If you haven’t seen the movie Office Space stop what you are doing and go watch it right now!

Especially take note of the restaurant manager who constantly berates Jennifer Aniston for wearing only "the bare minimum" of flair – little magnet-like pins with cool logos and witty sayings that are supposed to go on her waitress uniform to show she is a fun person.

"But I thought you wanted 15 pieces of flair" her character says. "Well that's fine, if you are the kind of person who is satisfied doing the bare minimum," he retorts. Then he refers her to a bubbly little pain in the ass of a wait-guy who has 37 pieces of flair on his uniform which apparently is supposed to mean he is lots more fun than Aniston's character.

Well, not to me but let's not go there.

Aniston ends up flipping off her boss and quitting the job. Good move that makes a good movie even better.

Now, back to reality. President Barack Obama held a news conference on the debt and budget crises today – he ignored the news about China hacking the Pentagon computers and stealing our stealth aircraft technology – and twice he used the "bare minimum" argument for why he should ignore Republicans' alternatives to his plan.

"If you just want to do the bare minimum." What a tremendous orator, communicator and all around good guy. I bet in a fit of fiscal restraint he fired his high priced White House speech writers and started watching cult flicks instead to get a cheap supply of great one-liners. Our President.

Karl Rove the GOP strategist and former Bush Administration power player decimated Obama's arguments on the Fox Business Channel right after the President went back to the Oval Office to plot out his next golf game. But I couldn't get Office Space out of my mind.

I mean, here is a guy who wants the world to think he is a devout Muslim without ever going to the local mosque, or a devout Christian without ever going to church, but in reality is a communist who wants to destroy the foundation of American wealth by replacing corporations with government.

Communists have to attack corporations because in reality their economic model was formed in the days of aristocracies and monarchies which pretty much died a natural death a century ago. So if communists want to retain any sense of relevancy they have to dumb down the educational system and then spew hatred for corporations to keep the masses diverted and engaged.

Rove said Obama's attacks on Republicans for supposedly preventing him from creating a workable budget plan that will make everything hunky-dory was hypocritical, and I agree. For starters, he ignored his own words and deeds for the past three years, not that you'll see that on the news because half the media talk about how he looked rather than what he said.

In fact the press conference was supposed to be all about Obama being "the grown up" in the negotiations while Republicans are supposed to be acting "childish."

Seriously. These ass-wipes are talking about who can out-posture whom while our country is on the brink of financial ruin and we are under constant siege from communists and Islamo-fascist terrorists. And no one says so much as a word about the fact that China – which also means North Korea and Iran – has our stealth technology, our sonar technology, and our satellite technology.

That means they know how to shoot down our stealth aircraft, and build their own planes that will avoid our stealth seeking capabilities. Don't put away the ham radios and communication wire just yet.

Know what I think? I think Obama knows damn well that he isn't going to see a second term in the White House and he's goofing off for the next 18 months while our enemies, his friends, build a rocket that can be launched from Iran on Inauguration Day 2013 just in time to blow the hell out of the swearing in ceremony for the next president.

Don't agree? Prove me wrong. At least we'll be talking about real issues instead of whether the guy who was elected on leadership capabilities can stop worrying about whether he looks presidential instead of acts presidential.

Oh, and while I was out driving today I was listening to my friend Jim Vicevich's morning talk show on WTIC-1080 radio, the CBS outlet for the Greater Hartford area – you also can listen to streaming audio on line – while he was interviewing former career US Army intelligence officer Ralph Peters about the cyber attacks on the Pentagon.

Peters, now an author and analyst, said that the Obama Administration just released its What To Do In Case Of … Rules for Cyber Attacks, which basically say we'll be very angry with the Russians, Chinese and others of their ilk if they keep stealing our stuff, but won't actually do anything about it.

Unfortunately, even though we have the capabilities to respond to their cyber attacks with our far more sophisticated cyber counter-attacks that will fry their entire Information Technology networks, and insert killer viruses in places where they'll hide for decades, the Obama Administration says we won't.

Because we are all way too nice and just want a world where everyone gets along.

See where this is going? A world where no one has a military advantage – except the Chinese who have more people that you can kill, and Russia which has more land than can be conquered, and the Islamo-fascist terrorists who have more suicide bombers than bombs. Which means the free world, in particular the United States of America, is screwed.

I bet when Obama ended his press conference he was humming Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta on the way back to his office.

I have been keeping track of the economic news, particularly the unemployment figures, on various television outlets, in addition to print and radio shows for several years now and am wondering where I can find an honest journalist.

Perhaps that is too harsh a judgment of my former profession, but still, how often do you hear the real unemployment figures versus the government spin?

According to the US Debt Clock, which shows real time figures on our escalating national debt, state debt, personal debt, and a gazillion other statistics, the real number of unemployed in the US and the reported unemployed in the US are off by nearly 11 million workers – this week.

The government's latest propaganda says the unemployment rate has risen to 9.2 percent of the workforce of 139,811,815 which would be 12 million people. Now, already we have an issue with the numbers because the Debt Clock says the official number of unemployed is 14,059,706, so either the number reported is wrong or the total workforce number is wrong.

Either way is irrelevant however, because the government figures only reflect those unemployed people who are collecting benefits. Even though unemployment benefits now extend for nearly two years, there are millions of people who aren't collecting benefits, either because time ran out, or they weren't eligible in the first place.

The debt clock says the actual number of unemployed people is 24,820,067 which is nearly 18 percent of the workforce, which is double what the government and just about every news outlet in the country is reporting.

And when the media does refer to those 11 million people, without actually mentioning that there are 11 million of them, they call them "underemployed!" What the hell does underemployed mean?

Can someone tell me? I realize that the phrase usually defines people who are not working full time, or are working at jobs which pay significantly less than the jobs they are qualified for or would be working at in a full economy.

But I have a question regarding these underemployed people; how do you know how many of them there are if they are off the grid?

How do you know how many of the 11 million non-reported unemployed or underemployed are in which category. How many are sweeping floors and cleaning bathrooms at fast food restaurants versus the number that have moved in with relatives and spend their days sitting in the basement muttering and sipping cheap wine?

How many are living under bridges? How many former hippies turned yuppies are living out in the woods, sleeping in hollow logs, surrounding by warning devices to alert them when census takers are in the vicinity?

All kidding aside, this is a propaganda scam that rivals the communists, the Nazis and any other totalitarian form of government that attempts to pacify its citizens by generating a non-stop stream of "good" news or news that at least isn't as bad as the real news. We are fed this garbage every single month.

And you know what really frosts me? Every time the news is bad, the Government Accounting Office or some other official organization scales it back using accounting methods that wouldn't pass a Grade Five math course, and then two weeks later they revise the figures!

And the revised figures are always a lot worse than the "official" figures that were released a couple of weeks earlier! But you hear about it on a scale that is exponentially less than the original announcement of the so-called good news.

It really bothers me that so many news anchors and reporters take the liberty of inserting snide comments into their coverage – especially of political matters – when they want to slam some office holder or candidate. But when they are handed information that is so easy to disprove – no opinions, just hard cold facts – they regurgitate the "official" spin without so much as a nod to the fact that it is off by at least half!

I have a question for the bureaucrats, politicians and journalists who regularly spew out these half-truths looking at the public with innocent, nearly angelic visages, expecting that if they look sincere we'll buy it: DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE PRESIDENT OBAMA'S CLAIM THAT WE'RE ALL STUPID????

News flash! We aren't. People have it figured out. And even if they aren't doing the math or watching the Debt Clock they know if they are out of work, and how many of their friends are out of work, and how much hot air they hear coming from Washington and their state capitals.

The best statistic of all will come on Election Day 2012 and that will be the one that says how many B.S. artists posing as concerned politicians find that the Debt Clock numbers now reflect them joining the real ranks of the unemployed. Maybe a president too! Unfortunately, I fear that it will be a long hard journey to find someone who reports the truth, meaning the whole truth between now and then.

Maybe I'll go down the street to visit my friend Diogenes. He'll probably be sitting in his hot tub this time of day, and if I explain this to him, he might let me borrow his lantern.

On a somber day in late October 1968 I entered a hangar at the Marine Corps air field in Quang Tri, South Vietnam, for a memorial service to six members of my unit who had been killed in action a few days earlier. A Marine from another unit at Quang Tri also died that week and his friends were there for the service too.

A few hundred Marines squeezed into that hangar and listened grim faced as the names of the dead were read, their brief histories were recounted and the chaplains from the various faiths performed their services. Then the First Marine Aircraft Wing Band that had flown up from Da Nang played Eternal Father, with one line changed from "for those in peril on the sea" to "for those in peril in the air."

