Day: August 15, 2017

Closing Thought–15Aug17

Welcome Home Soldier!

There are many of the so-called “Unknowns”….those soldiers that died in combat and we not identified at the time.  Slowly but slowly DNA is providing much needed identifications.

Recently another soldier has been identified….

In what his family believes was his last letter home to Zanesville, Sgt. Harold Davis wrote that his only dream was to see the United States again.

The letter, addressed to his mother and father, came from Australia. He was stationed there for a time as he fought in the Pacific theater in World War II.

On Feb. 1, 1944, Davis and 10 of his comrades were killed in a plane crash on Mount Kenevi in New Guinea. The remains of the crash weren’t discovered for another 19 years. Officially, Davis was listed as missing in action, and then, a year later, killed in action.

In 1963, the crash was found but individual identification of the men wasn’t possible. So they were given a group burial at Arlington National Cemetery, and Davis’s family believed that chapter was closed.

Everyone is invited to Davis’s funeral procession. The procession is scheduled to leave at 10 a.m. from Delong-Baker & Lanning Funeral Home located at 56 S. Fifth St. and will travel to Zanesville Memorial Park at 1475 Military Road.

Waite hopes people line the streets, waving flags. Davis has been away from Zanesville for more than 70 years. To his remaining family, and to the city, this is a celebration.

“It’s quite an honor to close this chapter,” said Carolyn Waite, Dick’s wife.

He was awarded the Army Good Conduct Medal (posthumous); Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one Silver Service Star and one Bronze Service Star; World War II Victory Medal; Presidential Unit Citation with one Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster; Philippine Defense Ribbon; and Philippine Republic Presidential Unit Citation, according to military records.

His family can now have the closure that they were missing……and may his soul rest in peace.

Now I shut down the operation for the day….see you guys tomorrow with a bag full of more stuff….chuq

Here A Nuke, There A Nuke

More from the world of nukes….chuq

Gulf South Free Press

The mash-up with North Korea should be making Americans nervous…..not that anything will happen today….but we have started down a path that could end badly for all people involved.

Recalling the hysteria of the 1950’s….the “Duck and Cover” exercises the interest in “bomb shelters”….it’s all coming full circle.

How about a quick tour of the world of nukes?

The USA has more nukes than hairs on one’s butt….like wise for Russia….then there is China, Pakistan, India, North Korea and Iran…..let’s not forget France and Israel….my point is there are a lot of nukes just waiting to be used….and we seldom talk about those nukes.

Seriously?

Just how many are there?

There are five nuclear weapon states in the world: China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and the United States. These are officially recognized as possessing such weapons by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

This treaty acknowledges and legitimizes their arsenals…

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Amateurs Need Not Apply

For centuries we have had a professional politician running the country….and that is the why it should be….people with experience, rational, selfless and sane.

But when we slip the bounds of intelligence we wind up with amateurs running things….a government of dunces…..

When Russia ordered 755 Embassy employees to leave the country in retaliation for US sanctions…..some said…..

President Trump, perhaps taking the “glass-half-full” approach a little too far, thanked Vladimir Putin Thursday for his decision to expel hundreds of American diplomats in response to new sanctions on Russia. “I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down our payroll, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m very thankful that he let go of a large number of people because now we have a smaller payroll,” Trump said at his Bedminster, NJ, golf club, per NPR. “There’s no real reason for them to go back,” Trump said. “I greatly appreciate the fact that we’ve been able to cut our payroll. … We’re going to save a lot of money.”

Putin has ordered the expulsion of 755 American diplomats and technical staffers, leaving a total of 455 people in US diplomatic missions in Russia. While it wasn’t clear whether Trump was being entirely serious, his remarks caused anger among the rank and file at the State Department, where Trump has proposed cutting the budget by 29%, Politico reports. “This is so incredibly demoralizing and disrespectful to people serving their country in harm’s way,” a senior diplomat says.

