:: Gandalf23's Blog ::

:: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 ::

---

"...for we have created a society so long immune from fear and repression, a safe and free and prosperous haven so encompassing that the deepest sense of liberation and victory that this American ever got to experience was when my college team won a stupid football game against the guys up the street."

Go and read the rest of this essay, Victory

Now. Seriously. Go read it.

This material will be on the test.


:: gandalf23 1:23:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Good News! Looks like Mohammed, the Iraqi Lawyer who helped rescue Jessica Lynch has been granted assylum.


:: gandalf23 10:53:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

You have to wonder about some people. Even if he didn't know that the end of the pier was near, he should have seen the boat!




:: gandalf23 10:51:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Well, looks like Robin Williams didn't write that piece at all. Turns out he was just attributed as the author because someone stuck that quote by him at the bottom. Oh well, still a pretty good idea.

Only four more days till dad leaves for Iraq.




:: gandalf23 7:25:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Only three more weeks till the Three-Gun Match. Should be fun. It'll be my first time competing or even seeing one. I'll most likely be shooting my AR-15 (rifle), .45 1911A1 (pistol), and my dad's shotgun (mine is missing it's front and rear sights right now). I would use my 20 gauge, but the barrel is about 8 feet long (well, maybe only 29 inches or so) and it only holds five rounds. I may take my metric FAL instead of the AR-15. Until recently the AR-15 has not been reliable, and while it appears to be so now maybe I shouldn't chance it. Dunno. I would use the 9mm conversion of the AR-15 as it gets rid of the gas system that's been giving me grief and just uses plain old blowback to operate, but we may have to shoot out to 300 yards, and I don't think it'll work that far. It'll still hit what I aim for, but I'm not sure it'll knock down the steel targets at that range.




:: gandalf23 3:03:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan... what we
need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message.

Robin Williams' plan (Hard to argue with this logic!):

I see a lot of people yelling for peace but I have not heard of a
plan for peace. So, here's one plan:

1) The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their
affairs, past and present. We will promise never to "interfere" again.

2) We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with
Germany, South Korea and the Philippines. They don't want us there.
We would station troops at our borders. No more sneaking through
holes in the fence.

3) All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and
leave. We'll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder
will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of who
or where they are. France would welcome them.

4) All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90
day visits unless given a special permit. No one from a terrorist
nation would be allowed in. If you don't like it there, change it
yourself, don't hide here. Asylum would not ever be available to
anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers.

5) No more "Students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they
don't attend classes, they get a "D"; and it's back home, baby.

6) The US will make a strong effort to become self sufficient energy
wise. This will include developing non polluting sources of energy
but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness.
The caribou will have to cope for a while.

7) Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel
for their oil. If they don't like it, we go someplace else.

8) If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the world, we
will not "interfere";. They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds,
rain, cement or whatever they need. Besides, most of what we give
them gets "lost"; or is taken by their army. The people who need
it most get very little, anyway.

9) Ship the UN Headquarters to an island some place. We don't need
the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, it would make a
good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

9b) Use the buildings as replacement for the twin towers.

10) All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no
one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer.

Now, ain't that a winner of a plan?

The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your poor,
your tired, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and
she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?' - Robin Williams


:: gandalf23 2:55:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Too bad they haven't found any ties between Al-Qaeda and Iraq. Oh wait, maybe they have. Looks like the French were sharing intellegence with them as well. Damnit! No wonder they didn't want us going in there. Speaking of the french, what's up with them not wanting to lift sanctions now? They were all for sanctions being lifted up until the war started. Now they aren't. Why?


:: gandalf23 7:24:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

I haven't seen the movie yet, but apparently Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine is not really a documentary. So I guess it's Oscar will be revoked now?


:: gandalf23 1:40:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Interesting:

"According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, between 1973 and 2002 Russia supplied 57 percent of Iraq's arms, France 13 percent, China 12 percent, Brazil 2 percent . . . Brazil? Hang on, where's Washington? Where's London? Well, it turns out Brazil supplied more arms to Iraq than America and Britain combined. London and Washington between them account for less than 2 percent of the Iraqi dictatorship's weapons; the parties that met on Friday [Germany, France, Russia]account for three-quarters.

"Les Anglo-Saxons" are not perfect. But if the alternative is the French, who never met a dictator they didn't like, then Bush and Blair are the best hope of mankind. France, Germany, Russia, Belgium and Canada are not on the side of peace or morality or the Iraqi people. The pictures from the streets of Baghdad make that plain.

On the other hand, they're cheerfully on the side of Total-Fina-Elf, the Western corporation closest to Saddam Hussein. Total had secured development rights to 25 percent of Iraqi oil reserves, a deal that depended on Saddam remaining in power. TotalFinaElf's largest shareholder is a subsidiary of Montreal's Power Corp. Power Corp's co-chief executives are Paul Desmarais Jr., who sits on the Total board, and his brother Andre Desmarais. Andre Desmarais' father-in-law is the prime minister of Canada, Jean Chretien. Canada a refused to join the war to liberate Iraq on "principle."

Got that? For months, the anti-war crowd has insisted that "it's all about oil," that the only reason the Iraqi people were being "liberated" was so that the second biggest oil reserves in the world could be annexed in perpetuity by Dick Cheney and Halliburton and the rest of Bush's Texas oil patch gang. Instead, it turns out that, if it is all about oil, then the principal North American beneficiary of the continued enslavement of the Iraqi people is the family of the Canadian prime minister--that's to say, his daughter and his grandchildren."




:: gandalf23 12:17:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Don Mattingly. Could _not_ think of his name tonight. He was a pitcher for the Yankees, right? I was talking to Wes about that extremely awesome Simpsons episode where the Nuclear power plant softball team does really well. Homer is using a bat he made out of a tree that was hit by lightning (like in The Natural), so everyone else on the team is using "lucky" stuff, like a table leg, or an artificial leg, stuff liek that. Mr. Burns and some other power plant owner have a million dollar wager on their game. Mr. Burns hires ringers for his team, like Daryl Strawberry, Ozzie SMmth, Mike Sosa, Ken Griffey Jr, Jose Cansaco, and Don Mattingly. Man that's one funny episode.

We were discussing that episode, which I can not belive that Wes has not seen, because Wes had mentioned that the best baseball movie ever was Bull Durham. I disagreed, I said it was The Natural, with Robert Redford. He said, well, the baseball hall of fame considers Bull Durham the best baseball movie, and then he mentioned that this was the 15th year anniversary of the film and that Tim Robbins and Susan Surandon we asked not to come to the showing this year, due to their anti-American outbursts lately. So Kevin Costner, a staunch Republican, said he also would not go, if they were not allowed to come. Stirred up quite a bru-ha-ha, or so I'm told. Dunno, it's the hall of fame's party, and if they don't want to invite Tim and Susan, that's their call. But they could have invited them and just asked them to keep their comments to baseball and Bull Durham related topics.


:: gandalf23 12:04:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Humiliation Follows Baghdad's Collapse Both Pro-West and Anti-American Arabs Voice Despair. Good article.

Now for something a bit lighter:

BAGHDAD, IRAQ—Reflecting on his time as Iraq's president in a pre-taped television address, Saddam Hussein expressed pride Tuesday that, despite the success of the U.S. invasion and the civilian casualties it has inflicted, he still has killed far more Iraqis than President Bush.


Above: Saddam greets admirers during his late-'90s Iraqi-killing heyday.
"George Bush believes he is so powerful, so strong," Saddam said. "But even with all of his bombs and missiles and Marines, he has not even come close to killing as many Iraqis as I did."

While estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed by the U.S. ranges from 500 all the way to 10,000, Saddam and his associates are believed to have murdered somewhere between 100,000 and 250,000 civilians since 1968.

"The international press counts off on their fingers every Iraqi that dies by Bush's missiles," Saddam said. "The papers make a big story of it when six Iraqi civilians are killed by American GIs near Basra, or when 15 Iraqi civilians are killed in air strikes on Baghdad. What paltry death tolls. I cannot even begin to add up how many died in Basra upon my orders, how many in Baghdad I killed with my own gun."

Throughout his presidency, Saddam said he routinely had political opponents arrested and put to death without trial, sometimes along with their entire families. He also summarily executed countless citizens for crimes as minor as petty theft and "monopolizing rationed goods."

"The race between myself and Bush is not even close," Saddam said. "I easily killed 100 times more men than Bush, not to mention women and children. That's right—women and children."

In his suppression of the Shiite Muslims alone, Saddam said he can lay claim to thousands more Iraqi kills than Bush.

"My officers did more damage rounding up students at [the Shiite Muslim theological institution] al-Hawza al-'Ilmiya in al-Najaf than the entire American 3rd Infantry did roaring through all of southern Iraq in their billion-dollar tanks," Saddam said. "And my men did not put down their guns just because someone asked for mercy. They finished the job like soldiers. They did not serve food to their enemies as if they were women at a picnic."

Saddam boasted that the 1988 Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds added another 50,000 to his tally.

"In Anfal, we rounded up the battle-age men and put them in front of firing squads," Saddam said. "Even today, when you travel through rural Kurdistan, you notice the high proportion of women. That is not because of the U.S. Army. That is not because of the 101st Airborne Division. It is because of me—Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, the Glorious Leader, the Anointed One, Direct Descendant of the Prophet, Great Uncle to the People."

In his campaigns against the Kurds, Saddam crushed unrest with chemical-weapons strikes against civilian populations—a tactic he said Bush "would never have the nerve to do."

"I remember the day my cousin [Commander of Southern Forces] Ali [Hassan al-Majid] dropped chemical weapons on the town of Halabja," said Saddam, referring to the March 1988 slaughter of 5,000 Kurds. "That is how he got his nickname, 'Chemical Ali.' Much better nickname than 'Dubya,' wouldn't you say?"