I never was one for funeral services but a Staff Sergeant in my unit had made a point earlier in the day … "If it was you, wouldn't you want to know that your friends cared enough to come for your service."

So I went and even though it has been nearly 43 years I still remember that service, the people who died, and especially the Marine Band playing Eternal Father. I hadn't expected a band at such a forward and remote airfield, but their music touched me that day, and does to this day.

I had been in Vietnam for about six months by then, had flown more than 100 combat missions and had gone a long way toward insulating my emotions from the daily horrors of combat. But for just a moment, that band reached deep inside me, touched my soul, and retained my humanity. For that I will always be grateful.

That was not my first encounter with a Marine band in that area along the violent Demilitarized Zone. In July 1968 the combat base at Khe Sanh, where a siege only a few months earlier resulted in the deaths of 274 Americans and between 10,000 and 15,000 North Vietnamese communist troops, was dismantled having been declared unnecessary with the more mobile tactics successfully being employed against the communists.

Since the fighting was so fierce there, formal decommissioning ceremonies were held and the Marine Band was flown up from Da Nang to play taps. I flew medevac missions there, had taken incoming there, along with air bursts, and marveled at the bravery of these musicians who came armed with brass and percussion instruments, dedicated to doing their jobs to memorialize and honor the fighters who survived and those who did not.

Now, all these years later, in the midst of a nationwide battle over national debt, national spending and the future of America, Congress wants to cut the budget for musicians in all services by about one third!

Are you people serious? A one-hundred million dollar cut from the bands in an overall $500 billion defense budget? Aren't there a couple of old ships that need to go into mothballs, or a few dozen aging aircraft that have outlived their serviceable lives? Don't give me that, we both know there are.

So I ask again, are you people – in Congress – serious? I guess not. In fact, the Washington Post quoted Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), who sponsored the measure to reduce funding, arguing that “the Pentagon doesn’t need any more band aid.”

Band aid! Get it? Hahahahahahahahaha.

"Is this House really capable of gutting investments in women’s health care but allowing a $5 million increase in funding for military bands?" the Post also quoted this lamebrain as saying, in a classic example of diversion since one has nothing to do with the other. This woman is a brain dead, knuckle dragging, snot-slinging Neanderthal. I said that. Me, not the Post or anyone else. Me.

The Post said the assault on military music "marks the first time that spending on the military’s 154 bands has been reduced by Congress. To take effect, however, the reduction must be approved by the Senate, which has yet to take up the fiscal 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill."

The Post also has reported that in a classic example of bipartisanship Rep. John Carter (R-Tx.) has joined with his co-chairman in the Army Caucus on Capitol Hill, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tx.), in a "Dear Colleague" letter, describing the assault on the military as "highly detrimental to our armed forces," because the bands "uphold pride and morale through music at funerals, welcome home celebrations, concerts, ceremonies and other esprit-de-corps events."

The bands also make recordings, often in their own studios, which are distributed free, because they can’t by law sell them.

Bands including the U.S. Marine Corps Band, "the President’s Own," which plays at White House functions, the U.S. Army Band, the U.S. Air Force Band and the U.S. Navy Band are well known in Washington. The Coast Guard band is administratively placed under the Department of Homeland Security.

Each service band also has smaller instrumental and singing groups, such as the Marine’s Chamber Orchestra, the Army’s Singing Sergeants, the Navy’s Sea Chanters, the Air Force Strings, and the Coast Guard’s Brass Quintet and Saxophone Quartet. The services also have bands that are stationed overseas but the Washington-based bands often travel as well.

All of this is important and it may be possible to make some reductions in travel or similar costs, but the worldwide cost of the bands is $325 million annually, which the anti-American forces in Congress want reduced by more than one-third to $200 million. So they want to go from roughly one dollar per American citizen to about 66 cents per American citizen. I guess illegal aliens get a pass.

Anyway, I think this is a travesty. There is so much more to our military musicians. They help in recruiting sure, but have you seen their music on the National Mall on Independence Day? Or at the Iwo Jima Memorial? Have you heard their vocalists?

Have you seen the chamber music played at official White House functions for foreign dignitaries? Have you even been to Eighth and I Streets in Washington, D.C., on a Friday night – the home of the Commandant of the Marine Corps – and seen the Drum and Bugle Corps and the Silent Drill Team? Have you been to a summer concert by Pershing's Own, the U.S. Army Band?

Tell me that Anchors Aweigh, or Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder don't get your blood pumping.

Yes, they all help with recruiting efforts and for that alone are worth their money. They also provide a path for thousands of musicians to continue on in civilian music careers, and for some they provide a full-time military career.

They were at Dover Air Base in October 1983 when the bodies of Americans killed in the Beirut bombing were brought home. They are in the vicinity of every American service member anywhere in the world, and they often are ambassadors to countries where some goodwill is a great idea.

And they go to remote, often hostile locales, to do what they do best, and remind our troops that America and Americans appreciate what they are doing, and haven't forgotten them.
Our military musicians represent the best of America, the pride of America, the hope of America. They lift our spirits and remind us of what is possible even when we are locked in desperate struggles against all enemies "foreign and domestic."

To reduce the opportunities to see and hear these ambassadors of the soul is anti-American, there is nothing else to call it. Those who support any reduction in our military music capabilities deserve to spend a two-year tour travelling to hostile environments – carrying the instruments for those who serve so willingly and so well.

A new and nearly unheard of - in national political circles - candidate has entered the race for the Republican nomination to challenge Barack Hussein Obama next year and stands as a shining example of a person with an insufficient public persona attempting to cloak himself in the guise of a previously successful person.

Just like John F. Kerry unsuccessfully attempted to portray himself as a latter day John F. Kennedy in 2004, Jon Huntsman who is so unremarkable that his own staff misspelled his name on his announcement stationery, is attempting to portray himself as a latter day Ronald Reagan.

It didn't work for Kerry and it won't work for Huntsman.

All else aside, there are two strikes against Huntsman already: he worked for Barack Hussein Obama as ambassador to China; and the American Terrorist Media loves this guy so much that they have progressed from tingles up their pant legs to virtual orgasms.

Either situation is an automatic disqualifier in my book and hopefully in the books of GOP primary voters across the country too.

Huntsman made his announcement in New Jersey's Liberty State Park, the same site where Reagan opened his 1980 presidential campaign with the Statue of Liberty in the background. But aside from the backdrop any similarity between Huntsman and Reagan ends right there.

In fact, Rush Limbaugh had a blast this week rebroadcasting excerpts from Ronald Reagan's announcement speech when he took on ex-president jimmy carter, and Huntsman's announcement speech where he promised to carry Barack Hussein Obama's water. What a difference.

Reagan took it right to Carter, promising and delivering a no-holds-barred campaign, while Huntsman opined that Obama is really a very nice guy who just has marginal policies. Whooppeee, we're in for a hot one now folks. Bleeeccchhh.

This entire approach of trying to recast oneself in someone else's image leaves me high and dry. If you can't portray yourself to the American public as who you really are, with expectations that the voting public will respond to you and your ideas - especially with modern marketing tools - you may as well quit before you start wasting everyone's time.

Remember John "Chameleon" Kerry when he went out to the Midwest on a bird hunting campaign appearance? Walked into a sporting goods store and the guy who talked about Genghis Khan with a soft 'g' in 1971, attempting to be the ultimate pseudo-intellectual back then, in 2004 asks the store clerk "Can I get me a hunting license here?"

'Get me a hunting license?' Really?

Did Ronald Reagan attempt to sell himself as a reincarnation of someone else? NO! He portrayed himself as himself and the public responded ... twice!

Did John F. Kennedy campaign on how much he was like some previous president? No way! He couldn't, he was the first Catholic to be elected president. Good grief even Obama didn't campaign on his similarities to someone else, he ran as himself -whomever that might be.

Kerry's unsuccessful attempt to build a link between himself and Kennedy should be a model of what NOT to do in a presidential campaign.

Kerry, who knew the Kennedys when he was a youngster, planned out his presidential bid decades in advance. Members of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who worked tirelessly to portray the real John Kerry to American voters recalled that he carried a motion picture camera with him in Vietnam, a very, very rare occurrence in those days - especially for troops in combat who were too busy trying to stay alive to film themselves doing it.

