama administration will be starting to breathe the word "legacy."

What they're up to will win and hold support, at least for a while, until the reaction.

But is it responsible? Or is it only vain?

Anyway, all honor this week to the Marines, who were very much the former, not the latter.

Compare And Contrast: GWB and BH0 Vis-a-Vis The Marines

Most Marines are savvy enough to know who's on their side and who isn't.

It is my belief that Barack feels inferior to members of the military --- and rightly so.  The feeling makes him defensive, which, in turn, causes him to hold himself aloof. 

Please note, it's all about feelings.  Acting based solely on feelings is the hallmark of the liberal.

Different Presidents, A Different Marine Corps: Obama Vs Bush

'Nuff said.

Breaking The Sound Barrier To Bring Destruction Just That Much Faster!

Speculation: Obama's First Hundred Days

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2191215/posts

The phrase “a hundred days” was coined by the Compte de Chabrol in 1815, referring to the time between Napoleon’s escape from Elba, and his defeat. Later, it was used to describe the 3-month honeymoon FDR enjoyed in 1933 with Congress, essentially dictating legislation from the Oval Office. Now, for better or for worse, we grade all of our Presidents on their First Hundred Days.

A lot can happen in a hundred days. Empires can be made and lost. It’s worth taking an early look at Obama’s first month to see what the first hundred could bring, even if the trends may be skewed by the learning-curve a one-term Senator might inevitably face in his new job:

- Joe Biden told the Russians we want to “hit the reset button” with them – ignoring a number of recent provocations on their part.

- Hillary Clinton tried showing off her intelligence – literally – by using sensitive information about North Korea as talking points during her current “listening tour” overseas.

- Secretary Gates and Ambassador Holbrooke publicly contradicted each other on what a rapprochement with the Taliban might mean for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

- Obama outsourced the rushed creation of a massive bill to his Party apparatchiks, and got handed a partisan and flawed result, whose final outcome depended on preserving the vote of a badly compromised Roland Burris, and hip-checking Judd Gregg with a Mephistophelian offer of a Cabinet position. In the meantime, the President’s campaign has failed to pay its debts.

- The Attorney General called Americans “cowards” for not addressing issues of race.

- The new Secretary of the Treasury got the Stock Market to plunge by revealing a mortgage bailout plan remarkable only for it’s lack of vision, theme, and details – which seems all too much a reflection of his own tax returns.

- The new Secretary of Transportation suggested a tax on the number of miles driven by car-owners, which the White House almost immediately repudiated.

- Numerous Democrat legislators warned darkly of resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine, which the President declined to support.

To any observer trying to decipher where this Administration is attempting to go, there’s no wonder that the only impression is incoherence and contradiction. Biden and Clinton seem intent on proving to our allies and adversaries that President Obama is not President Bush – but neither of them can say what that means. In the meantime, the Iranians are launching space vehicles, and building nukes. The Russians are flexing their muscle everywhere, and the Taliban is emerging from their caves.

At home, the only industry likely to be stimulated by the recent porkfest will be the lawyers who will file countless suits over whether the Federal government can force States to take money they don’t want, or whether a handwritten insert from a staffer or lobbyist truly constitutes “the intent of Congress” in the making of law.

Al Sharpton and North Carolina’s James Clyborn found new ways to feign outrage – Sharpton alleging a racial slur to the President as the writer of a bill with which he had almost nothing to do, and Clyborn alleging that refusing federal money (and the strings attached) was tantamount to racism. No wonder people are afraid to talk about race when even non-racial issues can turn up “the race card.”

Emboldened by the bailout of bad loans made by bad banks to bad credit risks, groups like ACORN are breaking into foreclosed homes and declaring squatter’s rights. The Stock Market continues to fall. What’s a leader to do?

Predictably, the President has embarked on the one thing he does best – hitting the road, shaking hands, and making promises. In short: he’s campaigning again, but this time Americans are asking for something more than vague promises of “change.” Several appearances have been annoyingly marred by dissent.

Karl Rove comments that, for as disciplined as the Obama campaign may have been in the past, his team is “winging it” on most issues now. In fact, nothing has really changed: no amount of discipline can offset the lack of a substantive message.

The time for campaign rhetoric is past, and the consequences of this lack of discipline and substance keep piling up. A lot can happen in a hundred days. Here’s hoping our President can figure out how to avoid marching all of us to Waterloo before the time is up.

Okay, I Teared Up At This, Too

I Didn't Just Cry ...

when I saw this trailer.

Several years ago, I posted "Taking Chance" to my black women's mailing list.  Even some of those die-hard military hating, antiwar mavens admitted it made them tear up.

I was weeping uncontrollably after posting it.  And now they've made a movie out of Lt. Colonel Strobl's letter.



By the end of the trailer, I was sobbing. 

I won't be home on February 21st, but I'm going to tape it, and then watch it in small doses.  I can pause it when I start gibbering ...

A Flock Of C-17s

C-17 Globemaster IIIs from the 437th
Airlift Wing and 315th AW at Charleston Air Force Base, SC., fly in
formation Dec. 18 over Charleston S.C., during an Army strategic
brigade airdrop exercise. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Jeremy Lock)

Welcome Home, Captain Lorenza Conner

Georgia Airman's Remains Found in Vietnam; Being Returned to Family

Last Edited: Friday, 03 Oct 2008, 6:30 PM EDT

Created: Friday, 03 Oct 2008, 10:29 AM EDT

Air Force Captain Lorenza Conner of Cartersville was piloting an F4-D Phantom fighter jet when he was shot down on Oct. 27, 1967 during a mission over North Vietnam. The Department of Defense said Conner's remains were recovered in a jungle in 2007. By The Associated Press CARTERSVILLE, Ga. (AP) -- A Georgia airman missing since the Vietnam War is being returned to his family. Air Force Captain Lorenza Conner of Cartersville was piloting an F4-D Phantom fighter jet when he was shot down on Oct. 27, 1967 during a mission over North Vietnam. The Department of Defense said Conner's remains were recovered in a jungle in 2007. Connor, a graduate of Tuskegee University, was 24 at the time of his death. Officials with the Department of Defense said the captain's remains will be returned to the family for burial with full military honors.  The funeral has been set for Saturday, Oct. 25, 2008 at Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Cartersville.

Powered by ScribeFire.