"The total number of Kurds we killed could be as high as 110,000, and that is not just an idle boast," Saddam said. "The United Nations Sub-Committee on Human Rights has been keeping extensive records of my actions for years."

In fairness to Bush, Saddam conceded that he has had a significant head start killing Iraqis, beginning his political career in the late '60s as a torturer for the Ba'ath party.

"Back in 1969, I turned the execution of 14 alleged anti-government plotters into a major public event, hanging them in a town square and leaving their bodies on display," Saddam said. "Already everyone knew my name, and this was still a good 10 years before I would carry out the wave of executions that signaled my rise to power."

In addition to killings, Saddam said he bests Bush in the torture department.

"There is a certain type of torture, which is called al-Khaygania—so named in honor of its creator, former security director al- Khaygani—in which the victim is handcuffed and suspended on a piece of wood between two chairs like a chicken," Saddam said. "Then, we attach an electric wire to the man's penis and toes. Can you see Bush doing this? Can you see Bush smashing a man's skull with a brick? Can you see him calling for the deaths of his own family members? Pah, he is too weak."

Saddam closed with harsh words for his American rival.

"I recently heard a critic of President Bush say he is a dictator," Saddam said. "That made me laugh. George Bush, a dictator! My sons Uday and Qusay showed more viciousness at 10 years of age."

"Bush has a long way to go before he can match me," Saddam added. "My hands are red with the blood of the innocent. His are merely a light pink."


:: gandalf23 11:07:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

I don't know if this is true or not, but the article just cracks me up. I got to the part where he says "--and because he was addicted..." and just bust a gut laughing. (third paragraph from the end) hehehehehehe. Man, that's some funny stuff. Or is it just me?
[edited to add:]
Looks like the story is a fake. Dang. But it sure is funny.

Another saddom related site:

Saddam's Head - the official website for the Saddam head from the statue in Firdo's Square




:: gandalf23 5:59:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

What a cool comercial! Here's how they did it.




:: gandalf23 5:48:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Edmund Burke's statement: "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing." Are these folks really "good" who passively sit by and let evil triumph, disapproving of it all the while?

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." --Thomas Jefferson: his motto

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and Patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight and nothing that he cares about more than his personal saftey is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.- John S. Mill


:: gandalf23 10:10:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

This sounds promising. Making oil out of turkey guts and other organic garbage.
:: gandalf23 7:49:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

The Microwave Mentality Wants It's Smoking Gun is a pretty good response to Weapons, Lies and the United States over on Kuro5hin.


:: gandalf23 2:38:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Speaking of Earth Day, if the Kyoto Treaty is all about lowering greenhouse emmisions, why don't they mention coal fires? Looks like the ones in China alone put out more CO2 than all the automobiles in the US!


:: gandalf23 1:52:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

It's Earth Day today, think I'll go test drive a Canyonero. :)


:: gandalf23 1:44:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Found this at Lt. Smash's website

The following have given their lives to liberate Iraq:

United States of America

Army Pvt. Johnny Brown, 21, Troy, Ala., vehicle accident
Army Spc. Thomas Arthur Foley III, 23, of Dresden, Tenn., grenade accident
Army Pfc. Joseph P. Mayek, 20, of Rock Springs, Wyo., weapons accident
Marine Cpl. Armando Ariel Gonzalez, 25, of Hialeah, Fla., vehicle accident
Army Spc. Richard A. Goward, 32, of Midland, Mich., vehicle accident
Army Spc. Gil Mercado, 25, of Paterson, N.J., weapons accident
Marine Cpl. Jesus A. Gonzalez, 22, Indio, Calif., combat
Marine Staff Sgt. Riayan A. Tejeda, 26, New York, N.Y., combat
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeff Bohr, 39, San Clemente, Calif., combat
Army Sgt. 1st Class John W. Marshall, 50, Los Angeles, combat
Army Cpl. Henry L. Brown, 22, Natchez, Miss. combat
Marine Pfc. Juan Guadalupe Garza, 20, Temperance, Mich., combat
Army Sgt. 1st Class John W. Marshall, 50, Los Angeles, combat
Army Pfc. Jason M. Meyer, 23, Swartz Creek, Mich., combat
Air Force Staff Sgt. Scott D. Sather, 29, Clio, Mich., combat
Army Staff Sgt. Robert A. Stever, 36, Pendleton, Ore., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Andrew Julian Aviles, 18, Palm Beach, Fla., combat
Army Staff Sgt. Lincoln Hollinsaid, 27, Malden, Ill., combat
Army 2nd Lt. Jeffrey J. Kaylor, 24, Clifton, Va., combat
Marine Cpl. Jesus Martin Antonio Medellin, 21, Fort Worth, Texas, combat
Army Pfc. Anthony S. Miller, 19, San Antonio, combat
Army Spc. George A. Mitchell, 35, Rawlings, Md., combat
Army Pfc. Gregory P. Huxley Jr., 19, Forestport, N.Y., combat
Army Pvt. Kelley S. Prewitt, 24, Alabama, combat.
Army Sgt. Stevon Booker, 34, Apollo, Pa., combat
Army Spc. Larry K. Brown, 22, of Jackson, Miss., combat
Marine 1st Sgt. Edward Smith, 38, Vista., Calif., combat
Army Capt. Tristan N. Aitken, 31, State College, Pa., combat
Army Pfc. Wilfred D. Bellard, 20, Lake Charles, La., vehicle accident
Army Spc. Daniel Francis J. Cunningham, 33, Lewiston, Maine, vehicle accident
Marine Capt. Travis Ford, 30, Oceanside, Calif., helicopter crash
Marine Cpl. Bernard G. Gooden, 22, Mount Vernon, N.Y., combat
Army Pvt. Devon D. Jones, 19, San Diego, vehicle fell into ravine
Marine 1st Lt. Brian M. McPhillips, 25, Pembroke, Mass., combat
Marine Sgt. Duane R. Rios, 25, Hammond, Ind., combat.
Marine Capt. Benjamin Sammis, 29, Rehoboth, Mass., helicopter crash
Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, 33, of Tampa, Fla., combat
Marine Pfc. Chad E. Bales, 20, Coahoma, Texas, non-hostile accident
Army Sgt. Wilbert Davis, 40, Hinesville, Ga., vehicle accident
Marine Cpl. Mark A. Evnin, 21, South Burlington, Vt., combat
Army Capt. Edward J. Korn, 31, Savannah, Ga., combat
Army Staff Sgt. Nino D. Livaudais, 23, Ogden, Utah, combat
Army Spc. Ryan P. Long, 21, Seaford, Del., combat
Army Spc. Donald S. Oaks Jr., 20, Harborcreek, Pa., combat
Army Sgt. 1st Class Randy Rehn, 36, Longmont, Colo., combat
Army Capt. Russell B. Rippetoe, 27, Arvada, Colo., combat
Army Sgt. Todd J. Robbins, 33, Hart, Mich., combat
Marine Cpl. Erik H. Silva, 22, Chula Vista, Calif., combat
Army Capt. James F. Adamouski, 29, Springfield, Va., helicopter crash
Marine Lance Cpl. Brian E. Anderson, 26, Durham, N.C., non-hostile accident
Army Spc. Mathew Boule, 22, Dracut, Mass., helicopter crash
Army Master Sgt. George A. Fernandez, 36, El Paso, Texas
Marine Pfc. Christian D. Gurtner, 19, Ohio City, Ohio, weapons accident
Army Chief Warrant Officer Erik Halvorsen, 40, Bennington, Vt., helicopter crash.
Army Chief Warrant Officer Scott Jamar, 32, Granbury, Texas, helicopter crash
Army Sgt. Michael Pedersen, 26, Flint, Mich., helicopter crash
Army Chief Warrant Officer Eric A. Smith, 42, Rochester, N.Y., helicopter crash
Navy Lt. Nathan D. White, 30, Mesa, Ariz., F/A-18C Hornet lost over Iraq
Army Sgt. Jacob L. Butler, 24, Wellsville, Kan., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Joseph B. Maglione, 22, Lansdale, Pa., weapons accident
Army Spc. Brandon Rowe, 20, Roscoe, Ill., combat
Army Spc. William A. Jeffries, 39, Evansville, Ind., illness
Marine Capt. Aaron J. Contreras, 31, Sherwood, Ore., helicopter crash
Marine Sgt. Michael V. Lalush, 23, Troutville, Va., helicopter crash
Marine Sgt. Brian McGinnis, 23, St. Georges, Del., helicopter crash
Marine Staff Sgt. James Cawley, 41, Layton, Utah, combat
Army Cpl. Michael Curtin, 23, Howell, N.J., suicide attack
Army Pfc. Diego Fernando Rincon, 19, Conyers, Ga., suicide attack
Army Pfc. Michael Russell Creighton Weldon, 20, Palm Bay, Fla., suicide attack
Marine Lance Cpl. William W. White, 24, New York, vehicle accident
Army Sgt. Eugene Williams, 24, Highland, N.Y, suicide attack
Marine Sgt. Fernando Padilla-Ramirez, 26, San Luis, Ariz., combat
Army Sgt. Roderic A. Solomon , 32, Fayetteville, N.C., vehicle accident
Marine Gunnery Sgt. Joseph Menusa, 33, Tracy, Calif., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus A. Suarez Del Solar, 20, Escondido, Calif., combat
Marine Maj. Kevin G. Nave, 36, White Lake Township, Mich., vehicle accident
Navy Corpsman Michael Vann Johnson Jr., 25, Little Rock, Ark., combat
Marine Pfc. Francisco A. Martinez Flores, 21, Los Angeles, combat
Marine Staff Sgt. Donald C. May, Jr., 31, Richmond, Va., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Patrick T. O'Day, 20, Santa Rosa, Calif., combat
Marine Cpl. Robert M. Rodriguez, 21, New York, combat
Air Force Maj. Gregory Stone, 40, Boise, Idaho, grenade attack
Marine Cpl. Evan James, 20, La Harpe, Ill., drowned in canal
Marine Sgt. Bradley S. Korthaus, 29, Davenport, Iowa, drowned in canal
Army Spc. Gregory P. Sanders, 19, Hobart, Ind., combat
Army Spc. Jamaal R. Addison, 22, Roswell, Ga., combat
Marine Sgt. Michael E. Bitz, 31, Ventura, Calif., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Brian Rory Buesing, 20, Cedar Key, Fla., combat
Army Sgt. George Edward Buggs, 31, Barnwell, S.C., combat
Marine Pfc. Tamario D. Burkett, 21, Buffalo, N.Y., combat
Army 1st Sgt. Robert J. Dowdy, 38, Cleveland, combat
Army Pvt. Ruben Estrella-Soto, 18, El Paso, Texas, combat
Marine Lance Cpl. David K. Fribley, 26, Fort Myers, Fla., combat
Marine Cpl. Jose A. Garibay, 21, Costa Mesa, Calif., combat
Marine Cpl. Jorge A. Gonzalez, 20, Los Angeles, combat
Army Pfc. Howard Johnson II, 21, Mobile, Ala., combat
Marine Staff Sgt. Phillip A. Jordan, 42, Enfield, Conn., combat
Army Spc. James Kiehl, 22, Comfort, Texas, combat
Army Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Villareal Mata, 35, Pecos, Texas, combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Patrick R. Nixon, 21, Gallatin, Tenn., combat
Army Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 22, Tuba City, Ariz., combat
Marine 2nd Lt. Frederick E. Pokorney Jr., 31, Tonopah, Nev., combat
Marine Sgt. Brendon Reiss, 23, Casper, Wyo., combat
Marine Cpl. Randal Kent Rosacker, 21, San Diego, combat
Army Pvt. Brandon Sloan, 19, Bedford Heights, Ohio, combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Thomas J. Slocum, 22, Thornton, Colo., combat
Army Sgt. Donald Walters, 33, Kansas City, Mo., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Michael J. Williams, 31, Yuma, Ariz., combat
Marine Pfc. Tamario D. Burkett, 21, Buffalo, N.Y., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Donald John Cline, 21, Sparks, Nev., combat
Marine Pvt. Jonathan L. Gifford, 30, Decatur, Ill., combat
Marine Pvt. Nolen R. Hutchings, 19, Boiling Springs, S.C., combat
Navy Lt. Thomas Mullen Adams, 27, La Mesa, Calif., helicopter collision
Marine Lance Cpl. Eric J. Orlowski, 26, Buffalo, N.Y., machine gun accident
Army Capt. Christopher Scott Seifert, 27, Easton, Pa., grenade attack
Army Reserve Spc. Brandon S. Tobler, 19, Portland, Ore., vehicle accident
Marine Maj. Jay Thomas Aubin, 36, Waterville, Maine, helicopter crash
Marine Capt. Ryan Anthony Beaupre, 30, St. Anne, Ill., helicopter crash
Marine 2nd Lt. Therrel S. Childers, 30, Harrison County, Miss., combat
Marine Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez, 28, Los Angeles, combat
Marine Cpl. Brian Matthew Kennedy, 25, Houston, helicopter crash
Marine Staff Sgt. Kendall Damon Waters-Bey, 29, Baltimore, helicopter crash
Marine Lance Cpl. Thomas A. Blair, 24, Broken Arrow, Okla., combat
Marine Sgt. Nicolas M. Hodson, 22, Smithville, Mo., vehicle accident