When Kerry made his bid for the presidency his commercials were full of dashing images of American Swift Boats on patrol in Vietnam's waters; remarkably similar to Victory at Sea images of World War II PT Boats, which were Kennedy's claim to fame. In fact, the movie PT-109 about Kennedy's boat being destroyed by a Japanese destroyer and Kennedy's true-life valor in surviving and help save other crew members, included scenes that appeared to be recast in Kerry's commercials.

But John F. Kerry was NOT John F. Kennedy and all the commercials in the world could not stop the truth from emerging. His betrayal of fellow Vietnam vets in his phony Winter Soldier hearings in 1971; his violation of his oath as a US Naval officer when he went to Paris and held unauthorized, and illegal, meetings with Vietnamese communists; his inclusion in the communist war museum in Saigon as a Hero of the Revolution - right there with Jane Fonda; his betrayal as co-chair of the Senate Select Committee on POWs and MIAs of more than 300 POWs left behind in Laos; all these transgressions caught up with him.

Oddly enough, in Huntsman's case the national electorate doesn't know enough about him yet to fully understand what are certain to be his weaknesses. On the surface his resume looks pretty good - twice elected Gov. of Utah, with a huge majority the second time; an exemplary Eagle Scout; the guy who made the largest tax reduction in Utah's history, and still ended the year with a budget surplus.

But what is certain to make many voters squirm is that he has worked in appointed positions in the administrations of presidents from both parties, including Reagan's but that was decades ago. Meaning he is part of the establishment, meaning he is tainted, meaning he is going to have to reinvent himself if he is going to gain a foothold with voters across the political spectrum who are sick to death of the establishment and the status quo. Huntsman's travels on all sides of the political spectrum automatically make him suspect as a RINO and as a ringer.

So Jon Huntsman has his work cut out for him ... starting with building an identity that will work with the voters if he is so uncertain of his true self. But my advice would be to lay off the Ronald Reagan comparisons.

We've already seen the real Ronald Reagan and that act is impossible to follow.

President Barack Hussein Obama is poised to announce troop withdrawals from the ongoing War on Terror's Afghanistan battlefields later today, with a preordained result that can be easily determined simply by studying the failed Vietnam policies of the late President Richard Nixon and his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

In the spring of 1969, about three months after his inauguration, Nixon announced that he was going to begin withdrawing troops from Vietnam. This apparently was his so-called "secret plan to win the war" on which he had campaigned the previous year. His timing could not have been worse, the results were disastrous, his decision failed to take into account the true situation on the battlefield, and his motivation was purely political - just like President Obama's.

When Nixon made his ill-fated announcement the US had approximately 540,000 troops in Vietnam, and for the first time in the war we had numerical parity with the communist forces, which by then were entirely composed of regular troops from the North Vietnamese Army.

A year earlier, beginning on Feb. 1, 1968, the communists had launched their Tet Offensive, using 75,000 Viet Cong guerrillas backed by North Vietnamese regulars - counting on huge numbers of South Vietnamese civilians to rise up alongside them. But the vicious terror tactics employed by the communists had alienated the South Vietnamese populace, who stayed home for the battles, and by the end of the month, with the exception of the siege at Khe Sanh and the Battle for Hue City, the fighting was over.

The Viet Cong suffered an estimated 37,500 troops killed in action, which forever broke the back of the guerrilla forces, with the North Vietnamese losing about 25,000 more.

When the siege at Khe Sanh was lifted in April the communists had lost approximately 15,000 troops of the 40,000 North Vietnamese who had surrounded the remote base, and another 8,000 died in and around Hue City. All in all it was a total military disaster for the communists.

But the American media, led by the late CBS evening news anchor and closet communist Walter Cronkite, lied to the American public and reported the US victory as a communist victory, much to the delight of their cohorts in Russia, China and North Vietnam. The American media by that point had progressed from mind-numbing ignorance of military issues, compounded by arrogance and groundless self-importance, to open collaboration with the communists.

Cronkite even flew to Saigon and reported to America that the war in Vietnam was at a "stalemate" and "unwinnable." Incredible liar.

As a result, the late president Lyndon B. Johnson replaced the victorious American commander Gen. William Westmoreland, but nonetheless began pouring even more US troops into the country - similar to President George W. Bush's 2007-2008 "Surge" in Iraq if you will.

Prior to this point in the Vietnam War the US had not lost a single battle, and never did. The communist losses were far in excess of America's although the American media again lied to the American public, ridiculing the military's body counts. (After the war it was revealed that in addition to annihilating the Viet Cong, killing virtually all of the 75,000 guerrillas in battle, the north lost about 1.5 million troops killed in action!)

With even more troops on the ground enabling a more aggressive search and destroy methodology the scope of the communist battlefield defeats escalated and they lost entire regiments and even divisions in a series of operations launched by US forces. By the spring of 1969, especially after the communists suffered massive losses in the 9th Marines' Operation Dewey Canyon, the communist field commanders began lobbying their political bosses to surrender.

Enter Nixon's troop withdrawal announcement, at the urging of Kissinger. The communist political bosses in Hanoi immediately squashed all talk of surrender, figuring correctly that while they couldn't defeat America militarily, they did have far more backbone than America's political leaders.

Later that year Nixon announced his "Vietnamization" program by which more of the fighting would be turned over to the South Vietnamese armed forces, a tactic that worked very well for the South Koreans in the early 1950s. The Vietnamization program was again ridiculed by the American media, but in fact, it worked!

South Vietnamese forces gained strength and ability, and while taking their hits along the way, still progressed to the point that in the spring of 1972, with most Americans long gone from the battlefield, they were able to stand up to a massive communist invasion of 250,000 troops, plus huge numbers of tanks and artillery. At the end of that invasion, fought on the ground by South Vietnamese forces backed by US air power, the communists had lost an estimated 150,000 troops killed in action, plus half their armor and artillery.

The US media again reported mostly on the difficulties encountered in fighting such a huge invading force, and basically neglected to mention that it failed miserably, even worse than the Tet Offensive of 1968, and that South Vietnamese forces were victorious.

America had long been at the bargaining table with the communists in Paris, another mistake based on the fraudulent concept that the war couldn't be won and only a negotiated settlement was acceptable. Later that year when the communist negotiators began dragging their feet Nixon ordered the Christmas bombings of the north to force them back to the bargaining table.

He suspended the bombing again at the urging of his by then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and as it later turned out again lost an opportunity to force the communists to surrender. In a memoir written well after the war, North Vietnam's top general said that the bombing was so effective and so demoralizing to the north that if it had continued for only two more days the communists were prepared to surrender unconditionally.

Instead, they went back to the bargaining table where they consistently outmaneuvered the American negotiators until an agreement was reached. The handful of remaining American fighting forces were withdrawn, and some of America's POWs were brought home, but half again as many were left in communist hands, to rot and die in Laotian prisons.

In June 1973 the US Congress passed the Case-Church Resolution, cutting off all aid to South Vietnam, our ally, including all medical, economic, military and humanitarian assistance.

Two years later after Nixon resigned in disgrace, and then-President Gerald Ford who openly told the northern communists via the American media that the US would not intervene if the communists again invaded South Vietnam, the rebuilt communist forces did just that. In April 1975, alone, abandoned and nearly out of bullets, the South Vietnamese government fell, setting off a communist rampage in Southeast Asia that left nearly 3 million civilians dead and millions more displaced.

And now we have Barack Hussein Obama, once again setting the stage for a premature troop withdrawal, a resurgence of extremist Muslim forces, and offering our enemies a secure haven from which to rebuild their forces and to once again attack America and our allies, if we actually have any.

We have many similarities between Vietnam and Afghanistan. Our enemies employ vicious tactics including using civilians as shields, they have sanctuaries in neighboring countries - Paah Kiss Taaan this time - Laos and Cambodia in the Vietnam war, that our troops are prevented from attacking, and the war is fought more often based on political and media considerations rather than military strategy.

As in Vietnam our government announces troop buildups and coming offensive operations in advance, giving the enemy time to adjust. We have "pundits" who obviously have no clue about real military tactics saying the war is unwinnable - exposing their abject ignorance of military subjects, yet providing "advice" that is heeded by President Obama.

In that vein I heard some Democratic "pollster" on Fox and Friends this morning saying the same thing as Cronkite - the war is "unwinnable." I didn't catch the guy's name and I really don't care who he is because he obviously is a Walter Cronkite wannabe who wants to go down in history as the man who convinced Obama to lose Afghanistan.

Yet we still are winning.

So-called experts are now arguing over what is the correct number of troops to bring home. That is irrelevant!

The issue is that by announcing an intention to disengage, Obama - who is doing this for political reasons just as Nixon did - is signaling a weakness in our political willpower. He is giving hope where there should be unrelenting, ceaseless attacks that kill and demoralize the enemy force, nothing less.

