Interesting how things are turning out: jf kerry’s too stupid to get educated types are rolling up their sleeves, and putting down their M-4s to help another people make a life.

From a wonderful and detailed post by Michael Totten:

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“This is my hardest deployment,” Marine Sergeant Cooley said as he unfastened his helmet and tossed it onto his bed. “We weren’t trained for this kind of thing.” He’s been shot at with bullets and mortars, and he’s endured IED attacks on his Humvee, but post-war Fallujah is more difficult and more stressful than combat. He isn’t unusual for saying so. Many Marines I spoke to in and around the Fallujah area said something similar.

“We’re trained as infantrymen,” Captain Stewart Glenn said. “But here we are doing civil administration and trying to get the milk factory up and running.”

“We make up all this stuff as we go,” Lieutenant Mike Barefoot added.

While most Americans go to school, work traditional day jobs, and raise their families, young American men and women like these are deployed to Iraq, Kosovo, and Afghanistan where they work seven days a week rebuilding societies torn to pieces by fascism, terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and war. It is not what they signed up to do. Some may have geeked out on nation-building video games like Civilization, but none of the enlisted men picked up any of these skills in boot camp.
[..]

Go, read, absorb and put it in your memory banks, for those years from now, when you meet an OIF vet, long removed from that part of their lives, now just looking like almost any other person i our nation, not wearing a uniform. Shake their hand. Tell them how much you appreciate that they would take up tools, instead of weapons or war, for those half way around the globe, to save them, and to thereby save us from harm.

I remain in awe of the compassion and dedication of those who have been trained to use violence in defense of this nation, and can put that aside for a greater purpose for all mankind.

I’ll venture to say, it will not be in me to ever thank a Democrat for the role they have played in signaling the enemy it is acceptable to kill ours and their own to support the political end game of a few power hungry people to the detriment of the rest of humanity. More souls have been lost in their pursuit of power, while our service men and women clean up behind them. But then. how could we expect anything else?

Mo’ better way to skydive – without the plane…

Wind tunnels keep getting better and better. I was able to get into the one at Ft. Bragg years ago by special invite and to be coached by the Golden Knights (including one of President Bush’s (41) jumpmasters. Video is on a VHS tape around here somewhere.  Yea…it was a while ago.

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Trivia: Glenn Bangs was the the commander of the first 82nd Airborne unit to land in Saudi for the very start of Desert Shield (and was the other jumpaster for President Bush).

Required reading: Sunday Ship History: Really Big Submarine Ideas by Eagle1 and Fred Fry’s Maritime Monday 105 for all things newsworthy in the maritime realm!
BT

A native of Waukegan, IL, Richard L. Conolly was born April 26th, 1892. He entered the Naval Academy and graduated in 1914.

From the DD979.COM website:

After graduation in 1914 he was ordered to Mexican waters where he served in USS VIRGINIA. He continued duty in that battleship until May 1915, when he reported aboard USS MONTANA for torpedo instruction. In November 1915 he rejoined VIRGINIA, and in March 1916 he was assigned to USS VERMONT as Torpedo Officer of that battleship for two months. Transferred in May 1916 to USS SMITH, he was aboard that destroyer when the United States entered World War I, in April 1917, and served aboard SMITH while she performed escort duty in European waters out of Brest, France.

He was awarded the Navy Cross for services while attached to SMITH in connection with salvaging the transport WESTBRIDGE, torpedoed by a German submarine in August 1918, as follows: “For distinguished service in the line of his profession on the occasion of the torpedoing of the WESTBRIDGE, when he, with a party of eight others remained on board for five days steering by hand and handling the lines from the tugs, while the ship was towed four hundred miles to port.”
[..]