United Kingdom

Fusilier Kelan John Turrington, combat
Lance Cpl. Ian Malone, Dublin, Ireland, combat
Piper Christopher Muzvuru, combat
Lance Cpl. Karl Shearer, killed in accident involving light armored vehicle
Staff Sgt. Chris Muir, Romsey, England, killed while disposing of explosives
Marine Christopher R. Maddison, combat
Lance Cpl. Shaun Andrew Brierley, road accident
Lance Cpl. Matty Hull, combat; friendly fire
Cpl. Stephen John Allbutt, Stoke-on-Trent, England, tank hit by friendly fire
Trooper David Jeffrey Clarke, Littleworth, England, tank hit by friendly fire
Sgt. Steven Mark Roberts, Bradford, England, combat
Lance Cpl. Barry Stephen, Perth, Scotland, combat
Sapper Luke Allsopp, London, combat
Staff Sgt. Simon Cullingworth, Essex, England, combat
Flight Lt. Kevin Barry Main, jet shot down by friendly fire
Flight Lt. David Rhys Williams, jet shot down by friendly fire
Lt. Philip Green, helicopter collision
Lt. Marc Lawrence, helicopter collision
Lt. Antony King, Helston, England, helicopter collision
Lt. Philip West, Budock Water, England, helicopter collision
Lt. James Williams, Falmouth, England, helicopter collision
Lt. Andrew Wilson, helicopter collision
Color Sgt. John Cecil, Plymouth, England, helicopter crash
Lance Bombardier Llewelyn Karl Evans, Llandudno, Wales, helicopter crash
Capt. Philip Stuart Guy, helicopter crash
Marine Sholto Hedenskog, helicopter crash
Sgt. Les Hehir, Poole, England, helicopter crash
Operator Mechanic Second Class Ian Seymour, helicopter crash
Warrant Officer Second Class Mark Stratford, helicopter crash
Maj. Jason Ward, helicopter crash

“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free”
-Battle Hymn of the Republic


:: gandalf23 8:09:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Iraqi Christians celebrated Easter, Shiite pilgrims made their way to Karbala for the first time in years, and Iraqi men protested the US after Friday's prayers. Yet no one was arrested, tried, imprisioned, tortured, fondled, mutilated, or executed for any of this. And people said that we wouldn't make any difference over there.


:: gandalf23 8:06:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Another horrible picture to come out of the war.



We're going to have to arm the new Iraqi Police and Army with _something_. Or at the very least we could sell these to a semi-friendly nation for some cash. Or sell them as parts for the US market (75% of the parts can be used to make legal firearms in the US). Heck, we could even sell them to the Chechens and get back in the good graces of the Islamic comunity (Russia is already upset with us).


:: gandalf23 6:33:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

You can make the Iraqi Information Minister say whatever you want. Kinda funny. Hmm..might be down right now. It was working earlier though.


:: gandalf23 3:36:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Got this email today, thought it was nice:



Osama Bin Laden, your time is short;
We'd rather you die, than come to court.
Why are you hiding if it was in God's name?
You're just a punk with a turban; a pathetic shame.



I have a question, about your theory and laws;
"How come you never die for the cause?"

Is it because you're a coward who counts on others?
Well, here in America, we stand by our brothers.

As is usual, you failed in your mission;
If you expected pure chaos, you can keep on wishing
Americans are now focused and stronger than ever;
Your death has become our next endeavor.



What you tried to kill, doesn't live in our walls;
It's not in buildings or shopping malls.

If all of our structures came crashing down;
It would still be there, safe and sound.

Because pride and courage can't be destroyed;
Even if the towers leave a deep void.



We'll band together and fill the holes
We'll bury our dead and bless their souls.



But then our energy will focus on you;
And you'll feel the wrath of the
Red, White and Blue.



So slither and hide like a snake in the grass;
Because America's coming to
kick your ass!!!



:: gandalf23 3:33:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Wanna be a cop in Iraq? Minimum pay is 80k a year!

On another note, we need a couple of these for our refigerators out back at work. At least then they'd look useful.




:: gandalf23 12:48:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Well, I'm back.

Good to be back.

Stopped off in Amsterdam on the way home. Went into the city and walked a round a bit. Beautiful day, it was about 50-60 degrees. Went to the Anne Frank museum. There was a huge line. I'm glad I went, but ugh, it was depressing as all get out. 10 or 12 people, crammed into that tiny space for two years, never going outside, not moving or doing anything during the day for fear that someone would hear them. Afraid that at any moment the SD would tear down the door and take them away. And then to go through all that and die a month before being liberated by the allies. So sad.

It just kills me that someone thought the right thing to do was to turn them in. Who thinks like that? And this was in relatively Jew friendly Holland, where the ruling monarch went out in public wearing a Star of David just like the Jewish people were required to.

I know that the Franks treid to flee first but were unable to, so they went into hiding. At least they did not meekly go to the camps like so many others. But I don't understand why they, or more people, didn't fight back. Well, actually, I do understand. They had no weapons. This is the reason that everyone who wants one should be able to own a rifle, shotgun, pistol, whatever, so that when something like this happens, you can fight against it. Maybe the outcome would have been the same, maybe the same number of people would've been killed, but at least they would have gone out fighting on their feet and not naked and gassed in a shower after months of degrading, inhumane conditions and forced labor.

Oh yeah, Happy Easter everybody!


:: gandalf23 8:58:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Mom, Just click the comment button ONCE!

Patience is a good thing.


-Mike

:: gandalf23 3:28:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Howdy all,

In the lounge at the Dubai Airport right now. Flight was scheduled to leave at 12:10am, now is moved to 2:25, but is delayed till 3 something. Will probably still get into Amsterdam with enough time to catch connecting flight, but not enough to leave airport and head to museums. :(

Am looking forward to being back in the US. Van is happy as he was just handed a check for a large sum of money (not all they owe us, but a good chunk). Of course, the check could bounce. :) I suggested that we stop by their bank on the way out of town to cash the check. :)

See y'all soon.