The war in Afghanistan is being won just as the war in Vietnam was being won. But once again the media is reporting it as being lost or at least unwinnable.

But consider this my media acquaintances - eventually, historians are going to realize that the American media was complicit in the deaths of some 3,000,000 southeast Asians slaughtered by the communists after the fall of Saigon, Phnom Penh and Vientiane, and those who took part will be forever branded as traitors to humanity.

And eventually, a withdrawal from Afghanistan when we are on the cusp of victory - military commanders on the ground there say they need about two years to wrap it up - will result in a resurgence of the same kind of extremism that was exhibited by the communists in the mid- to late-1970s. So my question to the American media is: do you really want this for your legacy? Is this how you want to be remembered?

As the next generation of propagandists who encouraged the slaughter of untold numbers of innocents - again? Think it over.

I generally don't write a separate column when we learn that a member of the Armed Forces from my state dies in combat because the ultimate goal of my columns - besides needling politicians - is to inform and give readers a sample of my writing style. Thus I don't want to create the appearance of commercialism when we lose another warrior in the ongoing War on Terror.

But for three years now I have been teaming up with other bloggers in Connecticut - most notably radio talk show host Jim Vicevich who precedes Rush Limbaugh on WTIC-1080 at 9 a.m. weekdays - to convince readers to send care packages to the troops overseas. This year the date on which I intended to deliver my annual "Support the Troops" message coincided with the news that Connecticut has lost another soldier.

My fellow bloggers and I participate in the blog competition in conjunction with an annual Internet Troopathon run by Move America Forward, the nation's largest pro-troop organization. The Troopathon this year will be held on June 23 and our blogathon competition has been underway since last month.

Three years ago, our team - The Greyhawks, named after the call sign that was assigned to Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM)161 - came in second place against some stiff competition. I served in 161 in Vietnam, it was the first helicopter squadron to carry troops into battle in Korea, and it also served with distinction in the Gulf War and the ongoing War on Terror.

For more than 40 years HMM-161 flew CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, but last year the squadron transitioned to the new V-22 Ospreys which are half helicopter-half airplane and it's designation was changed to VMM-161. The HMM designation is now part of history.

Nonetheless, the Greyhawk tradition lives on here in Connecticut. Last year the Greyhawks won the blogathon competition and this year we are in the lead again. In addition to Jim http://radioviceonline.com/ and I, the CTWatchdog.com consumer website hosted by my former Hartford Courant colleague George Gombossy also is participating.

The blogathon is a means of encouraging people to visit the MAF website - all you have to do is click on the Remember Their Sacrifice link on our websites - where you can select a care package to send to troops serving in the Middle East. The options range from a package suited to one person, which costs $30, up to enough to serve a battalion. The choice is yours, but if you are so inclined please click on the link on my website, or Jim's or George's, and do something special for the people who are most impacted by the war.

None of us, not the Greyhawk bloggers, nor Move America Forward, gets so much as a cent out of this. We do it because we know that there are people defending us every single day and night from some of the most vicious terrorists the human race has ever faced. There is little we can do for them directly because the military provides all their material support.

But we can do this. Please help us.

And please pray for the family and friends of Army Private First Class Eric Daniel Soufrine, a Woodbridge, Connecticut native who was killed in action in Afghanistan on Tuesday. I offer his family, friends and loved ones my most sincere, deepest condolences.

There is little else I can offer in this time of tragedy except to say that his efforts on our behalf, and his sacrifices, as well as those of all who knew and cared for him, will never be forgotten.

Flags will fly at half-staff until he is brought home for burial, but long after they have returned to full-staff his memory will live with those of us who once walked in his shoes, and were fortunate to have returned.

As long as there are veterans of America's wars, as long as we have the capability to communicate, as long as there are days of remembrance, he will be remembered, along with all the others who also died in the service of our country.

It is our obligation to ensure that his memory, his deeds and his sacrifices will live on as long as there is a United States of America.

SAEPE EXPERTUS, SEMPER FIDELIS, FRATRES AETERNI
"Often Tested, Always Faithful, Brothers Forever"

Aware Americans have been talking for decades about the "dumbing down" of the public school system, with curricula focused on the slowest students in each class to ensure that no one ever fails - thus drawing the entire system into a black hole of underachievement.

Now we find that one reason the media gives only passing notice to this travesty is because many American "traditional journalists" are so blindingly stupid, or at least terribly unschooled, that they probably don't know what constitutes a real education.

I say this because of the reprehensible actions of the vast majority of media outlets and personalities last week when Sarah Palin made an appearance in Boston. She said that when Paul Revere of Revolutionary War fame rode out to warn the colonists that the British were coming, he also warned the British that the colonists were gathering to kick their red-coated butts back to England.

AAAAAAHHHHHHAAAAAAAA! went the collective American Terrorist Media. WE HAVE YOU NOW!

WHAT A STUPID THING PALIN SAID THIS TIME! WHAT A STUPID BROAD SHE IS! WE TOLD YOU SO! WE SAID SHE WAS A NINCOMPOOP! WE SAID SHE HAD NO BUSINESS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OR ANY OTHER OFFICE! WHAT A JERK! EVERYONE KNOWS PAUL REVERE WARNED THE COLONISTS NOT THE BRITISH. SEE? SEE? SEE? WE TOLD YOU!!!

Unfortunately someone should have told Paul Revere what the media would say about his ride some 236 years later. Revere was one of three patriots who rode that night, the others being William Dawes and Dr. Samuel Prescott. History states that all three were arrested by the British but Prescott and Dawes quickly escaped while Revere was held and interrogated before being released.

Revere said in his later writings that he warned the British troops that they better let him go because they were about to be squished. Left without a horse, Revere returned to Lexington in time to witness part of the battle on the Lexington Green.

A transcript of a letter from Revere to his friend Jeremey Belknap in 1798 describing his ride that night which can be found online at http://www.masshist.org/ says:

I observed a Wood at a Small distance, & made for that. When I got there, out Started Six officers, on Horse back, and orderd me to dismount;-one of them, who appeared to have the command, examined me, where I came from, & what my Name Was? I told him. it was Revere, he asked if it was Paul? I told him yes He asked me if I was an express? I answered in the afirmative. He demanded what time I left Boston? I told him; and aded, that their troops had catched aground in passing the River, and that There would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up.

Note to the media - I left the segment above as I found it online for authenticity purposes so don't get all over the spelling and grammar errors. They aren't mine. Dumbasses.

So, um, where are the apologies? There ARE apologies aren't there? Apologies to Sarah Palin, apologies to the readers and viewers of the various outlets that were subjected to a media fraud, and especially apologies to all of the schoolchildren across America who were so horribly misinformed by this propaganda onslaught.

We also need apologies from the so-called late night entertainers who attempted to hack Palin to pieces over her alleged faux pas. Let's start with Jay Leno, who showed himself to be vicious as well as ignorant.

I've always thought of Leno as somewhat of a bumbling jerk who has lots of money and collects classic automobiles because he had the good fortune to inherit the late night audience that the late Johnny Carson spent decades building, and the good sense not to screw up Carson's efforts.

But Leno really showed his true character when he went on a rant against Palin, commenting that New Yorkers should have someone ride to warn them the next time she is coming to town. How about a warning pasted across the TV screens stating that Leno is an arrogant, uneducated, stiflingly self-absorbed jack wagon whose commentary is dangerous to the mental health of unsuspecting viewers?

Leno should apologize as should that perverted jerk Letterman - I don't know what he may have said because I haven't watched his pathetic efforts at humor since the revelations about his relationships with staffers, and his vicious sexual comments about Palin's then 14-year-old daughter. But he should apologize before he starts each show just because he's such an ass.

Oh yeah, that dimwit Imus should apologize too - partly for even being alive, but specifically for his running attacks on Palin in which he repeatedly characterizes her as stupid. Imagine that - a man who has to stand on the shoulders of his extensive staff every day just to give the impression that he has a double-digit IQ calling someone else stupid.

You know who is dumber than these media stooges? Their audiences! Think about it - these jackasses go out in print or on the airwaves every day making some of the dumbest commentaries in recorded history and they have a ready supply of fawning sycophants at hand to laugh on cue. What dipsticks!

I watched Sarah Palin on Fox News Sunday last weekend and even Chris Wallace gave the distinct impression that he thought she was full of it. She didn't back down though - and ended the segment with the comment "I know my American history."