Admiral Conolly continued his naval career after WWI, serving on a variety of surface ships, including three destroyers and two battleships, before attaining his first command tour, that being the USS DUPONT (DD-152) in August, 1929.He was there in the opening days of WWII, and escorted the USS HORNET and Gen Dolittle’s raiders across the Pacific.ADM Conolly went on to be in charge of major naval operations in both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans for the remander of the war, then became one of the top officers in the opening days of the Cold War:

Assuming command of Destroyer Division 7 in May 1939, he was transferred to duty as Commander Destroyer Squadron 6 on January 30, 1941. He was at sea, in command of Destroyer Squadron 6 at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He subsequently participated in the initial attack on the Gilbert and Marshall Islands on February 1, 1942, as part of the gun bombardment force under command of Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr.; and in April his destroyers served as escort for the aircraft carrier HORNET from which Lieutenant General Doolittle’s Army planes took off for the first bombing of Tokyo. He also participated in a shore bombardment of Wake Island in command of destroyers in Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance’s Task Group.

July 2 1943 Operation Husky

Task Force 86 under the command of Rear Admiral Conolly was scheduled to land the 3rd Infantry Division and two Ranger Battalions of the U.S. Army on the beaches of Licata, Sicily.

Admiral Conolly had a most difficult task: that of moving some 25,000 men from Africa to Sicily in a fleet of landing ships, tank; landing craft, tank; and landing craft, infantry, which was designated JOSS Force. Traveling in a convoy of seven columns, they were slowed at times to a speed of two and a half knots by strong winds and heavy seas. This was the first shore-to-shore amphibious operation to make such extensive use of these landing ships. The Sicilian coastline presented a further complication. Because it was known to be fronted with false beaches which would prevent landing ships from placing their troops and equipment on the shore, pontoon causeways were brought along to bridge the gap. The newly developed amphibious truck, called DUKW, was first employed in this operation and met with great success. False beaches presented no problem for the DUKWs, which could continue in land, as needed, with their cargo.

Jan. 31, 1944 Marshall Islands

Rear Admiral Richard L. Conolly commanded the Northern Task Force, responsible for landing troops under Marine Major General Harry Schmidt. These troops were from the Marine 4th Division. Their objectives were Roi and Namur islands in northern Kwajalein Atoll. On Feb. 1, ships responsible for fire support and bombardment moved in to extremely close range, maximizing their effectiveness, killing a significant number of defenders, and earning Conolly the nickname “Close-in,” along with the gratitude of the troops, who were able to come into the beaches standing up. Navy ships and pilots dropped 6,000 tons of heavy explosives before the Marines set foot on Roi-Namur.

D-Plus 1, Roi

During the afternoon of D-Day, Marines of both regimental combat teams transferred from the transports, outside the lagoon, to the LST’s from which (it had been planned) amphibian tractors would in turn run the assault waves into the lagoon and thence to the beaches. Meanwhile, both Admiral Conolly and General Schmidt had already seen the confusion incident to boating the IVAN Landing Group. They concluded that the only realistic course of action would be to move the LST’s inside the lagoon and launch the morrow’s assault amtracs from positions reasonably near the line of departure. Moreover, considering both the scattered location of many tractors, as well as their dwindling fuel supply, movement of the LST’s would bring sources of support nearer the hard-pressed, dispersed vehicles of the 10th Amphibian Tractor Battalion.

July 1944 Guam

Admiral Conolly, the amphibious group commander for that assault, found it hard to obtain reliable information on the reefs around Guam, he sought out the services of an American geologist who had conducted a prewar survey of the island. And it was Conolly’s detailed questioning of the geologist at Pearl Harbor, prior to his sailing for the operational area, that provided him with the confidence that the assault plan for landing the Fifth Amphibious Corps over the western beaches at Guam was viable.

On July 8 1944 four cruisers of Southern Attack Force led off with a 3-day bombardment, firing five thousand five hundred 5- and 8-inch shells on the coastal defenses. From the 12th through the 16th, four battleships fired more than three thousand 14- and 16-inch shells. During the next 4 days 3 battleships were Joined by 2 others and by 6 cruisers, and they blasted the island with more than 16,000 shells. LCI(G)’s (Landing Craft, Infantry [Gunboat]), closing to within a few yards of the reef, raked trenches and pillboxes and reported the location of enemy positions to the heavier ships. Destroyers screened the larger ships and delivered harassing fires at night. Admiral Conolly, directed the bombardment from the flagship, and supervised the destruction of every known gun emplacement that would seriously endanger the assault landing.