-Mike
Easter, 2:14am



:: gandalf23 3:24:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Severe storm hits UAE



:: gandalf23 11:12:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Spent all day on the boat today. Fired up the system in automatic mode (finally, after much "No, Mr. Mike, we can not do that") and.... it crapped out. grrr....This is what happens when you are only able to test the sday before you leave. Found out at noon that the boat would be leaving for a job at 3pm. We just left the boat, it's after 9:30 pm, the main engine's starter is kaput, so it may not be going anywhere for a while. Which is good, as that means I can work on it tommorrw, but bad for the client.

Van said today that if they do not pay what he is owed we are never coming back or doing any more work for them. Of course, he then said he would submit a bid for replacing the gear shifters on one of their other boats. So who knows.

Had awesome Italian food last night, may go to a Japanese place tonight for sushi, depends on when they close.

-Mike
April 18, 2003, 9:50pm
:: gandalf23 10:56:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Howdy everybody!

Well, we left for the airport at about 9am on Thursday, got there about 9:30. Took about 2 hours to get through the check-in line and through security. The guy in front of us was not allowed to bring a T-square with him (the security guy kept making tomahawk motions with it, like it could be used as a deadly weapon). He wanted to put it in his checked bagagge, but it was too big to fit, and they wanted $10 for a cardboard box! He ended up just stuffing it into the luggage, but it stuck out quite a ways and I am sure it was broken during the trip. My pepper spray and stun gun went though fine (in checked bags). And they did not question me about my sock full of batteries either (in my carry-on), so I was alright.

First stop was Detroit. The new Detroit airport is really nice. The ceilings are huge (unlike DFw) and there is even an electric train inside the terminal to carry you around! Plus they have giant TV screens showing CNN so that you can catch up with what's going on in the world and a rather nice selection of shops and restraunts/fast food places. If you are ever there, try the Japanese place. After about an hour we got on the flight to Amsterdam.





As usual, I was not able to sleep on the plane. This time we went coach, not 1st class. Lemme tell you, coach sucks. Not so bad going to Detroit, but for crossing the pond, it whomps big time. Really, it is impossible for me to stay polite and express my true feelings for the situation. I spent eight or nine hours with my shoulders touching other people's shoulders, my legs touching theirs, and my kness getting bashed in by the guy in front of me, Who also had a huge head, so I was unable to see most of the in-flight movies (there were two movies on the entire nine hour ordeal, The Emperors club and Analize That). The meal was ok, but we had to develop this synchronized eating technique. If we didn't sychronize, we'd end up with elbows and ankles in each other's faces. Very messy and uncomfortable. I don't know why the seats in coach recline, as they only reclined about 1 degree, and that one degree does not help at all. I am 6 foot tall, that's average height, but I was squished like a squishything is a situation that causes it to become squished playdough in a preschool. (*work on this one later*)

Anyway, by the time we got to Amsterdam I was glad to be out of the plane. I was looking forward to exiting the airport and heading to the Anne Frank and Van Goeh Museums. But the temperature outside was five degrees C, which is about negative a jillion in Texas temperature, and as I was in short sleeves with no coat or anything I decided to stay in the much warmer airport. Also the line to go through customs was astronomical in length. there must have been 600 people in line. So Van and I wandered around and we ended up hanging out at the Sandwich Island, where we drank $3 a glass orange juice and tried to sleep. But sleep was arriving in short, 2 minute intervals, if that even. Then after about eight hours we got onto another plane headed for Dubai.



This plane was a 747-300, and we were lucky in that it was not completely full like the last flight and we could spread out a bit. This made all the difference in the world. Out tickets said there were three people on our row of three, but luckily there was only one guy on the row behind, so Van got the aisle seat there. There was enough elbow room this flight, but it was still uncomfortable and sleep came in shot intervals, like when you are real tired and are falling asleep while driving and you nod and jerk, nod and jerk. Or like chemistry class. Kinda like that. Think I slept for about 30 minutes on the 7 hour flight. Flight was a bit longer this time that usual as we had to avoid Iraqi airspace. I looked out he window a few times while we were near the border of Iraq but never saw any flashes or anything.

Got into Dubai at about 11pm local time (2pm Texas time) Friday and then we drove to Abu Dhabi. This drive took about 2 hours, then we checked in to the Al Ain Palace Hotel and I got to sleep about 2:30am. Woke up to the phone ringing at 9am. We had breakfast and then went to the boat. Unpacked some equipment and then headed into the office. There we learned that the boat was going on a job that night and we were asked to go with it to work on the system while the boat was sailing there and back. this would be for aproximately 10 days.

Soooo...no living in the hotel for us, back onto the boat we went and moved into the hospital. This is the room that I was in originally back in 2001. Very tiny, but better than what most of the crew has. It's aproximately 7 feet by six feet by about two inches taller than I am. The bunk bed takes up 6 by 3 feet of that. There is a bench along one 3 foot wall, and a table that is about 4 feet by 1.5 feet. We both layed down for a nap about 4pm and I did not wake up till about 9pm. We missed lunch and dinner. Watched a really bad movie with the guys in the mess (missed the begining so don't know the name, but it was in English with Arabic subtitles, so I watched it), then watched Kiss the Girls. Then they watched an old Sharon Stone movie Blood and Sand and it was _bad_, so went to sleep about 1am. Well, went onto the bed at 1am. Did not actually sleep till 2. Then woke up at three when they did the anchor (placed the anchor? layed the anchor? weighed the anchor? don't know the proper term). This was incredibly noisy. You know the noise that a roller coaster makes as it is climbing up a hill? Multiply that by about 5 and then imagine that it woke you up in the wee hours of the morning and you have no idea where you are. That's what it was like. Sorta.

Today we have been working a bit, but they do not want us to mess with the system until after the job, which makes sense, but then why are we here? Had eggs and corned beef for breakfast. Think the corned beef did me in. That and the sea-sickness. The boat moves much less now that it is full of 80,000 gallons of acid and a bajillion gallons of diesel and water, but it still rocks just enough to turn me green at semi-regular intervals. In fact, I'm feeling a bit pekid right now, so think I may lay down for a bit.

Well, slept through dinner,it's 8pm now, but tummy is feeling a bit better now. Glad for that. Not really hungry, may get some bread in a while, maybe some fruit juice. Gonna skip eggs and corned beef from now on. We are currently tied up to the rig.

Don't know when they are planning on doing the job, but since it is "soon" can't mess around with the equipment, sooo.....am writing this and listening to some General Public ("Tenderness", from the "Clueless soundtrack, great song!). Am also re-reading the manual I wrote the last time I was here,
"What To Do when Things Go Wrong" so that I'll be a bit more familliar with the system when I actually get to play on it.

Not sure when I'll get to post this, we have a cell phone, but no internet access out here, plus even the cell phone is not working so well. Van called his wife a while ago and she was unable to tell who it was, so I didn't even try to call anyone. I'd meant to post the first part of this at the hotel, but things kinda got crazy quickly with us moving to the boat, so I was unable to.

In the states most rig crews work two weeks on, two weeks off, I think. Here it is 28 days on, 28 days off. Depending on your position you get flown (at company expense) back home either every six months, or every other month. Not too bad, but the work is very dangerous, even in the states, and over here the value on human life is a bit less than ours. There is a lot of fatalism over here, if it's your time to go it's your time and there is no use trying to be safer as it will not help and only cause more work.

Talked with a few guys about the stuff going on in Iraq, starting with our driver from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. We spent most of the ride talking about the war, and Iraq, and Arab leaders in general. I expected, from what I had been reading in the states, that everyone would be a bit upset at us and feel
angry at us for invading a muslim state and going on a "crusade" or something like that. And, if we'd arrived last week, that would have been true.

But, ever since Bagdahd started to fall and the looting began, they've been able to see (on Arabic tv as well as BBC [ none of them watch CNN]) the true living conditions of the Iraqis. Even the Arab media had official minders telling them what they could and could not show, and who they were allowed to speak to. Once the minders disappeared, they were able to interview avarage Iraqis and get honest answers. One man was interviewed as he was looting a chair from some ministry, he was asked why he was looting from his government, and the man said "I have no chair at home" Everyone saw this and mentioned it. As one guy said "They have no mobile, so satelite, no internet, no water, no electricity, no food. How to live like this and be a man?"

Most of the guys are very hopefull about the future, but also a bit worried, as Arab leaders always start out "good" and then end up staying forever and going "bad." They hope that the US will, while not ruling Iraq, at least be able to provide some basis for a good life in Iraq. They are not super excitied about "democracy" as the only real world example they have is Israel, but they hope that Iraq can become like the UAE, which, given the amount of oil there, it probably can. In the UAE there are very good schools, excellent roads (I'd say in general, better than the states), there is a degree of freedom here that, while much less than in the states, is still an order of magnitude better than what they've got back home. Here there are things to do, movies, cafes, shops, you can buy a car, you can get a nice flat, good furniture, electronic goods are readily available, clothing is available, food is plentiful. It's run by the king who is a _benevolent_ dictator.

The guys on the boat would be very happy if Iraq was run by someone like the King here in the UAE, or the Prince in Dubai. Also, everyone has said that they would like to see a leader who has a set number of years, then is out. They are amazed, amazed!, that Clinton stepped down, and that Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton are still alive. The driver, Mahmoud, even said something to effect that the only good thing about Israel was that their leadership changed frequently and without bloodshed.

Several guys asked me how many anti-war protesters have been killed by the government. I said none, as far as I knew. I don't know if they believed me or not. They all seemed to think that everyone in America was against the war and out protesting. I tried to explain that I thought most Americans did not want a war, but thought it was the right thing to do, we didn't see any other choice. I explained that a lot of the protesters were students or others without jobs, as most people with a job are not able to take off to protest, and that if you could get a chance to not go to school and instead hang out with some friends shouting and getting on tv, wouldn't you do that? They understood that because most of the protesters in Arab countries are students and the vast unemployed.