Apparently the president does not realize the Putin CANNOT fire an American employee of the Embassy.  They are not fired but rather will be reassigned.

Then the mash-up with North Korea….when he said “Fire and Fury” will rain down on NK……but then there is more….

President Trump issued one more provocative threat to North Korea Friday morning: “Military solutions are now fully in place,locked and loaded,should North Korea act unwisely,” he tweeted. “Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!” The tweet comes after a Chinese newspaper warned both countries to avoid a pre-emptive strike on the other. It also follows Trump’s meeting with national security officials on Thursday and a doubling down on his earlier “fire and fury” warning.

Will some one please tell this man that war is not a goddamn John Wayne movie or a episode of the Rambo trilogy that is fought with cute slogans.  In war people die….in war people are maimed….. the thought of war should be the last consideration of a president not the first damn thing that enters in his tiny mind.

The World’s First Prime Minister

Does anyone know the name of the world’s first prime minister?

Don’t head for the Google button…..

His name was Armand-Jean du Plessis…..but most people remember him by his other name….Cardinal Richelieu……

Cardinal; French statesman, b. in Paris, 5 September, 1585; d. there 4 December 1642. At first he intended to follow a military career, but when, in 1605, his brother Alfred resigned the Bishopric of Luçon and retired to the Grande Chartreuse, Richelieu obtained the see from Henry IV and withdrew to the country to take up his theological studies under the direction of Bishop Cospéan of Aire. He was consecratedbishop on 17 April, 1607; he was not yet twenty-two years old, although the Brief of Paul Vdated 19 December, 1606, announcing his appointment contains the statement: “in vigesimo tertio aetatis anno tantum constitutus”. Mgr. Lacroix, the historian of Richelieu’s youth, believes that in a journey made to Rome at the end of 1606, Richelieu deceived the pope as to his age, but the incident is still obscure. In his diocese, Richelieu showed great zeal for the conversion of Protestants and appointed the Oratorians and the Capuchins to give missions in all the parishes. Richelieu represented the clergy of Poitou in the States General of 1614, where his political career began. There he was the mouth-piece of the Church, and in a celebrated discourse demanded that bishops and prelates be summoned to the royal councils, that the distribution of ecclesiastical benefices to the laity be forbidden, that the Church be exempt from taxation, that Protestants who usurped churches or had their coreligionists interred in them be punished, and that the Decrees of the Council of Trent be promulgated throughout France. He ended by assuring the young king Louis XIII that the desire of the clergy was to have the royal power so assured that it might be “comme un ferme rocher qui brise tout ce qui gheurte” (as a firm rock which crushes all that opposes it).

Source: CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Cardinal Richelieu

The very idea of a prime minister and his duties originated with Richelieu.

Class dismissed!

A Better Plan

Yes I am talking about Afghanistan….again.

I have been bitch for over 10 years about how we got into yet another horrible war with NO plan to whether win or to go home.  Sounds all so familiar.

You know it is really not that hard for fight a war using the enemies game plan.

Say what?

That’s right….use their game plan against them.

When I was sent to Vietnam I was assigned to the LRRPs for the 9th Infantry Division….we spent a lot of our time in enemy territory and we needed to know what to expect….we all wer4e given a copy of North Vietnamese general’s book of guerilla warfare….People’s War, People’s Army by Gen. Giap.  It outlined the proper way to fight a guerilla war…tactics, logistics, everything they a soldier would need to know.

I bring this up because the same thing could have been done for our fight in Afghanistan.

Again…..say what?

That is right there is a game plan for Taleban fighters…..it is a book written 1995 by the fighters themselves entitled “Afghan Guerilla Warfare” by Ali Ahmad Jalali.  The book gives details on ambushes, logistics, weapons, bombs making, etc, etc….

Now would it nor have been  good idea to familiarize the troops with what to expect when fighting the Taleban?

Arrogance has doomed a many army in the past….and it is pulling the US military in too many directions to ever come out of the country with a win.