Apparently Wallace didn't and obviously many alleged "journalists" on the national scene don't either. And these people have the temerity to want to tell us who we should vote for - in the primaries and for president - and actually think we're the "lower class."

But Sarah Palin won't get the apologies she deserves and we won't either because of the aforementioned media arrogance. Why do you think they are carrying on about that sick freak of a Democratic New York Congressman Anthony Weiner's disclosures that he has Internet sex with women he doesn't know and sends them x-rated photos of his privates?

Do you honestly think members of the American Terrorist Media would be making such a big deal of a Democrat's perverted behavior if they weren't trying to divert attention away from their insufferable ignorance over the Paul Revere-Sarah Palin story?

This is cover your ass time for the media and Weiner, sick bastard that he is, has now discovered what it means to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thrown under the bus he is, and he deserves it. Personally, I think freaks like him ought to be in sideshows, not the US Congress where his mere presence, among so many others like him, is a primary cause of the decline of the United States of America.

But the media would give him a pass in a heartbeat if there weren't so many people scrambling to distance themselves from their reprehensible performances on Palin.

I think Palin may have set these people up on purpose, knowing as she does that they are biased, unprofessional and make their living lying to the American public.

Whoa! Did you feel that? I did! I mean, I was writing about all the slimeballs in Congress and the media and started to feel as though I was neck deep in a settling tank at a sewage treatment plant.

Then I switched back to Sarah Palin and it was like walking into a cool shower and watching all that slime wash right down the drain. I like that analogy. Congress and the media = sewage.

Sarah Palin = cool, clean shower. Yeah. That works.

If I have one criticism of Sarah Palin - and I discussed this at length with my son who is an expert on these things - it's that she didn't call the media out more aggressively for so obviously trying to sabotage everything she does. I mean, we have a president in the White House who can't do simple math in his head and thinks the US has 57 states!

Here's a couple more examples of Obama's "special" relationship with the media: 2008: Navy Seal Team 6 is Cheney's private assassination team. 2011: I put together Seal Team 6 to take out Bin Laden.

2008: Bin Laden is innocent until proven guilty, and must be captured alive and given a fair trial. 2011: I authorized Seal Team 6 to kill Bin Laden.

2008: Guantanamo is entirely unnecessary, and the detainees should not be interrogated. 2011: Vital intelligence was obtained from Guantanamo detainees that led to our locating Bin Laden.

But does he ever get hammered by the media? NO!

My son says he has seen enough of Sarah Palin's lipstick and now he wants to see the pit bull behind it. I agree. Enough of the nice girl nonsense. If you want to be president the country wants to know that you can take off the velvet glove and use the iron fist on occasion.

How about the first punch going right onto Jay Leno's massive glass jaw? I'll bet Palin could kick his ass in one round.

For months now I have been watching the national media, aka Mainstream Media, aka Lamestream Media, or as it is known in this column, the American Terrorist Media, attempting to run every non-traditional candidate out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination before we even get to the primaries.

The traditional media doesn't like Sarah Palin - we all know that, they've been savaging her mercilessly since 2008. They don't like Herman Cain - I mean after all, a BLACK Republican presidential candidate who also is a corporate CEO with a strong track record of business success, who can't be pushed around on the flat tax issue? They don't like Michelle Bachmann at all - Good GAWD another Republican Woman???

The media does like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney who announced his candidacy today because they think his Romney Care legislation enacted when he was governor will kill his chances with conservatives - Republicans and Independents alike. They loved Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels - who? - until he dropped out. They love to hate former House Speaker Newt Gingrich because he has more baggage than an overseas tourist flight.

They keep throwing former Ambassador Jon Huntsman's name around because he worked for Obama and again would have no chance with rank and file Republicans on that issue alone. They loved to love former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee until he dropped out because according to the media's "logic" he also was beatable.

Even when the announced GOP candidates were preparing to debate in South Carolina the media described Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty as "the only top-tier" candidate (defined as meeting the approval of the national media, which is further defined as having baggage that would prevent his election should he face incumbent President Barack Obama.)

Sen. Rick Santorum, Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, and former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson all get passing grades from the media for one reason - they all are known quantities and all can be manipulated by the very people who are passing judgment on them.

Meanwhile, the media also has declared the Presidential election of 2012 a done deal, with Obama the winner, because the arrogant pieces of crap think the American public is so dense that we can't think for ourselves.

As evidence of Obama's certain victory 18 months from now the media points to last week's election of a Democrat to the US House of Representatives in a "GOP stronghold" in upstate New York; and to a horribly skewed poll that was done by CNN - Obama's public relations agency - that has his approval rating bouncing back from the mid-40s to around 60 percent.

First, in upstate New York, no one got a majority of the votes cast because a former Democrat who reinvented himself as a Tea Party candidate ran a third party race that siphoned votes from the Republican candidate and assured the Democrat victory. Now, without question the Republicans should have put a much, much stronger candidate up for that seat, and they should have done one hell of a lot more to educate the voters to the sleazeball tactics of the opposition.

They didn't and paid the price, but I hardly think that qualifies as a "trend" or even a sign.

AS far as the latest bogus poll is concerned - every news outlet on the national scene is reporting it as if it is gospel (every one, get it? EVERY one. Meaning FOX too. It's true. It's true. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it but I did.)

Way back when it first broke a number of outlets mentioned that it had a horribly over-represented number of Democrats compared to Republicans and Independents so it has virtually no validity - although that point was established once we noted it was sponsored by CNN.

But there is more to this approval rating issue. If a major percentage of registered voters don't like a particular candidate it isn't likely that they are going to change their minds simply based on who else is running. I have seen this before, very recently, and I can tell you that once a candidate's negative ratings go above 50 percent it is very hard to get people to change their minds - unless you have rigged sufficient numbers of voting machines that it doesn't matter.

Obama's approval rating supposedly shot upwards due to his "courageous" decision to allow US Navy Seals to put two bullets into Osama bin Laden's head. Are you kidding? I even heard radio personality Don Imus, who frankly isn't even a ghost of his former hard-edged self any longer - make that point recently.

There was nothing courageous about making that decision. It was a decision that had to be made and should be made in the normal course of business if you are President of the United States. Imus claimed that Obama's decision to allow the SEALS to whack Osama has erased any comparison between Obama and the ultimate wimp president, jimmy carter.

Bull! It did no such thing. The fact that sycophants like Imus are trying so hard to give Obama a macho image only serves to further illuminate the point that even a simple decision has to be blown up far beyond its true value and meaning to give Obama any boost at all. For crying out loud the majority of Americans have been wanting bin Laden dead for nearly ten years!

How courageous is it to say "Sic 'em" once he was found? A pacifist could have made that call in his sleep!

The GOP has some real issues to deal with, but they aren't the issues the media is pushing. The lesson to be learned from the New York race is that: 1.) we should enact run-off legislation that will require the top two finishers to run against each other in any race where no one gets 50 percent of the vote (as in Bill Clinton); and 2.) we'd better start grooming some spoiler candidates of our own all across the country to draw votes away from establishment Democrats to nullify that tactic.

It will piss the Democrats off and they'll holler and fuss like spoiled children, but who cares? They won't win, Obama won't win and that is the real issue.

The GOP also needs to get off stupid questions like "Is Sarah Palin qualified to be President?" Are you serious? Is Obama?? Good grief a New England stone wall has more qualifications to be president than Obama? At least the stone wall has strength of character.

As Huckabee put it one night recently, just about any GOP candidate out there has worlds more qualifications than Obama. I even saw Juan Williams on a recent panel talk show, in his continuing role as Democrat mouthpiece and reciter of the daily Democrat talking points, take a shot at Congressman Paul Ryan's presidential aspirations because Ryan supposedly has no foreign relations experience.

Williams quickly shut up when the host reminded him that Obama doesn't have ANY experience except for voting "Present" when he was representing the people of Illinois.

And it shows! Unless you're Williams or one of the other media sycophants working out of the D.C. beltway or Manhattan most people know that Obama is doing squat except screwing up the country.

I've been having a blast the last few days watching the media work itself into a state of extreme frustration because Sarah Palin won't tell them what she is attempting to accomplish with her bus tour of America. She won't tell the media and sometimes she won't even tell the GOP power structure where she is going or what she will do when she gets there.

Would you like to know why? Because she doesn't trust either of them and she shouldn't.

Best way to cover Sarah Palin's bus trip? Rent a car and follow her. Listen to her speeches, write down what she says, take in the crowd reaction and do the job you signed on for instead of sitting on your ass in the bureau letting the Democratic communications people write your stories for you.