One of the guys on another boat, EW 1 or 3, don't reemmber which, is Iraqi. He has been unable to go back to Iraq for 10 years or so. He has to meet his family in Jordan when he wants to see them, and even then not all are allowed to go, I guess to make sure that they don't run off with him. He is veryvery happy that Saddam is out of power and is looking forward to a new Iraq. There are apparently a lot of Iraqis living in the UAE. Hopefully they can go back home now and bring with them a desire to build a better Iraq.

Some of the guys are fishing now, so I may go hang out with them. Although you need a lawn chair and a six pack to fully enjoy fishing :)

Talk to y'all later


-Mike
April 13, 2003

---

Salem Everybody!

The sea is angry today, my friends. Angry like an old man trying to return soup at a deli.

Do you know how long it has taken me to work in that quote from Seinfield? :) Anyway, the sea really is rather angry today. The waves are still under 3 meters, but still. Looking off the stern of the boat (the backside) towards the rig, we are moving quite a bit, twisting and turning and it almost looks like we are moving the rig itself. There is a lot of mass on this boat right now, so we may be moving the rig a bit, but it may be an optical illusion. Either way, we are moving around a lot more than I would wish.

The job started at 6:30am. I woke up around 7am and have been hanging out in the control room. Passed on eggs and corned beef today, just had bread and strawberry jelly. Think that was the right decision.

Wow. We are reallyreally moving right now. Ok, it's better now. Remember that I Love Lucy where they are on the boat? Or maybe it was a Three Stooges. Anyway, everything is sliding from one side of the room to the other. It was kinda like that just now.

Anyway, the job is 10 hours of boredom, spiked by brief moments of sheer terror. Like when I first went into the control room today, there was a lot of smoke and such coming from one of the pumps. Turns out that the liquid nitrogen pump's air intake had collapsed, which is a bad thing. So we had to shut down the job and fix it (well, not me and Van we, but we the boat's crew), which was tricky as there was liquid nitrogen involved and acid and such. I got to don a hard hat (which is sooo silly, if anything really fell 100 feet off the rig a hard hat is not going to do anything)and wander around a bit on the working end of the boat. Wow, rough waves. Lost my train of thought.

Let's see...wandering around...they are using two high pressure pumps on this job, could probably get away with only one as the coil tubing that the stuff is going down into the hole in is very small in diameter, so there is not much volume going down at any given time, maybe 1 or 2 barrels a minute. Of course, the pressure is something crazy like 5,000 psi, but the volume is low. Wandered over to the mix tanks to see them in use. An inhibitor is added so that the HCL does not eat away the pipes. And to keep fumes from building up they open the tank's hatches so that you can see fumes coming out. I stayed away from that area. Anyway, they got the air intake fixed, but somehow acid had gotten past two check valves (one way valves) and into the nitrogen lines. So they were very worried about that, but everything seems ok now. Hopefully there was enough inhibitor in the mix to take care of it.

It's very foggy today. Visibility is fine on the boat and even to the rig, but we can't see any other rigs or platforms out there, and we are in a area with lots of them. I am told this is rare. Maybe caused by pollution, maybe just fog, no one seems to know for sure.

Well, the waves are picking up a bit now, so I'm going to stop writing and go lay down or throw up or something.

Talk to y'all later,

-Mike
April 14, 2003

---

Hola Everybody!

Went fishing with the guys for a while. They caught about 2.5 gallons worth of fish while I was hanging out with them. One of the fish weighed about 30 pounds, but all we have is the head. A baracuda came in and bit it it while we wre pulling it in. There is a nice sized school of baracuda hanging out now, so we are stopping fishing till they leave. Also saw a bunch of sea snakes. Well, I assume a bunch, I guess it could've been the same one over and over. They (it) was pretty big, about 10 feet long, but had a real small mouth. They are super poisonous, but just like a coral snake, they don't bite people very often cause they can't bite you in very many places: ears, nose, lips, fingers, and toes is about all they can bite. And let me tell you, my ears, nose, lips, fingers, and toes are not going anywhere near a sea snake! I asked if they were good to eat (rattle snake is pretty good) but the guys said it was prohibited to eat them. I asked if this was a religous thing but they said that the sea snakes were protected. I guess it's an environmental thing. We'll either have a fish fry tonight around 2am or we'll have the fish for lunch tommorrow. It's midnight now, so I'll stay up, not tired after the afternoon nap anyway.

We just finished a pressure test, so in about...2 more hours we will start the job. The job is to pump HCl from our boat up a flexible high pressure pipe (that costs about $1000 a foot!) onto the rig and down the hole. It should take about 600 minutes to finish (10 hours). Then we pack up and head to another rig and do a job there. I do not know what we are doing at the other rig. On the way out today we picked up a load of stuff from one rig and took it to another. I guess they try to cram as much stuff to do in one outing as possible. Makes sense. I would be posting pictures of the rig, but I was told it is not allowed. Picture taking in the oil field is veryvery prohibited. And since technically I don't have the proper permit to be in the oilfield to begin with, I figured it was not a good idea to take some clandestine pictures. You have to have an "off-shore pass" to go to the oil field. Apparently about every other time they go out the cops stop the boat and check everyones pass to make sure they are all allowed. We had heard that the Abu Dhabi jails were very nice, so we were not too worried. :) Besides, we filled out the paperwork before we left, it just takes time for the pass to be issued. It takes another pass, that takes even longer to aquire, to fly out in a helicopter, otherwise we would've just flown out after the job was done and worked on the system on the drive back. In the meantime we would have worked on some stuff on Emirates Western 3 (which is in Dubai's dry dock) or worked on a faulty densiometer on an on-shore skid (which, from their description of the problem is most likely not faulty, it has just come unplugged).

Anyway, I'm heading back to the control room to stare at gauges and look important. I may even mutter a bit under my breath and perhaps tap some gauges as well. I need to find my clipboard.


-Mike
April 14, 2003

---

Well, it's 3am now and we still have not started the job, so I am going to take a nap. After the pressure testing we did, the rig does some testing on their end and then they insert the coil tubing into the well. If things go smooth,then it take 2 or 3 hours, if they don't, then it takes as long as it takes. I set the alarm for 7am, we should be doing the job by then.

The boat is absolutely freezing, which is veryvery nice. The computers and battery chargers tend to overheat, and there is only one AC system, so to get the control room cool the rest of the boat is freezing. But I like it this way, it's fun to type with blue fingers, and I have a nice warm quilt to keep me warm.

No fish fry so far, maybe they'll have it for lunch today.

-Mike
april 14, 2003

---

Aloha Everybody!

The sea is still angry my friends, but not quite as angry as an old man trying to return soup at a deli, more like a man forced to watch a Trading Places marathon. Had lunch a little while ago. Chicken, chicken soup, rice, potatoes in a green sauce, salad, kiwi and oranges. Very good. I am stuffed. Felt bad because I did not finish everything on my plates, but I did not want to over stuff myself. I don't know what became of the fish. At breakfast we watched some Al Jazera news, in arabic. During lunch we watched the local Abu Dhabi newscast, also in Arabic. I say local, but there was no local news at all, it was all Iraq and Israel.

It was very interesting, Al Jazera showed lots of veryvery happy Iraqis and no Arab people yelling about America or George Bush. The Abu Dhabi station also showed lots of pictures of veryvery happy Iraqis, they really liked showing the footage of the statue being torn down, but they also showed some angry Arabs as well. However, I noticed that the Angry-at-the-US Arabs were not Iraqis. They were in a nice house, the electricity was on, and they had a satelite receiver in the background (they were not allowed under Saddam's reign of terror). I asked, and heard that they were Syrian, but one may said he thought they were Egyptian. Either way, I thought it was interesting that the folks getting all bent out of shape about the war were not the ones directly involved. That the ones who live there are in the streets singing and dancing and looting and saying "Thank you George Bush" (heard that a few times). As I mentioned before, the concensious on the boat is that the war was a neccessary evil, that now the people of Iraq can have a better life. There is zero anti-American feeling on the boat. Unlike the muted anti-Americanism when we started bombing Afghanistan.

But there is a lot of anti-Palestinian feeling on the boat, which supprised me. I had kinda noticed some in the past, but assumed it was more personal, that the guys on the boat just didn't like the Palestinians who worked for the company. But today I found out that most of the guys on the rigs are Palestinians. Ahab, the job supervisor, was quite upset with the Palestinians today. I asked Prassad about this, as the Indian guys are usually a bit unbiased when talking about Arabic things, he said that the Palestians are in general jerks. Apparently there is a sort of affirmative action over here where Palestinains get jobs, and very nice ones at that, that they are not qualified for, simply because of the plight of the Palestians. Then they becaome little napoleans and p

opps. Seems that Van was screwing around on the captain's pc and tripped the circuit breaker, again. So my laptop went down (the battery is dead). Let's see, where was I...oh yeah...

Anyway, the point is that the Arabs are really upset with the Palestinians. They give them tons of money and support and stuff and good jobs, but they always ask for more and never return the favor, never do what the other Arabs ask them to do, like stop blowing up women and children. Seems that at least on the boat, the Arabs guys here say it is ok to blow yourself up to kill some soldiers, but not for women and children. And they feel that if the Palestians would take their wealth and build schools, hospitals, clinics, things like this, not just blow it on cars and nintendo that then there would be jobs building the stuff and once the stuff was built that there would be less anger and less people who felt they had nothing to lose and to whom blowing themselves up for $25,000 was a good deal. At least on the boat, the guys are sick of seeing Palestianians on the news every night. Mahmoud even said that one good thing about the war in Iraq was that there were less Palestinians on tv.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting since on the news lately in the states we are hearing about how the "Arab street" says that we must fix the problem in palestine before we fix Iraq, or something like that, but from my listening to the "Arab boat street" it seems that the folks here are tired of hearing about Palestinians and their problems.

