Spy Agencies Failed to Collate Clues on Terror

I woke up to this headline in the New York Times the other day and had a great idea.

What we need in government is a central clearing house for sensitive and potentially dangerous information. This agency would be sort of a sensitive stuff tsar (I use this spelling because, for some reason czar is kind of out of fashion these days and tsar is simply an alternate spelling).

But wait! Now I recall that such an agency already exists, in fact it is an entire new cabinet department--The Department of Homeland Security. So then, if we already have a sensitive stuff tsar, why the headline, and more importantly, why the attack?

Now let me see, Mr. Peabody and I will take a ride on the wayback machine and take a look at the birth and rearing of the DHS (Department of Homeland Security in case you have forgotten).

Soon after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 there were a lot of people asking how all of those people could have passed through the security grid on that day. What they quickly learned was that there was ample evidence to tag all of the conspirators and keep them from boarding those airplanes. The problem was that while the FBI knew one thing and the CIA knew another thing and the DIA and the NSA each had a piece of the puzzle, no one was in place to put the puzzle together--there was no FBICIADIANSA marriage bureau in federal government.

The minority Democrats in Congress (the opposite of progress) said, lets make an agency to do that. The Bush administration said it was not needed and fought against a law that would create such an agency. Eventually enough Republicans bought into the concept and miraculously it became a Bush idea.

Immediately (well, within two and a half years) they started putting demi-tsars in place with tentacles in every three letter section of the FBICIADIANSA. But, they also found a way for other agencies to dump parts of their mission into this new and growing department. So they dumped Immigration and Naturalization, Border Patrol and those folks at the airport who peer into your bags into the new department. Logical enough, they are directly involved with security matters.

But, in order to make it the second largest department in government, and pick up a greater share of the money pie, they added some things that would have better been left alone.

First, they ripped the heroes of our shores, the U. S. Coast Guard out of their nest in the Treasury Department and dumped them into DHS. Second, they also pulled the Secret Service out of Treasury and finally took the Federal Emergency Management Agency from its perch as an executive agency directly under the President and added it to the morass. This group of agencies was always looked upon with awe and as examples of well functioning federal activities.

DHS took their funding and put it into the big pot. Each of the last three essentially saw severe budget cuts under their new masters. The Coast Guard has found ways to continue to do their sterling job without degradation of services but that may not last long. We all know what FEMA, denied direct access to the president, did in New Orleans. And now we are starting to see the chinks in the armor of the Secret Service.

It has always been interesting to me that Tom Ridge, the first Secretary of Homeland Security, a career politician and public servant gave up in about two years and the spot was filled by a horse breeder. At least now we have someone in the position with public service experience, but without more power, Secretary Napolitano can not change the culture in the FBICIADIANSA.

There is no way to un-explode the new agency, but there are ways to make it more efficient. That requires Congressional backing. Anybody want to guess if anything will actually be done about it? There will be plenty of words and virtually nothing of value will come out of it.

The New York Times should hang on to that headline, they will have opportunity to use it again. Unfortunately the next time real people will have died.

Get off Tiger Woods' case

Can I blow a whistle and throw a red flag?

The penalty is “piling on” and I want to enforce a “shut the hell up penalty.”

Tiger Woods is a very good golfer (I am told by some that he is the best there ever was). He plays golf in public, earns a lot of money and leads the lifestyle of a millionaire. None of that gives me—or anyone else for that matter—the right to know every intimate detail of his life. I don’t care if he has dozens of mistresses (God knows he can afford them), I don’t even care if he likes whips and chains or horses.

I really liked it better in the days of Camelot when JFK was cheating on the woman every young man in America would have given any body part of your choice to spend just one night with her. We all kind of knew about the president and Marilyn Monroe and it was great sport to see the news reports of Marilyn in that slinky gold gown singing, “Ha------py, Birth------day, Mister Pres-------i----------dent.” He was good looking, had enough money to buy the presidency and was an unofficial member of the Las Vegas Rat Pack. The Secret Service was a-political in those days and just let things happen. Privacy was expected.

This voyeuristic way of life began with Ken Star investigating a blow job in the oval office, for which we—the taxpayer—paid $40 million. And what did we—the taxpayer—get for the investment? Not a damned thing. President Clinton was charged (the official term is impeached) by the House of Representatives with “lying to congress.” The Senate did not convict him.

The other thing that added to this explosion of voyeurism is the endless news cycle where they have got to find enough “news” to keep those crawls going 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365.25 days per year. There ain’t enuf real news to do that so the TV talking heads revert to gossip, innuendo and planted stories.