I don't know what the GOP field is going to look like by this time next year, but I am very happy that we have a diverse and interesting group of candidates out there trying for the nomination. I like Herman Cain. I like Michele Bachmann. I like Sarah Palin too, and yes she is qualified to be president if you look at her real record in Alaska instead of reading the propaganda spewed by the alleged ATM.

I'll decide who to vote for when the time comes, and on that day you can be sure of this - I won't be making any decisions based on anything I see in the media.

In 1943, the American military intercepted a radio transmission detailing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's route for an inspection trip to bases in the South Pacific.

His aircraft was shot down by American interceptors and he died. Yamamoto, the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet, who commanded the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor, had studied at Harvard University giving him an inside knowledge of America. His death was a major blow to the Japanese military during World War II.

I bring this up because I believe that had he been alive in October, 1944 at the Battle of Leyte Gulf, in which Gen. Douglas MacArthur's return to the Philippines was hanging by a thread, the allied victory may well have had a different outcome.

(I read as much as I can about that battle because my late father was serving aboard the aircraft carrier USS Princeton - shown at left - when it was sunk there on Oct. 24, 1944. He was blown off the hangar deck by a massive explosion and survived several hours in the water – sharks below, Japanese zeroes above – before he was rescued.)

Regarding the ongoing War on Terror and the recent death of the top Al Qaeda commander, Osama bin Laden I believe the action by US forces who killed him has much the same military and historic significance as the death of Adm. Yamamoto. In both cases our military eliminated highly intelligent, highly skilled enemy commanders who also possessed first-person knowledge of America.

Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave the order to kill Yamamoto much as Obama gave the order to kill bin Laden, but you don't see a lot in the history books about Roosevelt appearing before the nation's media and taking credit for the death of a top enemy commander - as Obama did.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of Roosevelt's either, despite the fawning obsequiousness of many modern Republicans who either don't know the nation's history or think we don't. Roosevelt's economic policies are widely believed to have extended rather than ended the Great Depression, his threats to expand the number of judges on the Supreme Court so he could have his way in social engineering issues were nothing short of extortion, and his expansion of the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution was outright theft of the right of individuals to reap the benefits of their own labor - in my opinion.

But he still had the good sense to let the military do its job, and gave credit where it was due. Obama on the other hand got so much negative press for taking credit for the operation by US Navy SEALS, and a photo of his Administration officers in the Situation Room where he looked like the least important person in the photo, that it upended the uptick he got in popularity polls.

Even though the Constitution has been amended so no American president can ever serve more than two terms, unlike Roosevelt's four, it is hard to imagine how Obama expects to serve a second term with his overall disapproval – negatives – hanging strong at 50 percent or more.

Some friends were talking the other day about Obama's stabbing Israel in the back by siding with Palestinian terrorists who want to return Israel's borders to where they were in 1967 when the entire Arab World tried to push the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. They were saying there will be a monetary reaction from the Jewish lobby which voted heavily for Obama in 2008 but will likely not invest much in his re-election bid now.

Personally, I don't think it matters, and I believe Obama knew that before he betrayed Israel. Of course, considering that he started off his administration by bowing to the King of Saudi Arabia, maybe he thinks shafting Israel is just business as usual, not a betrayal.

But if you go back to the column I wrote on Friday, March 18, 2011, about how the OPEC countries invested trillions on Oct. 10, 2008 in an attempt to crash our stock market you'll see why I don't think Obama cares about the Jewish lobby. In my Oct. 11, 2008 column I suggested that the Pentagon try to determine who may have had trillions of dollars at their disposal to make such a devastating impact on our economy. The market moved more than 2100 points that day, including 400 points in the last 15 minutes of trading, which would have been impossible for individuals, or even corporations to achieve.

Only a consortium of countries with a grudge against the US and enough money at their disposal could have pulled off that attack. The Pentagon hired a consultant who researched the trades that day and later revealed that OPEC countries, using the glut of profits they made over artificially inflated oil prices during the previous year were the likely culprits.

So – what has been going on with oil prices lately? Yes, indeed, they are again rising as they did three years ago. I'm sure that some of the increase is due to the actions of unscrupulous speculators, but the real profits are going right where they did in 2007 and 2008 – into the pockets of OPEC producers.

National level political pundits have been saying for months now that Obama is building a $1 billion "War Chest" to buy off enough poll workers across the country to ensure that he gets the most votes on Election Day 2012. So where is he going to get that money if he keeps moseying along, angering the various political, ethnic and social groups that joined to get him elected in the first place?

Let's put this into perspective. $1 billion is a lot of money but it is only about 5 percent of the amount spent on Oct. 10, 2008 to manipulate the stock market. Now that a pro-terrorist president with some very odd ideas about a social, financial and military agenda for America is in office, it will take far less to keep him there than it did to get him there.

I don't think the Republican Party is much help at this point either. I'll write more about that in another column, but it hasn't escaped any observers' attention that the American Terrorist Media is going out of its way to discredit, by any means, fair or foul, any GOP candidate who isn't on a preapproved short list.

Nonetheless, some very persistent, very capable, very intelligent, very knowledgeable candidates are refusing to be cowed by the coming onslaught of negativity and are proceeding with their campaigns. At the same time, some of the media favorites are bowing out, much to the chagrin of the self-anointed king makers who had already selected them to be sacrificial lambs over whom they could eulogize after the 2012 election that they ran a good race but Obama was simply too popular for them.

I think Obama is going to get all the money he needs and a lot more to run any kind of campaign he wishes without regard to cost control and it won't matter to him one bit if none of it comes from Jewish Democrats or their supporters. In fact, I bet he already has his $1 billion, with much more on tap if he needs it.

Life in America for the next 18 months is not likely to be a picnic for us, but it is my hope that enough Americans will be sufficiently fed up with his anti-United States agenda to get out and vote Obama out, in numbers large enough to offset any tampering with polling place scanners, and regardless of whether the king makers are happy with our choice.

It was today, 43 years ago, at the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, in Irvine, California that 24 CH-46 Super D helicopters appeared in the sky to the south, flying in a formation that wrote 161 in the air, ending a journey that began on April 20, more than 3,000 miles to the east.

Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 161, commanded by Lt. Col. Paul W. Niesen, was putting the icing on a history making flight, that itself was just the beginning of a history making journey.

HMM-161 landing at El Toro, April 23, 1968.

You won't know about this if you haven't read the official Marine Corps history of 161, or my unofficial history, but it happened. We started off at the Marine Corps Air Facility in New River, N.C., which was and still is part of the sprawling Camp Lejeune complex in flights of four on April 20. Each section flew a pre-planned route with refueling stops and overnight stays at military bases along the way.

We took one day off in Tuscon, Arizona so the squadron could regroup, and then flew into California as one unit.

The main gate at New River Air Facility, circa 1967

We flew a southern route from North Carolina to California and, as a crew member on YR (Yankee Romeo)-39, I saw the Mississippi River, the Great American Desert and even the lower reaches of the Rocky Mountains from the open cabin door of a CH-46.

A CH-46 from HMM-161 over the desert during the squadron's cross-country flight in April, 1968.

I don't know why this year is more special than any other years, but thanks to the Internet, many of the survivors of that flight and the subsequent tour in Vietnam are talking about it - a lot. For the past three days I have been receiving emails from friends who served in 161 back then, starting with a pilot, Chuck Songer, who noted in the first message that it was 43 years ago that we were making that historic flight.

One person responded, then another, then another, then the floodgates opened. We all have our memories.

We spent five days at El Toro then boarded the USS Princeton LPH-5 for a 17-day trip across the Pacific that included an exploding boiler and a very intense trip right through the center of a Pacific Ocean typhoon.

Two CH-46s from HMM-161, one piloted by Lt. Col. Niesen, making a dramatic mid-ocean rescue of a sailor who had fallen overboard from the USS Princeton, LPH-5.



HMM-161 writing its squadron numbers in the air over a US Navy vessel in 1967 during a NATO operation.

Then we were off the coast of Quang Tri, South Vietnam, then on land in our new home and within 48 hours were flying combat missions along the DMZ, the Laotian border area, and of course the Marine Combat Base at Khe Sanh.

The air strip at Quang Tri. Hot burning sand and helicopters.



In the next several months 161 set records for virtually all of the things that someone keeps track of, but along the way we lost aircraft, pilots and crews too. Chuck Songer made it about three months in country before he was wounded in both legs from communist gunfire and medevaced out of country and eventually home.

Southeast approach to Khe Sanh

Col. Niesen was wounded that day too. HMM-161's tour in Vietnam that started with the April 20 liftoff from the flight line at New River eventually saw 20 crew members, corpsmen and pilots killed in action.