On July 21st 1944 Admiral Conolly’s Task Force 53 lands an Assault Force on Guam under the overall command of Marine Major Gen Roy S. Geiger. After three weeks of hard fighting by Major Gen Allen H. Turnage’s 3rd Marine Division and Brig Gen Lemuel C. Shepard Jr’s 1st Provisional Brigade and Army Major Gen Andrew Bruce’s 77th Infantry Division, Guam’s defenders under LtGen Takeshima Takeshi are overwhelmed and the former American territorial island is retaken.

In 1946 Admiral Conolly was a U.S. Naval Advisor to the Council of Foreign Ministers at the Paris Peace Conference.

In 1950 Rear Adm. Richard L. Conolly was the commander of the U.S. fleet in the Mediterranean and east Atlantic.

On April 8, 1950, a United States Navy patrol plane vanished over the Baltic Sea. The plane, carrying four officers and six enlisted men, was a Privateer, a four-engine plane with a tail assembly somewhat resembling that of the B-29. U.S. officials stated that the plane left Wiesbaden Air Base in Germany and that its destination was Copenhagen, Denmark. Some debris was later sighted by search planes, but there were no survivors. The Soviet Government subsequently stated that Russian planes had fired upon a B-29 Flying Fortress after it had failed to comply with orders and had opened fire upon the Soviet planes.

THE PRESIDENT. “There is an investigation, and it has been ordered by Admiral Conolly, and I can make no comment on it until we know all the facts.”

1951-1953, Admiral Conolly, became President of the Naval War College. (Conolly Hall is named in honor of Admiral Conolly.)

ADM Conoyly and his wife died in a commercial plane crash March 1st, 1962.

In honor of Richard Conolly’s long and distinguished service to the Nation, the 17th destroyer of the SPRUANCE Class was commissioned October 14th, 1978. Some trivia about USS CONOLLY (DD-979):

• She was the only one of the 31 “SPRU-Cans” to not have an oval shaped ship’s insignia.
• She was the first SPRUANCE in the Atlantic Fleet to be equipped with TOMAHAWK (in the armored box launchers, as seen above).

CONOLLY was the first DD-963 unit to act as a fleet oiler, delivering about 30K gallons of F-76 to USS JESSE L BROWN (FF-1089) in the South Atlantic.

• There is a “minor mis-alignment” on the structure of the transom, starboard side, where there is a (maybe no longer) matching chunk of concrete pier missing in Dakar, Senegal.
• She did participate in an “OTL” (operational test launch) of a TOMAHAWK Land Attack missile in August, 1986, accompanied by USS IOWA (BB-61), that also fired a TLAM test weapon. These two ships formed a nominal “BBBG” (Battleship Battle Group), supported by USS DOYLE (FFG-39) with a dual SH-60B LAMPS MK III detachment embarked. This exercise was to formulate tactics for the employment of BBBGs for sea control operations. The Officer in Tactical Command was COMDESRON 32.
Until a very recent decision by DoN, USS CONOLLY was to be a museum ship, located at Waukegan, IL on the Great Lakes. She would have been the only SPRUANCE to be saved. Last year, however, the Navy decided to sink her as a target ship. The date is still pending.
• and…then there was the vaccum powered sewage system malfunction…

Assigned to COMDESRON 10 in the Atlantic Fleet after commissioning, CONOLLY spent her entire time in commission homeported in Norfolk, VA. Her first “cruise” was to the Mediterrean in 1981, with her second to the Middle East Force (read: Persian Gulf) in 1982. In the summer of 1983, she sailed south to the Panama Canal to make her third cruise as the flagship for UNITAS XXIV/WATC.