While I'm thinking about it, why do a lot of the talking heads on tv back in the states think that de-stabalizing the region is a bad thing? The regimes here are, for the most part, pretty damn bad, not nice places to live at all, so why would it be bad for them to go away and be replaced by something else? I for one am encouraged for the region when I hear these guys on the boat talk about how Iraq could be better and that maybe this happeing in Iraq will wake up the other Arab leaders, make them realise that they have to take care of their people "like they do here in Abu Dhabi"

Have y'all heard the George W version of the "Whatever" song by the guy that did the puppet show Siffl and Ollie? (one of the best shows ever, in my opinion) Man it's funny.

The best part is when Osama calls him up:
"I am Bin Laden. You still have not caught me."

"I'm George W. You know what the "W" stands for? Yet!"


hehehehehehe

The sad thing is, I played it for a few guys here (the mp3 is on my laptop) and while they thought it was funny as well, they wondered how I was able to get something like that in America. How was it allowed?

Sigh.

See? Maybe a regime change across the board here would be a good thing.

-Mike
April 14, 2003, 2pm middle of the Persian Gulf somewhere

---

Guttentag Y'all!

Saw an odd sight yesterday as we were leaving the job. We are out about a hundred miles into the gulf, there is no land around anywhere and there are no birds. But, as we were leaving, I noticed a five gallon gas can, blue, floating in the water. As we got closer I saw that there were two birds on the can and that they were using it as a floating nest. It was too far away to take a picture of with my digital camera and I forgot to get film for my 35mm (!) so no pictures. I guess they were doing ok way out there, there's plenty of fishes and such to eat.

Well, the job was supposed to take 10 hours but they did it in only six. How? They cheated! They used weaker acid and lied about the rate. They claimed to be pumping at a higher rate than they were pumpimg.

We were done with the job around noon, then headed to another rig to do a small job, filling up their small acid tanks. It took us abvout two hours to get to the other rig and then about two hours to get everything ready and to fill up their tanks. These were small 10 barrel tanks and each already had some acid in them. They pumped about 16 .something barrels total. I was in there for the whole job. One of the guys spilled some acid and got yelled at, mainly because he said he spilled it over the radio and the guys on the rig heard him. So when the job was done and Ahab had to fill out the paperwork showing how many gallons he had pumped, we figured it was 800 and change. So he asks what he should put down. I said "800 and change", but he said that there was acid that was pumped into the mix tank that was not used and there was some still in the pipes, so you have to add a little extra. I said, how about 1000? That's a nice round number. He ended up writing down that he pumped 2000 gallons into two tanks that together do not hold more than 1000 gallons! !!!!!



By now it was time for dinner, so I went to wake up Van, he'd gone a nappin' about 3pm. He was very startled to be woken up and decided that he was more tired than hungry. We had a six or seven hour journey ahead of us to the next rig, so after dinner I sat out on the deck for a while looking at the stars and the sea and then went inside for a bit and read then slept. Talked with Prassad a bit about Hinduism and vegatarianism (only about 20% of Hindus are vegetarians) and how the brittish were quite evil for splitting India into India and Pakistan before granting them independance as that has caused several wars and untold loss of life. I did not realise that Pakistan was spending something like 40% of it's GNP on defense. India spends about 6%, but they have a much larger GNP, so the raw dollar amounts are actually higher for India. I think the US spends about 1% on defense don't we? Prassad spent three years in Germany when he was in the Indian Navy (he was a submariner and they bought a German submarine) so we also talked about Germany, castles, and beer gardens.

Had a beautiful sunset, the whole sky was an orange/red/pink color, everywhere you looked it was this color. Really neat, but the mariners thought it was a bad omen. :(



Van woke up at some ungodly hour and flailed around a bit. I am not sure where he is now, as when I asked him what time it was he said 6am, so I rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour. I awoke after about an hour and got ready for the day then noticed that it was 5:30am! It's too early for breakfast, and until they finish this job (which should be the last one) I do not want to mess with the program, so not much to do right now. Besides, right now we are not even tied up to the rig as the weather is too bad! We are tied up to the buoy, but not to the rig itself. So, since I'm awake, I'm doing a little work on the laptop and listening to some music (Mc 900 Ft Jesus's The City Sleeps, next up is Pat Benitar's Love is a Battlefield). I may crawl back into bed for a while, as the sea is a little rough, but I may try to just tough it out.

Found out that most of the fish is in the freezer. They mostly caught catfish, and the Arabs Muslims will not eat or fix it, so we have to wait till we get back into port and then an Indian cook will fix it up. It's odd that they will not eat catfish, but will eat shrimp and lobster and carp, which are all bottom feeders. They also caught some weird crab/lobster thing. Looks like a lobster but without the large claws and it's not red. Don't know what it's called, but they caught a lot of them.

Did some backing up and such on the WW machine. Ron, you may be interested to know that there was @ 2.9 GB (GB!!!) of .alg files on that puppy. They zipped down to a nice 189 MB, but still, that's a lot of data for one year of use. I guess I should go ahead and put on the new 30 day license since the old one expires tommorrow, but I hate to do anything to the machine till they are done with it. Van f'd up the WinFrac machine when he installed a newer version of Winfrac on it. He forgot to make some changes and such and it went down in the middle of their first job. Luckily a quick restart "fixed" it till the job was over, but man, it could have been a disaster. And we don't need any more disasters.

Wow. Boat is really rocking now. Think I will go lay down for a bit.

-Mike
April 15, 2003, 6:30am!

---

Helpful travel tip: when on a boat that is rocking like crazy, don't sit in a swivel chair. I was caroming around and around and around and around like a merry-go-round ride from hell! There is a reason that the locals call this chair hakeeish ibin ameriki (the Swively Chair of the Devil)! Seriously, it was rough, and it kept going back and forth and around and around first one way then the next. Finally I was thrown clear. I was lucky to escape with my soul! Went back to bed after that.

Listening to the Thompson Twin's If You were Here, the song played at the end of Sixteen Candles when Molly Ringwald and the guy are sitting on the coffe table. Next up is Pretty in Pink, by the Psychadelic Furs, from the uh... Pretty in Pink soundtrack. Gotta love those John Hughes films!

ugh! The sea got bad enough that Van needed to lay down for a while as well. And, after he woke up he went outside and harfed. It seems that most people on the boat are currently seasick to some degree, so I don't feel quite so bad. Misery loves company and all that. We are currently about halfway through the job on this rig, the Kamikaze(!! what a name for a vessel!!), and I hope that this is it and after this is done we head back to Abu Dhabi and land that does not move.

-Mike
April 15th, 2003, 4pm.

---

We should be done with the job in about 6 hours or so. There is another job that they are supposed to do, on another rig, but Ahab, the Stimulation Supervisor on board, is due to start his vacation tommorrow, so he wants to get back for that. I am encouraging this, as I want to get back to a place where the horizon is level all the time and the floor does not try to attack the ceiling. I used to want to someday get a boat and sail around the world, but I think I'll have to put that plan on permanent hold. The sad thing is, the sea looks to be calm, but the boat is thrashing about like a shark on crack, I do not know why we are thrashing about so, but we are.

A lot of the non-mariner side of the crew is sick today from the swells. So the control room is full of sick and nervous guys chain smoking like madmen. I decided to step out for some fresh air. It's actually helpfull to lean over the railing and stare at the sea for a while. At least for me it is. The sea is like a giagantic Rorschash test today, it's all dark blue, black, and shades of gray swirling around and mixing and so forth. It kind looks like a bad jpg, you know when the colors are all pixely and not mixed too well. Saw a jellyfish today. At least, I think it was a jelly fish. It was quite small and a few feet under the water and it disapeared quickly, but I'm calling it a jelly fish. The guys are fishing again, so I saw a lot of fish as well. Not in the water, but on the deck. Almost stepped on one. So far no dolphins or whales or sharks.

"I understand just a little. Non comprende, it's a riddle." What song is this? A suprise gift from the middle east to the first non-Wes person who answers.

Speaking of gifts: Glenda, you said you wanted a Sting cd, but I have no idea what you have. Email me a list of the Sting/Police cds/albulms that you have so I'll know what not to get. Did I get you a cd fromt eh guy that helped outon Desert Rose? (Cheb somethingoranother)

I hear rumors that the weather is supposed to get "reallyreally bad" this evening. Think I'll go light on the dinner. I wonder who we should throw overboard to apease the sea gods?

-Mike
Aplril 15, 2003, 6:30pm

---

Now I know why in the old days sailors were paid in rum. I'm stumbling around like I'm drunk, I've got a splitting headache and horrible tummy type problems, my concenstration is gone and I'm prone to tossing my cookies, so I might as well be drunk, right?

Dinner was eggs and toast. They also gave me corned beef with onions and some funny cheese (had green stuff in it and tasted funny, but it's supposed to be good for seasickness). I had a little of the cheese, but since the captain said anything salty is good I just put tons of salt and pepper on the eggs.


In Shah Allah (God willing) we will be back in port tommorrow afternoon/evening.


-Mike
april 15th, 7:45pm

---

There is an excellent way to wake me up at 2:30am:

[it's dark and the boat is lightly rocking]
[from out of the darkness comes a Voice]
VOICE: Mike!
Mike: Snerggza?
VOICE: The well is on fire!
Mike: SNerzatga!!!!
[thumping of legs into the wall is heard]
[smacking of head against the ceiling]
[flailing about of the arms]
[crash as Mike falls from the top bunk bed]
[boom as Mike impacts the floor, bench, and table]
Mike: What?
VOICE: They are flaring the well.
Mike: Oh. Flaring. Gotcha. Where's the band-aids?