Those deaths represented far more than statistics to most of us. We had joined together in New River beginning in the late summer of 1966, a point when we didn't even have a squadron designation, and many of us lived together, worked together, and fought together for more than two years. Those deaths hurt, and still do.

HMM-161 was designated The First because it was the first Marine helicopter unit to carry troops into battle in the Korean War. The squadron had many other tasks in the intervening years, but we were the first of the various units that carried the 161 colors to fly CH-46s. The squadron continued flying the 46s right up until last year when it received the first tilt-rotor Ospreys and was renamed VMM-161 - the "H" designation no longer applies since Ospreys are not technically helicopters.

I don't think about Vietnam as much as I used to. I was 18 when I joined the Marines, just turning 19 when I joined 161, and 20 years old when we left for Vietnam. I turned 21 during that tour, as did my friends John Allison and Norm "Frenchy" LaFountaine - all of us shared the same birthday.


Two views of yours truly way back when. Top, aboard the USS Princeton, LPH-5 en route to Vietnam. Lower, grabbing a cigar and a few quick winks outside the 161 Avionics hooch, summer 1968.

But I am older, 43 years older in fact, and I have been fortunate in that I have 43 years of other memories that often shoulder the past aside. Time has been taking its toll and many of the people who made that cross-country flight and survived our tour in Vietnam are no longer with us. Some have died of diseases, old age, heart attacks, strokes, even at their own hand.

But once in a while, an email will arrive from an address that I recognize as one of my former squadron mates and I'll stop what I am doing for bit to think back. We were an incredibly talented group of people, starting with our pilots. We had some of the best officers and NCOs that younger Marines could ask for, and we did everything that was required and asked of us, to a far greater degree than many inhabitants of the civilian world could imagine.

In mid-1969, at about the time most of us had completed our tours and were ready to come back to the states, the entire Viet Cong guerrilla force had been wiped out, and the North Vietnamese regulars who had borne the brunt of the fighting in the south since 1965 were decimated.

The US had been working with the South Vietnamese Army for several years to help build their capabilities and if left to its own designs, the war would have become more of a South Vietnam vs. North Vietnam affair in a matter of years. In fact it did and I'll address that in a minute.

But just about the time our tour was winding down, and at the time the US finally had numerical parity on the battlefield, with nearly 550,000 troops serving "in country," President Richard Nixon, at the instigation of National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger announced that he was going to start troop withdrawals.

It was an abysmally stupid announcement on Nixon's part because as we later learned, the communist military commanders already were putting pressure on the political bosses in Hanoi to surrender. They had been beaten to a pulp, even though the pro-communist American media never reported it - and were afraid the US would just cross the DMZ and roll right over them - which we should have.

But the political bosses in Hanoi prevailed after Nixon's blunder, saying the US had weak leaders - they were right - and no backbone - they were right - and no political willpower - they were right, and even if they couldn't beat us militarily the communist politicians would eventually defeat our politicians. They were right about that too, but not as soon nor as easily as they expected.

In late 1969 Nixon announced his Vietnamization program, to shift more of the military burden to the South Vietnamese army, an approach which had worked wonders nearly two decades earlier in South Korea. By 1972 nearly all US combat troops were gone and the northern communists invaded the democratic south with some 250,000 combat troops backed by massive artillery and armored divisions.

But the south held, and aided by US air power inflicted an unprecedented defeat on the north. For years the US intelligence community said that 75,000 communists were killed that spring, but after the Soviet Union fell and the KGB archives were opened for foreign researchers, that number was upped to 150,000, with half of all the communist armor and artillery destroyed too.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the top communist military leader who had defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1953, was fired and placed under house arrest.

Nonetheless Kissinger strongly urged Nixon to continue the Paris peace talks, even as Jane Fonda was urging the communists not to surrender - apparently using the argument that even though they had just suffered a military defeat that dwarfed their losses in the Tet Offensive of 1968, America's political will was virtually nonexistent.

The peace talks continued until late 1972 but when the communists kept dragging their feet Nixon began another bombing campaign against North Vietnam. Unfortunately, according to reports from the communists long after the war was over, Nixon, again at Kissinger's urging, stopped bombing two days too early. The communists were on the verge of full surrender, but again, American political "strategy" and willpower were insufficient.

Over South Vietnam's rigorous objections the Paris Peace Accords were signed in March 1973, literally giving South Vietnam away. To put the final nail in the coffin, the US Congress passed the Case-Church Resolution in mid-1973, and the Foreign Assistance Act of 1974, which ended all economic, humanitarian and military aid to South Vietnam, in what has to be the most shameful incident in the history of US foreign relations. (News reports from the time state that the US government accused the South Vietnamese government of corruption. Talk about hypocrisy.)

The South was left to fend for itself, Nixon resigned, Gerald Ford became president but still relied on Kissinger for foreign relations "expertise," and in April 1975, seven years after HMM-161 and hundreds of thousands of other American, South Korean, Australian, New Zealand and Thai servicemen went to help South Vietnam stay free, it fell to the communist onslaught, alone and abandoned.

In the next few years the communist rampage consumed Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos with nearly 3 million people butchered by the communists. An estimated 2 million South Vietnamese boat people fled on the South China Sea, with some 300,000 perishing due to storms, sharks or pirates. Hundreds of thousands were imprisoned in communist concentration camps that the American pro-communist media labeled "re-education" camps, and more than 160,000 are reported to have been murdered by the communists.

When Kissinger and company signed off on the Paris Peace Accords they knew that more than 300 American fliers were still being held captive in Laos, but in the following years they too were written off and abandoned. In 1991 Sens. John Kerry and John McCain as co-chairs of the Senate Select Committee on POWs and MIAs slammed the door on all further inquiries into their fate, and ordered all information on those brave Americans to be "Classified" until long after we all are gone.

By now you must be asking yourself if I would do it all over again?

I'll tell you. I wish I could bring back all who were killed, and heal all who were grievously wounded. If there truly was magic in this world, that is how I would use it.

As I write this, it is a gray and rainy day in Southern New England. The trees are just starting to show a bit of green, but the clouds and fog descended on us earlier and with the starkness of the forest just beyond my office window, it is easy to conjure up images from the war, especially the monsoon months after Agent Orange had done its work.

Oddly enough, I remember the good things most. How so many of my fellow aircraft electronic technicians volunteered to fly as gunners. How many Air Medals we were awarded, individually as well as unit awards, along with many other decorations. How close we were, even if the stress of war and death rubbed us terribly raw at times. And there is no doubt that I also remember how many were killed, and the others who were wounded.

But even knowing what I know - How our ally was abandoned by our government; how we were betrayed by traitors like Kerry, and Fonda, and yes, Kissinger; even knowing what happened I would never in a million years have missed the opportunity to serve with the people I knew in HMM-161 who 43 years ago began a journey that in many ways still has not ended.

Maybe it would have been more politically correct to write about Easter today. But I'd rather leave you with the words from the original version of an Irish folk song now known as The Parting Glass.

What I have done through lack of wit,
I never, never can recall;
I hope you're all my friends as yet;
Good night. And joy be with you all

In fact, how about if I just leave you the entire song, as it was performed on one of my favorite movies, The Waking of Ned Devine.



It was 43 years ago today, but I remember much of it as if it all just happened. And I will never forget those who also served in HMM-161.

How do you know when someone from the Obama administration is lying?

Their lips are moving. I know, it's an old joke and it's supposed to be about lawyers, but I've watched the president and his henchmen out on the talk TV circuit for the last couple of weeks supposedly explaining everything from Libya to America's finances and all I really saw was smokescreens.

We supposedly have ceased taking an active role in the attempt to overthrow Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi yet we haven't - our planes are still bombing him but secretly. (And we still don't know why him, why now, and why not some other places. Oh, and we have no Congressional authorization to use military force, although Congress appears to have ceded that authority to the UN and NATO.)

We supposedly are going to set the budget and the massive federal deficit right, but we really aren't. We supposedly are moving toward emerging alternative energy sources - a b.s. term in itself - yet the price of oil is again escalating. Once again countries that have a grudge against us will have plenty of money to manipulate our stock market and destroy our economy as they did in late 2008 - but the Administration isn't talking about that, much less doing anything about it.

Did you know that while Obama was saying we didn't have "boots on the ground" in Libya, meaning military personnel, he could get around the lie because the military can temporarily transfer Special Operations Forces to the control of the CIA? This then makes them "covert operatives," not members of the military ... even if they are still wearing their uniforms and carrying the same weapons!