The picture shown is post-1984-85 regular overhaul. I will link in the supporting sea stories and reports about USS CONOLLY this evening.

Parallel universes? Nope. Parallel Internet. Tinker Bell move

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From The Sunday Times
April 6, 2008
Coming soon: superfast internet
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

THE internet could soon be made obsolete. The scientists who pioneered it have now built a lightning-fast replacement capable of downloading entire feature films within seconds.
At speeds about 10,000 times faster than a typical broadband connection, “the grid” will be able to send the entire Rolling Stones back catalogue from Britain to Japan in less than two seconds.

The latest spin-off from Cern, the particle physics centre that created the web, the grid could also provide the kind of power needed to transmit holographic images; allow instant online gaming with hundreds of thousands of players; and offer high-definition video telephony for the price of a local call.
[…]

I wanna be a beta tester…

Certainly food for thought. Desert Storm starring General Schwartzkopf and staff and all the supporting service members…the last of our “military” engagements.

From the Northeast Intelligence Network: Take a read, do a little meditation Yat goh hiu yan move

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On Saturday, the conflict over Islamic symbolism in the Flight 93 memorial got its first international news coverage. One highlight is the conversation that Leonard Doyle, U.S editor of the UK Independent, had with Tom Burnett Sr.:

Tom Burnett, whose son Tom Jnr died in the crash, said of the design that it is “aesthetically wonderful,” but “a lot of it contains Islamic symbols”. He added: “We ought to just throw the design out and start anew because it really dishonours those who died.”

Towards the end, Doyle moseys around to the bombshell, reporting the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent as a fact. The bad news is that Doyle immediately tries to dismiss this explosive information by making a completely irrelevant and factually preposterous counterclaim:

Part of the blame must lie with Paul Murdoch, architect of the winning design who initially described it as a “Crescent of Embrace”. The title caused the internet to erupt with conspiracy theories. Then someone noticed that the arc actually pointed towards Mecca. The fact that this was also the direction to Washington DC was lost on the conspiracy theorists.

No, the direction to Mecca is NOT the direction to Washington. The shortest-distance direction to Mecca (the way that Muslims calculate the direction to Mecca) heads northeast from the western Pennsylvania crash-site. Some people find that counterintuitive, but Pennsylvania and Mecca are both in the northern hemisphere, with Mecca being about 2/3rds of the way around the hemisphere. Thus the direction to Mecca takes a shortcut towards the north pole. D.C., in contrast, lies southeast from the Shanksville crash site.

The errant claim that D.C. and Mecca lie in the same direction is a red herring anyway. what difference would it make if people facing into the giant crescent were facing Washington? Is there a religion of facing Washington five times a day for prayer? Were the hijackers of Flight 93 followers of such a religion. No. They faced MECCA five times a day for prayer. That is why the Mecca direction matters.

A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a “mihrab,” and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The memorial now being built in Shanksville will be the world’s largest mosque by a factor of about fifty (and there are some really big mosques).

Doyle is not the first person to try to dismiss the Mecca orientation of the Flight 93 crescent by claiming that the crescent also points to something else. Of course it DOES point to a host of other places. It points to everything on the line between the crash site and Mecca. Earlier this year the crazy Dr. Daniel Griffith noted that one of those points turns out to be the Vatican. So what? There is no religion of facing the Vatican for prayer.

The Independent should issue a correction

Given that Doyle’s attempt to dismiss the Mecca orientation of the crescent was based on an absurdly wrong factual claim (that the direction to Mecca is the same as the direction to Washington), the Independent ought to issue a correction, especially given the importance of this error to Doyle’s reporting. Without the factual error, his illogical pretense that the Mecca orientation would not matter if the crescent happened to also point to Washington simply disappears. The Mecca orientation would then stand in naked disgrace before the Independent‘s international readership. Is that enough of a prize to make a serious push for?