Now a very wide awake and slightly sore, and only moderatley bleeding Mike stares out the porthole at a large ball of flame shooting off the end of a crane. This was done on purpose, to test the pressure of the well. They frac the well, build up some pressure, then release it and burn it (don't want oil spilling out everywhere), they then note the pressure. Eventually the initial large pressure goes away and what is left is what will be the pressure of the oil coming out of the well over a large amount of time. Kinda like when you first turn on a water hose sometimes the water shoots out real quick then dies down. Also they use the flare to test for the purity of the hydrocarbons in the well. Right now the flare is extended about 150 feet, maybe 200 feet away from the rig and there is a 50 foot ball of flame shooting out of it.

Maybe it's the Boy Scout in me, but it's very pretty. It lights up the rig, and from our point of view it looks like the lifeboat is on fire.



Now, where did I put those marshmellows?

Speaking of Boy Scouts and marshmellows, my cousin Joey recently moved up from Weblos to Boy Scouts. Summer is coming up, are you going to be able to go to summer camp this year? I have such fond memories of summer camp: being chased by the gar while canoeing, doing the mile swim, "acquireing" someones underwear and running it up the flagpole, rock hockey (bloody knuckles rules, of course [basically it was fair game to smack the bejebus out of your opponets hands with your stick]), powederd eggs (blecch!), snipe hunts, Hugo's monster hunts, archery, telling ghost stories around a campfire, waging war on the evilevil racoons, goldfish, capture the flag, ticks (not the cool comic book guy, but the annoying insects), the Troll, eating rattlesnake for the first time, reading comic books at 2am by flashlight in a thunder storm. Good times...

-Mike
April 16th, 2003, 3:15am!

---

Well, they have been flaring the dang thing for hours now. Finally they stopped around 7am and I was sure we'd be leaving, but they apparently found some problem and want us to frac some more. grrrrrr. Hopefully the new frac job is quick and we can go soon.

There is nothing for me to do until they are done with the jobs. Van is keeping himself busy by translating drawings into Autocad. He was going to do a modification to all the Remote Valve cards but we don't have _any_ of the right electrical doodads (resistors, capacitors, fuses) to do it, so we'll have to either order them from the states and wait, or try and find them in Abu Dhabi somewhere when (if?) we get back.

Ron, do you think we could modify the text of the runtime license so that it says it expires on say May 16th 2004? Or do you think that ti took a bit count and if we modify it it will stop working unless the bit count is exactly the same? I put the 30 day emergency license on the WW machine and it seems to be doing ok, but I do not want to switch over to the new system yet. Never know what will stop working, and I'd much rather break the system while in port than while on a job.


-Mike
April 16th, 2003. 8:20am

---

Well, we ended up not fracing anynmore on that well, but now were are running acid out to six other rigs. Gah! Should be back in port sometime before Christmas! I sure am glad I watched a lot of Gilligan's Island as a kid, I knew better than just to take a small amount of clothes for a three hour tour, although if we are still on teh boat day after tommorrow I will ahve to use the ship's laundry facilities. I am going to avoid that if at all possible as the laundry room is quite moldy and the equipment down there has a tendancy to shrink/rip/mutilate/tear my clothes. Also the soap they use it itchy. Not to bitch or anything :)

Ron, I tried changing the date on the runtime license (well, actually a _copy_ of the license) and it did not work. So I guess it does do a bit count or something. Or it just has to have the date 1-jan-00 for a runtime license to work. Dunno. Oh well. I did go ahead and install the new stuff, so far it looks ok. Will know for sure in a few hours when we get to the next rig for acid delivery.

-Mike
April 16th, 2003 12:40pm

---

Well the new stuff looks good so far, so minior changes need to be made. I can't for the life of me remember where to go to change the maximum GPM of the various chemicals on the job recipe screen. I called ROn, but the connection was less than perfect, so not sure he even knew it was me talking. I'll email/call when I get back to port.

About 7pm we had a fish fry. The captain had caught a kingfish, must've been three or four feet long, and we had that for dinner. It was yummy.

-Mike
April 16, 2003, 7:45pm

---

Almost as soon as we sat down to dinner last night the boat started rocking something fierce. Had to cut the rope holding us to the buoy with an axe and a meat cleaver. Loud clanging was heard at this time and continued until we arrived in port. Was the anchor smaking the side of the boat and a few loose but full 55 gallon drums of something rolling about and smaking into things. Several of the crew had to sleep in the mess because their portholes were under water most of the evening and they leaked. Can you imagine waking up to water just pouring down on you? No water in our cabin last night, but several times I did get up and stare out the porthole and watch waves carrem (kareem?) over the bow (front) of the boat and across our deck. We are usually 12 feet or more above the water, but not last night. Spent a while at the begining of the storm, immediatley after dinner, out on the deck sitting in a chair, and then when it got worse standing at the rail. After a while though had to come in and lay down a bit. Spent the night awake and clutching the mattress to keep from flying off it and into the night. The AC went out after a while. Heard today from the paper today that the storm was the worst in 50 years, with speeds up to 75 knots! I am not sure how fast a knot is, I think it's about 1.2 MPH, but I could be wrong. If so, WOW! That's just slightly less fast than Nolan Ryan can throw a baseball. Van thinks that the stuttering motion we experianced off and on all night was the drive shaft getting twisted, but the captain says it was jus tthe current in the water. Either way, it was a rather scary noise.

Anyway, we surrvived. All the Indians and Arabs on the boat harfed. None of the Philipinos or Kenyans did, and only half the Americans did. Speaking of that, Luis, can you ask Michele how to say "Howdy" and "Thanks" in Philipino?

At the internet cafe I'm at they are playing Michael Jackon's Thriller albulm and playing CS. I'm tempted to join in a game, but from weatching them, I could take them easy, and don't want to needlessly antagonize folks over here. :)

'Bout time to head back to the Hotel,

Happy Good Friday everybody! (Or Happy Passover for our Jewish friends)


-Mike
April 19. 2003, 00:34
:: gandalf23 1:41:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

I'm alive. Been stuck on the boat, literally, since the day we arrived. Arrived in Abu Dhabi at about 1am, left on boat at 3pm same day! Last night was a horrible horrible storm, everyone on board threw up many times (although I did not, maybe I've gotten my sea legs? Of maybe there was just nothing left to hurl?), so we left the oil field (had to cut [with axe and knife] the rope holding us to the rig) and headed back to port. Arrived in port at about 8am, by 9am we were off the boat and in the clients office. Now we are at an internet cafe about to head to the hotel. It has been raining here since 7pm last night. Very unusual. Lots of thunder and lightning. Very scary on the boat. Water was everywhere. Reminded me of the opening og Gilligan's Island. Got zero sleep last night due to outrageous rocking motiong of the boat. Alternating being thrown against walls or off the bunk. Had deathgrip on mattress most of the night to prevent mike from flying off into the floor area.

Kept a log of what was going on the past few days, but left the floppy on the boat :) Will add it later. Also have pictures!

Glad to be on dry (sorta), stable land, but my tummy is still flip flopping, I guess I got used to the motion of the boat and now stability is a bad thing. Dunno, am looking forward to lying down and sleeping for 24 hours :)


-Mike

:: gandalf23 12:05:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Just got emailed this power point thingy showing pictures of a very damaged A-10 Warthog that managed to make it back to base. I am told that in the last picture the picture is the rather short person in the middle. Yup, it's a girl. I wasn't aware that we were allowing women to fly combat missions, but the internet never lies. :)





:: gandalf23 9:50:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

WOOO-HOOOO!

April 9th, 2003





November 9th, 1989




:: gandalf23 9:13:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

What a beautiful day! The sun is out, no clouds, it's not too cold, it's not too hot. Turned on the tv this morning and at first I thought they were showing a rerun of when the wall fell down. But no, it was live in Bagdahd, folks were tearing down a big ol statue of Saddam. Sweet! Looks like the whole Arab world is not pissed at us. Just those _not_ in Iraq. Then I get into the car and they are playing U2's "All I Want is You" followed by They Might Be Giant's "Little Birdhouse In Your Soul" which are two of my all time favorite songs. Sigh....it can only do downhill from here.....I have to do my taxes :( (I know, shouldn't put it off till the last minute)...grumble grumble...three divided by the square root of Mercury's equator times the estimated age of the amount of strawberries eaten in Guam....grumble....carry the 18....waitaminute! My refund is more that I thought it was! (not much, but still more) Yeay! Woo-Hoo! Why it it that I'm sooo happy that the government will be giving me back my own money that they took from me? Why is it that if I owe them and wait a while to send it I owe them interest, but they don't owe me for keeping my money for a year and a few months?

Speaking of tax day, I thought I would remind everyone that this year April 15th (next Tuesday) is also National Buy A Gun Day. And you know, in this time of economic downturn, it's our responsibility to do our part in stimulating the economy. Plus you'll be helping out Homeland Defense! :) (but only if you buy an Evil Black Rifle)

Speaking of Evil Black Rifles, I will be using mine this May at a Three Gun Match at Tactical Professionals in Mingus, Texas (about an hour and a half West of Fort Worth). Should be a hoot blast!

Found out yesterday that the boat is not in Dubai. So we have to drive from Dubai to Abu Dhabi. Wheeee!
:: gandalf23 7:54:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Added comments. It may take a few seconds for the coments thingy to show up as it's in England.