OK, Tiger Woods got some strange. That’s the news. How he resolves issues with his wife and others is none of our frigging business. Tell us when Nike cancels his contract or something newsworthy happens. Do not parade a boatload of tall blond floozies looking for their 15 minutes in front of me for hours and repeatedly.
We’ve had morality police forever. When the morality police gain control we have excesses—just ask the thousands of “heretics” who were burned at the stake by the good old Spanish Inquisition. Our modern morality police are the Talaban. Is that really the direction in which we want to be moving?

Why don’t we all just mind our own damned business and get off Tiger Woods case. Let him resolve his family issues and get back to entertaining us on the golf course. And if after the game he decides to pick up a little strange, that is his business. It isn’t illegal and morality is something that is best left to the individual. I think it is what they call freedom.

He is our President wether you like it or not

I am so fed up with this character assassination of the man who the majority of Americans elected to the Presidency that I am about to puke.

First, I did not vote for President Obama, so don't start labeling me a liberal or a leftist. If anything I am a Republican who would like to have his party back from the screamers and the blubberers and the flat-out liars who now own the party.

Second, I didn't vote for George W. Bush either. His flaky Air National Guard time was a poorly concealed effort to avoid the draft. As President he issued orders for an un-necessary war that has taken thousands of the flowers of our nation and extracted their futures. He regularly ignored the Constitution in many of his Executive Orders and I personally think that he will be remembered in history right along side the likes of Millard Filmore and Herbert Hoover. BUT, when the election was finished he became MY President--I didn't like it but the majority had spoken. The Constitution says that he was qualified and properly elected. I reserved the right to complain but I never wished for his assassination or demanded that he resign because I don't like him.

The constant drone of fanatical right-wing drivel is actually causing me physical pain. The latest nonsense, a photo of the President on a dais bedecked with U. S. flags where everyone is saluting except for him. The perpetrator of this nonsense screams out that he shouldn't be Commander in Chief if he won't salute the flag. In his email he says he has no idea what is going on but everyone else is saluting, why isn't he? Good question, so I went to a video of the ceremony and surprise, surprise--the photo was taken during the playing of "Hail to the Chief." The Obama-is-wrong-no-matter-what crowd would be up in arms if he had saluted himself, wouldn't they?

Birthers, Death Panels, even lies about reducing my access to health care through my military retirement are all absolute lies that many people will not check because they simply WANT them to be true. Folks, it doesn't work that way. Miss Hoffman, my first grade teacher, taught me that before I pass on rumors about someone else I should first seek the truth--did all these people miss first grade?

This country is in real trouble (as it is most of the time) and I, personally, want the President and his administration to concentrate on those problems, not on the lies and ignorance that are proclaimed daily by the cuckolds of the Republican Party. I firmly believe that ANYONE who advocates or even suggests the assassination of a President of the United States should quickly find themselves in the domestic version of Guantanimo Bay. The well known Secret Service should be earning their pay by rounding these people up and then shutting them up.

Where is the Republican Party of the past that knew how to be the "loyal opposition" and to whom I would go for truth? Those leaders are all gone and have been replaced by un-truthful pervayors of whatever venom is flowing from the fangs of the T-party organizers and the "entertainers" who dominate talk radio. My beloved Grand Old Party has become the realm of bumper stickers and talking points and absolute fabrication.

Truth, where art thou?

The UPC and Five Guys burgers

Everyone today knows what a UPC is.

The ubiquitous Universal Product Code is the little white rectangle located somewhere on everything that tells the computer what the item is, how much it costs and probably a whole lot more.

I went to sleep one night in the 70s or 80s not ever having seen a UPC and the next morning everything had one. Nobody ever stood up in a press conference and said, “I did it.” No newspaper or television talking head ever read the press release announcing the birth of the UPC. It just simply appeared—everywhere—on the same night.

Ever since then I have wondered where it came from, how it was agreed upon, who mandated it and even who came up with the design. I’ve Googled it. I’ve looked for it on Wickapedia. I asked my next door neighbor. Nobody knows, and even more fascinating is the fact that no one seems to care.

I’ve learned to live with it only slipping back into my “I wonder” mode a few times a year. At one time I thought it was done by the CIA. Another year it was Schwan’s (you know, the big yellow trucks that are everywhere but few people have ever bought anything from them). Then at another time I worried that it was some kind of terrorist plot—but to resolve that one I simply stopped watching the Fox Everything is a Terrorist Plot Network. Honestly I had almost given up on the quest for that bit of knowledge. Then it happened—the light flashed and it all became clear.

Last night I went to Five Guys for supper. Now if you don’t know what Five Guys is, you are forgiven because soon it will be revealed to you. Five Guys is a relatively new fast food eatery. The walls are generally unadorned, your table is placed among 50 pound bags of Idaho potatoes. Their menu consists of Burger, Cheeseburger or Bacon Burger, a “Little” version of that trio, hot dogs and fries. Red and white tiles line the walls and above the tiles are quotes from restaurant critics and newspapers extolling the virtues of the burger chain.