Doyle has already been asked for a correction, without reply. Our petition, however, gives us a new tool for dealing with such recalcitrant parties. We are up to about four hundred signees after one week, and over half say they are willing to engage in activist measures like forwarding emails. Maybe this is a good opportunity to fire a test shot, and unload a minor deluge of correction requests on the Independent.

If you want to pitch in, just copy and paste the following short note into an email

To the Editors of the Independent:Please correct a glaring factual error in Leonard Doyle’s article on the Flight 93 Memorial (“Conspiracy or coincidence? Flight 93 memorial attacked over crescent shape,” March 29, 2008). Doyle’s reporting of the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent is much appreciated, but he then tries to dismiss the significance of this orientation by making the factually ridiculous assertion that the direction to Mecca from the Shanksville Pennsylvania crash-site is also the direction to Washington:

… someone noticed that the arc actually pointed towards Mecca. The fact that this was also the direction to Washington DC was lost on the conspiracy theorists.

The shortest distance direction to Mecca is to the northeast from Shanksville. Washington is to the southeast.

It is important to correct Mr. Doyle’s errant excuse for dismissing the Mecca orientation of the crescent because orientation on Mecca is actually very significant. A crescent that Muslims face into to face Mecca is called a “mihrab” and is the central feature around which every mosque is built. The planned memorial will be the world’s largest mosque. Please include this significance of the Mecca orientation in your correction.

Respectfully yours,If you haven’t yet signed our online petition, please give it a look. Also, Tom Burnett Sr. just released a public appeal for people to spread the word about our petition effort. If anyone wants to forward or post Tom’s letter, it is available for copy and paste here (scroll to bottom for HTML format).

Glaring omissions in Doyle’s report, amounting to cover up

If the Independent‘s correction policy extends to dishonest reporting by omission, there are two other key facts, fully known to Mr. Doyle, that the Independent should publish. While he was driving to Shanksville, Mr. Doyle talked to Alec Rawls by telephone for almost a half an hour, mostly about the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent.

Doyle was fully apprised of the double dealing of Memorial Project spokesmen who in private conversation admit the Mecca orientation of the giant crescent and make excuses for it (basically, they all assume it is coincidental), while in the newspapers they deny that the crescent points to Mecca. For example, when Superintendent Hanley was asked directly about the Mecca orientation by a reporter for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette last summer, she claimed that:
“The only thing that orients the memorial is the crash site.”

Thus Doyle was fully aware of the controversial nature of the Mecca orientation claim, yet he did not report it as a matter of contention. He reported it as an fact. That means one of two things. When Doyle talked to Hanley (who is quoted in his article), she may have acknowledged the Mecca orientation of the crescent to him. Alternatively, Doyle could have checked the Mecca orientation of the crescent for himself. (Alec Rawls told him how. It takes literally 2 minutes to verify.)

Which is it Mr. Doyle? Either is explosive and should be reported. If a reporter for a major newspaper verifies for himself that the Flight 93 crescent points to Mecca, he damned well ought to say so! If Memorial Project personnel admitted the Mecca orientation of the crescent, after a long history of denying it in to the press, that is newsworthy!

Why is Doyle holding back? This is cover-up, just like his attempt to dismiss the Mecca orientation with the red herring about the direction to Mecca also being the direction to Washington.

A perverted concept of “balance”?

Doyle’s behavior is a puzzle. If he wanted to cover up the Mecca orientation of the crescent, why did he report it at all? In two and a half years, only one other reporter bothered to fact-check and report the orientation of the crescent. (Kirk Swauger at the Johnstown Tribune Democrat wrote last summer that: “[The Mecca orientation claims] seem to be backed up by coordinates for the direction of qibla from Somerset that can be found on Islam.com. When superimposed over the crescent in the memorial design, the midpoint points over the Arctic Circle, through Europe toward Mecca.”)