:: gandalf23 11:25:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Well, it's official. I just got confirmation from NWA (not the old rap group, but the airline). I'll be leaving around noon on Thursday and arriving just shy of midnight on Friday. For some reason the flight is going to Dubai and not continuing on to Abu Dhabi. Maybe we are spending the first night in Dubai? Maybe the guys on the boat wanted a night on the town? :) Van thinks that the boat may have been moved to Dubai. I hope so, Dubai is a much better city to wander around in than Abu Dhabi.

I should be returning on the 20th which is good as that'll get me back before my dad leaves for Iraq. My sister is happy as that means that she will not have to mow the yard. :)

I'll be in Amsterdam from 7am-ish to 2pm-ish, so I will try and hop on the train and head into town for a bit. Hopefully this time I can get to the Anne Frank museum after it's opened (last time out I got there at 6am). Anyone want anything from the Anne Frank museum?


:: gandalf23 12:14:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Sears takes care of it's reservist employees

Good for Sears! Think I may go buy a craftsman tool on my lunch break.



:: gandalf23 8:18:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Petition to Grant Citizenship to Mohommed


:: gandalf23 8:17:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

There is an amazing variety of Kalashnikovs in use in the Iraqi theater.



In this picture of our Kurdish allies, you can see some Yugoslavian AKs (you can tell by the rivet pattern at the rear end of the receiver), and possibly a Chinese gun in the center and probably a East German AK with the folding stock. Also note the cut-away training magazine in use by the gentleman on the right. Not a good idea to use in combat as the sides are open and sand/dirt/crud can get in and jam it up. I'm not sure who made their magazine pouches, but they are kinda neat. Wonder where I could find some?


:: gandalf23 7:19:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

Wow!

Bug Pictures (Insect Macro Photography)

Some truely stunning pictures there. Here's one I really liked:

---

Another good reason not to believe everything you find on the internet. What kills me is that there are folks who believe this guy. I love the section where he describes the heat seeking RPGs that he uses and the thermal-signature eliminating trenchcoat, watch computer, and personel detection flares. Shesh! I think this guy watched the Matrix one too many times, or played the old role-playing game Shadowrun or Cyberpunk a few too many times.






:: gandalf23 9:04:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Wow!

"U.S. Central Command earlier said more than 2,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed or wounded when coalition forces swept through Baghdad a day earlier on what was called a reconnaissance mission."

2000 just when our guys swept through Bagdahd! And we lost only one man. Damn. I though the kill ratio in Mogedeshu was awesome (something like 50 to 1), but 2000 to one is just....damn, there are no words.

All that power, all that destructive energy, and yet, we are severly restaining ourselves. We are watching out for the civilians, we are guarding the archeologial and theological treasures of Iraq, not the Iraqis. Hell, they're the ones mining and sniping from mosques. We are the ones providing medical care and food and water to the people. We could have turned the country into a giant parking lot, but we didn't.

Damn!

:: gandalf23 8:52:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Bagdahd Webcam

(may not work)

:: gandalf23 9:54:00 AM [+] ::
...

---

hehehehehehehehehe
:: gandalf23 10:53:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Once again, reporters are idiots:

"In the opening battle, the tank unit fired two 120 mm high velocity depleted uranium rounds straight down the main road, creating a powerful vacuum that literally sucked guerrillas out from their hideaways into the street, where they were shot down by small arms fire or run over by the tanks."

I am guessing that after the tank shot a round down the street that there were quite a few Iraqi soldiers who decided that discretion was the better part of valor and tried to high-tail it outta there, and they were mowed down as they ran. No way in hell does a 10 pound shell going mach 5 create enough of a vacuum to do what this guy is saying it does. Now, had they lugged up the Battleship Missouri and fired a broadside from it's main guns down Main street, then yeah, it would've sucked guys out of houses and such, but an 120mm tank shell? No way!

What was this guy smoking?

:: gandalf23 10:50:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Gotta love Heinlein:

"Anyone who clings to the historically untrue--and thoroughly immoral-- doctrine that 'violence never solves anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The Ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more disputes in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms."

-Robert Heinlein
:: gandalf23 9:52:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

I do not know if this is true, but this just seems wrong. Does it come as a suprise to anyone that the fellow in question is an "evangelical southern baptist"?


How well did you sleep last night? (new subject)

Found these pictures of our troops sacking out.




This could not have been comfortable


Some Britts. I noticed that our boys keep their boots on, but the Brits all look to be barefooted. Dunno why, but I found that interesting.




:: gandalf23 9:27:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

It'a a little old, but you should read this SIT-REP from a US Marine Major in Camp Commando, Kuwait. It's got some good points:

"A fully mechanized Army Division is simply mind-boggling. On our left (western) flank is the 3rd Infantry Division that recently deployed from their base in Germany. Marines are tough but we don’t win the big wars. The Army wins the big wars. They do it because they are massive and can bring an incomprehensible amount of firepower to a fight.

The most important fact to remember is that one Army Mechanized Division has more firepower than most countries."

.....

"Tyranny left unchecked by apathetic people is why Hitler was able to see the Cliffs of Dover from the shores of Western France."


:: gandalf23 8:58:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Am I the only one who has noticed that Soddom Hussein has killed more Muslims that Israel has?

Looks like we found where he hid the chemical weapons, in the Euphrates River!

The call to prayer is back on is a small town in Iraq. The Baathists destroyed the mosque 15 years ago and would not let them build a new one. But the Brits got a PA system working so at least the mullah (or is it imman? I never can remember) can call his flock to prayer five times a day.




:: gandalf23 8:18:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

New Class Challenged

"I can't help but notice that anti-Americanism, and the various manifestations of what some have called Transnational Progressivism, are most common among people who, well, have state-supported managerial or intellectual jobs, the people who made up what Milovan Djilas and others called the "New Class" of bureaucrats and managers in the old Communist world. Not surprisingly, the New Class was deeply concerned with matters of status and position, and deeply opposed to things that might have led to competition on merit. There's nothing new about such a view, which predated communism: As David Levy and Sandra Peart note, it's an attitude that even in the nineteenth century was characteristic of anti-capitalists and anti-semites - and, nowadays, there's a lot of overlap between anti-capitalists, anti-semites, and anti-Americans.

A common thread among anti-semitism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Americanism is the fear of being outdone by people willing to work harder. It's not surprising that such a fear exists among a disproportionate number of those who take state-supported jobs. "


:: gandalf23 7:49:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

While I'm thinking about it, I had what I consider a good idea the other day. I think that if you are on Welfare for more than 2 years then you should be given three or four choices:

1) Join the millitary. You get free housing, clothing, education, and food (or at least it's heavily subsidized). Medical care is taken care of (thus reducing medicare). You serve your country, _and_ you get a paycheck. Plus you, and your family, may get to travel the world. What a great deal!

2) For those who are concientious objectors, or who can't make it in the millitary (or who the millitary does not want) you can join Americorp. Same deal, they give you a paycheck for working, you serve your country by helping those less fortunate than you are, and you get some educational assistance and medical insurance.

3) Join the Peace Corps. You don't get a paycheck, but you do get food and shelter taken care of, and you get to travel the world helping those less fortunate than yourself.

4) If you don't do any of the above, after two years you are off of welfare.


:: gandalf23 7:42:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

Teenage boys, armed and in uniform. This is sooo true.

"He quoted an unnamed World War II veteran:

"Imagine this. In the spring of 1945, around the world, the sight of a twelve-man squad of teenage boys, armed and in uniform, brought terror to people's hearts. Whether it was a Red Army squad in Berlin, Leipzig, or Warsaw, or a German squad in Holland, or a Japanese squad in Manila or Seoul or China, that squad meant rape, pillage, looting, wanton destruction, senseless killing. But there was an exception: a squad of GIs, a sight that brought the biggest smile you ever saw to people's lips, and joy to their hearts.

"Around the world this was true, even in Germany, even - after September 1945 - in Japan. This was because GIs meant candy, cigarettes, C-rations, and freedom. America had sent the best of her young men around the world, not to conquer but to liberate, not to terrorize but to help. This was a great moment in our history."

That's the difference right there. It's just as true today as it was back in 1945. It's damn sure the difference between the fedayeen and our soldiers.

Also make sure you check out What can she look forward too?


:: gandalf23 7:26:00 PM [+] ::
...

---

I'd like to meet Mohammad. Not like when people say "I'd like you to meet my friend Jesus," I don't mean the Mohammad of the Koran, but the Mohammad who risked his life to help rescue PFC Jessica Lynch.

This guy, an Iraqi, just happened to be visiting his wife at the hospital where she worked and saw an Iraqi colonel slap an American POW. Now, most of us, had we seen something like that, would've done very little, other than tell our wifes about it. Let's face it, you don't live too long in a brutal regime by going against the millitary. But this guy, he not only said to himself that this was wrong, and said it to his wife, but he went further and walked 6 miles to find some Marines, risking his life (we could have easily shot him, or his own millitary or paramillitary groups could've shot him) to let them know that PFC Lynch was alive and in a hospital. And then he went back and drew a map of the place with locations of guards and such and went back out to the Marines. What a guy!

This Mohammad, who's last name is being withheld because of a fear of reprisals, is a hero. If he wants to become an American, I say we fly him and his family over here. All of 'em. And on the taxpayer's dime. If he wasnts to stay in Iraq, I say we throw as much work his way as we can, and help him out. He's a lawyer, maybe he could become the local mayor or govenor or something, maybe he could be a congressman. Whatever he decides to do, though, we need to help him out. At the absolute very least, he needs to be given the Legion of Merit

He risked his life, and his family's lives, for one of ours, so we need to do everything we can for him. If anyone hears of a place where we can send him money or cards or flowers or something, let me know.

:: gandalf23 7:01:00 PM [+] ::
...