Every time I see the president on the television these days I change the channel because I have come to the conclusion that I can't believe a word that he or any of his spokespeople utters.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, who has almost declared that he is running for president, is openly investigating Obama's claims to be a US citizen, and counter-claims that he is not. This is something the media should have done years ago when Obama first declared that he was running for president, kind of the way they are going after Trump now.

I saw Trump on the Neil Cavuto show on the Fox News Channel last week and Cavuto nearly sneered at Trump's decision to send an investigative team to Hawaii to search for Obama's birth certificate. Cavuto averred that Obama already has released his alleged birth certificate, but Trump pounced with both feet.

Trump noted that Obama has NOT released an actual birth certificate, but HAS issued a "Certification of Live Birth," from the State of Hawaii - and referenced in such "esteemed" locations as Fact Check as a Birth Certificate - but it is not a birth certificate. As Trump noted, the Certification of Live Birth is not a valid Birth Certificate - which should be on record in the county in which he was born and is a public document by the way - and that the Certification of Live Birth omits many details that are contained on a real Birth Certificate such as which hospital Obama supposedly was born in and the attending physician.

Trump told Cavuto that Obama's relatives can't even agree on which Hawaiian hospital he supposedly was born in, while his Kenyan grandmother is adamant that she witnessed his birth in Kenya.

To that point, the documents below that purportedly record the birth of one Barack Hussein Obama II have surfaced and oddly enough they do contain all the information that US birth certificates contain - except they were issued in Kenya.


This document is a Certified Copy of Registration of Birth, and below is a copy of the actual Certificate of Birth.



Take a look at this document, which purportedly is an actual birth certificate listing our very own president as being born in Kenya to a Kenyan father. See the details it lists. Why don't we have these details from the State of Hawaii if Obama was in fact born there?



I am not for an instant claiming to be an expert on any of this. But I do know that this issue has been hotly debated for at least three years now and everyone who points out even the most obvious discrepancies in our president's background story is immediately jumped on, reviled, dismissed as a crank and relegated by extremist Democrats and their media lackeys to the status of "birther" which is not a compliment.

For instance, I was working in my office last Saturday afternoon and a talk panel show was on. I am not familiar with it because I rarely watch TV at that time, but the panel got around to Trump and his investigation and he was immediately dismissed by a bunch of people I don't know. "We've been down that road before ..." smirk, simper, smirk, simper.

Well, actually, no they haven't. A few mainstream news figures have tried to raise the issue but they are shut down pretty quickly.

I did see a very thorough review of the issue a couple of years ago in Pamela Geller's Atlas Shrugs blog, including forensic reviews of various documents released by Obama. Those reviews were startling in their revelations of different type faces and other inconsistencies. Check out Pamela's work here, but it may take a while to load it all because it is extensive: http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/obamas_birth_certifcate_forgery/

Pamela thus became the fawning mainstream media's favorite target and has been roundly dismissed by hacks who don't possess a micron of her journalistic ability.

But they never made the effort to review her work and determine if there was validity to the information she revealed. They universally relied on the Certification of Live Birth that as Trump noted, has a far lower standard than an actual birth certificate.

Here are a few other issues that have surfaced on the Internet and came my way the other day. Relating to his claim of attending and graduating from Columbia Univeristy: No classmates, not even the recorder for the Columbia class notes ever heard of him. Where is the footage of the graduation ceremony for his class showing Obama as a proud graduate? Has anyone talked to the professors? Where are the people who knew him or taught him or lived with him?

When did he meet Michele and how? Are there photos? Every president gives their photos and memorabilia to the public for posterity. What has he released? Who was the best man at his wedding? Who were the groomsmen? Where are the people from President Obama's past saying they knew him, attended school with him, were friends with him? As insignificant as we all are someone whom we went to school with remembers our name or face, someone remembers we were the clown or the dork or the brain or the quiet one or the bully or something about us.

Can we talk to them and get some background information - which considering the grilling that Sarah Palin, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul and dozens of others received, certainly should have been done by the media long ago?

This literally represents the tip of the iceberg on questions related to Obama's history. If you go the Pamela Geller website I listed above you'll see a video of Trump appearing on the female talk show The View a week ago.

When Trump was making his case Whoopi Goldberg said the only reason anyone is questioning Obama is because he is black. Aha! Play the race card when all else fails.

Then she pulled the timeworn, hackneyed tactic of diverting attention to George Bush, claiming no one every questioned his authenticity that way!

Hey lady, we not only have George Bush's birth certificate, we have his childhood photos, his school records, and his military records. Got Obama's? Show me.

It appears that Donald Trump has a lot of established politicians and alleged journalists who feed at the same trough, very, very worried. I find that somehow comforting. Go Trump!

The state of Connecticut has dropped charges against a Massachusetts man who was accused of helping kill his Alzheimer's stricken father - a Marine Corps combat veteran of the Korean War - in a case of so-called mercy killing - assisted suicide - or euthanasia.

The state's decision not to pursue a conviction in the case effectively paves the way for generations of disaffected youth to off their parents with little fear of retribution.

Parents who have limited or no parenting skills may want to look closely at the case of Bruce F. Brodigan of Somerville, MA, who previously pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the death of his father George D. Brodigan, who died at the age of 82, on Sept. 14, 2010.

George Brodigan died of an overdose of alcohol and amitriptyline, which was prescribed to Bruce Brodigan, police said. However, press reports say the state Medical Examiner’s Office was unable to determine the manner of death.

In dropping the most serious change against Brodigan, the state also paved the way for him to apply for a program termed accelerated rehabilitation on three lesser charges - tampering with evidence, making a false statement to police, and interfering with police.

That means - if the program is granted - that he will have to promise not to help anyone else pass over to the promised land ahead of schedule. If he is a good boy for a year, the charges will be dismissed and his record erased.

Police initially alleged that Bruce Brodigan assisted in the death of his ailing father. The elder Brodigan also was a retired West Hartford lawyer and former interim Superior Court judge.

Hartford Superior Court Judge Arthur P. Gold accepted the state's decision Tuesday and said in court documents that the manslaughter case will be "reopened and pursued" if Brodigan is not successful in the pretrial intervention program. I have no idea how you would fail a pretrial intervention program if you know that to do so will put you on trial facing an extended prison sentence.

Basically, Bruce Brodigan will have to say "yes" at the appropriate times, and "no" at the appropriate times and be sent on his way to wait out his one-year probation. Then he'll go on with his life in Massachusetts and the state of Connecticut will be left wrestling with the issues of assisted suicide, mercy killing, euthanasia, call it what you will.

We will be seeing escalating numbers of the elderly being "put down" as if they were family pets. Inevitably issues will arise where some people will say the dead person was in pain and only hours or days at best away from dying naturally, while those who opposed the "procedure" will maintain that was not the case at all.

The debate on euthanasia is just getting started and while it may seem clear cut to some people, I challenge them to define at exactly what point in their lives they want a friend or relative to pull the plug on them. The definition of "terminal" is bound to find some very wide interpretations.

According to news reports Bruce Brodigan described the end of his father's life as the "most beautiful, loving moment I had with my father" throughout his life.

Frankly, it sounds a lot more like a Charlie Sheen moment to me. Not the kind of moment where Sheen is in a motel room with a bevy of hookers and a kilogram of cocaine, but a moment out of the movie Platoon. where Sheen is in a massive firefight firing weapons and screaming "This is f'ing beautiful man!"

I can relate to that somewhat because as a .50 caliber machine gunner on Marine helicopters in Vietnam, I had a few of those moments. It's easy to have a feeling of euphoria when you have the biggest weapons and the battle is going your way.

But one thing I never saw was the communists come running out of their jungle positions yelling "Shoot more, shoot more, this is f'ing beautiful man!" Being on the losing side of a deadly encounter generally is less exciting than being on the side where death is inflicted.

As a wounded combat veteran the elder Brodigan probably knew that.

Now I know that there are going to be people reading this who say I am being flippant and disrespectful. So what? If it gets people talking about this, so much the better.

Because this week, the state of Connecticut quietly moved the goalposts in the euthanasia - assisted suicide - mercy killing debate and most people didn't notice. We deserve far better. We deserve a full, transparent, free wheeling debate on this issue and thus far we have not had it.

Oh, and would everyone who is reading this please print it out and save it in a safe place. Then 30 or so years from now if you see a death notice about me, and it says alcohol and drugs were involved, please press for a forensic autopsy and make sure they identify the alcohol as GlenMorangie single malt scotch, at least 12 years old.

If they say it is anything else, press for a full investigation!