One possibility is that Doyle may be pursuing a perverted concept of balance, akin to the left wing preference for equality of outcomes over equality of opportunity. The facts tilt in favor of the critics of the crescent, so in order to write a story that presents the two sides as equally valid, Doyle buries the facts, not completely, but enough to write a story that does not advantage either side. Of course if the facts went against critics of the crescent, this concept of balance would go out the window (as it should). But when the facts support conservative voices, this perverted concept of balance seems to be a second mode that the West’s left wing media falls into.

That’s just a theory. Perhaps Mr. Doyle can offer a better explanation. His article is in many ways quite a nice one, telling the story of Flight 93, and of Tom Burnett Jr.’s decision to do something to stop the hijackers. Give Doyle credit also for reporting the most explosive fact (the Mecca orientation). Then he dismisses the Mecca orientation with a completely fraudulent dodge, and omits how the Project has been denying the Mecca orientation for years. Very odd.

Doyle also fails to mention that every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign.

In contrast to his fabricated grounds for dismissing the Mecca-orientation of the crescent, Doyle simply repeats without comment the Memorial Project’s claim that the design was changed to remove “any perceptions relating to Islamic symbolism”:

The crescent became a circle, with two symbolic breaks, one where visitors will walk along the flight path, the other at the crash scene.

Would it have been too much to note, as was clearly explained to Mr. Doyle, how every particle of the original Crescent of Embrace design remains completely intact in the so-called redesign, which only added a few irrelevant trees to the rear of a person facing into the giant crescent.

The circle is still “broken” in the exact same spots, creating the exact same crescent. This is even how architect Paul Murdoch explains the crescent design: the terrorists broke the circle, turning it into a giant (Mecca-oriented) crescent. The only change in the “redesign” was to include a broken off chunk of the circle, which now floats out behind the mouth of the crescent.

After long conversations with Tom Burnett, Alec Rawls and Bill Steiner (who has been organizing opposition on the ground in Pennsylvania for two years) Doyle actually knows more about the Islamic symbolism in the crescent design than any other reporter who has covered this story. If he would just report the truth, he could do some real good, and advance his own career at the same time, by breaking the story of a lifetime. Instead, he has decided to hide the truth, even using blatant disinformation to do it. Sure looks like ideological bias.

Insist on a correction.

To join, email Cao (caoilfhionn1 at gmail dot com) with your blog’s url.

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A trackback, now and then, would be nice, but…no pressure.

Continuing in the vein of the last two weeks, more on the (mundane) life at sea: The SHs. Ship’s Servicemen. Function: Four main things, to me, a non-Supply type, looking at how it affected my life:

• Ship’s Barbers
• Ship’s Laundry
• Ship’s Store Operator
• “Gedunk” Machine Fillers

First: Ship’s Barbers – Yes, they cut hair. Somewhere on the ship, there is a small to medium sized space, in my case I have seen from 3 chairs (on an AOR) to one (DDs/FFGs). On the door, the day’s appointment times, maybe tomorrows, too. Walk by and scribble your name in the 15 minute block. Some ships allow call in appointments to all, some to officers and chiefs. The shop isn’t open 24/7, but usually human like “business hours” and some evening periods, too. For me, an an XO, the Barber shop had more than one purpose. It was a 15 minute Q&A period with an SH1, plenty seasoned and with a finger on the pulse of the crew, where information flowed both directions. He would clue me in on issues not getting a fair shot, I could provide more detailed explanations for situations/operations for the general edification of those not getting the gouge via the chain of command, or in need of clarification. It was a great safety valve. Not only was this a feature I used, but one day, the CO asked me to schedule him for a haircut. I later provided him the time. That evening, as we sat after 8 o’clock reports covering the day, he commented: When you set me up for a haircut, it’s with SH1….we smiled, knowing why. Done, was the response, and it always was henceforth.

Readers: Got a good “sea story” about the barbers aboard? Drop it off in the comments. I know there are plenty. Other SH stories? Hold them and come back weekly to connect them to the functional areas above, please! The last week of SH stories will be noted and then batteries released for any topics not covered.

Next week: The Ship’s Laundry and activating the bleach.The Fog hd Juno ipod

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