You walk in the storefront, walk to the big red letters “Order Here” and order. You find a table, get a handful of peanuts and sit down to await your number being called. As you look around you spot the sign that says: “Today’s Potatoes Are From” with the name of the town in Idaho where they were grown scribbled on the sign with a Sharpie.

As you watch them prepare your order—everything is done right out in the open—you see someone pick up a Styrofoam cup, fill it with fries then put your fries and your burger (in its aluminum foil raiment) into a bag. Then he scoops up another order of fries and drops them into your bag.

Rumor has it that they started in Washington DC. President Obama is probably their most famous customer. I first tasted the best burger in the world a year ago and now they appear to be everywhere. We found one in Lancaster, York and Harrisburg, PA and we ate our way down I-81 all the way to Orlando and Ocala, Florida.

As I said, last night I was sitting in the Five Guys in Orlando and it dawned on me. I was marveling at the fact that in less than a year there were Five Guys almost everywhere—almost “overnight.” Who in the world could make something expand so quickly? Hmmm, it has to be the same guys who made the UPC appear. Who in the world could do that?

I looked at the white tiles and thought Frosty the Snow Man. I looked at the red tiles and thought Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Of course==the master of the one-night miracles. The only person in the world who can visit every house in that world from sunset to sunrise all in one night, and at the stroke of midnight in most. And, do it all without being spotted by 99.999996706 percent of the population. (There is that report from Little Jimmy Dickens about what he spotted his mommy doing)

So now it is revealed, the creation and implementation of the UPC and the rapid expansion of Five Guys could only have been accomplished by Santa Claus. Now we know he does work more than one night a year.

It is oh, so obvious. I could kick myself for not figuring it out earlier.

I’ve been a verrrrrrrry good boy!

Obama's Fox War Front is a Bad Idea

While I agree completely with the Obama Administration’s assessment that Fox News is no more “news” than its “Fair and Balanced” slogan means either fair or balanced, I also feel that attacking Fox is a mistake.
Way back, the first time Don Rumsfeld served as Secretary of Defense, he had an Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs named Bill Greener. I once heard him talk at a Defense Information School (where they teach military public affairs officers their trade) symposium. His central theme was the Greener Dictum which simply stated is “Never argue with the man who buys ink by the barrel.” Today he would most assuredly add, “or the one who has control of the 24-hour news cycle.”
Obama has nothing to gain from attacking Fox. It will simply cause more people to watch Fox to find out what he is talking about.
The thing is, since Fox News does not rely on news sources for its information (most of its stories are Republican Party talking points or the amplification of the crazies) they lose nothing in not having access to the White House sources. Major Garrett, the Fox News reporter assigned to the White House, is a credible, working journalist but please note how little air time he gets as compared to, say, Fox’s current star, Glenn Beck.
Beck and his fellow-travelers take the Republican Party talking points and amplify them with information not base on any facts what-so-ever. The rantings about “death panels” or the screams of the “birthers” and Beck’s own horror of calling the President a racist are what pumps up his far-right audience.
The Obama administration can not out-scream Fox—doing so is beneath the dignity of the office of the President of the United States. Rather than try to excoriate Fox the Obama Administration’s truth squad would do better to counter the crazies who come up with death panels and release so much information on the President’s birth, including eye witness accounts, that the birthers just slake away looking for other sources of mis-information to scream.
The Obama Administration has not yet figured out that we are in a bumper sticker world and they must learn how to state their objectives in one sentence of less than 10 well crafted words. Their last effective bumper sticker was Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid.”
I hate it and I read as much as I can and I watch as many divergent views as I can but the fact remains that more than 95 percent of this country is incapable of internalizing any message that takes more than one sentence to explain. Every administration must learn that message.

Researchers Check Sources

I am spending the summer as a Park Ranger at Gettysburg National Military Park, PA where I make presentations to the public and answer questions at the Visitor Center. It’s the best job I ever had and I am loving every minute of it.

But today I almost died of laughter.

Sitting in the Interpretive preparation area of the new Visitor Center with Rangers Dan Welch and Liz Dietzen I was working on my Battle Overview Powerpoint presentation. Dan was reading “Command and Communication Frictions in the Gettysburg Campaign” by Phillip M. Cole. As I walked by him, knowing my background in the Marine Corps, he said, “Whenever two Marines are together, one is in charge.”

Kind of surprised at the comment I agreed and he continued, “Really, it’s right here in this book.” He then started paging through the book looking for the quote and eventually found it on page 9. Then like any good researcher we went to the footnote to find the source. I waited patiently for him to find the footnote, which read, “. . . Glenn B. Knight, editor and compiler, Unofficial Dictionary for Marines [Internet Address: http://4merMarine.com/USMC/dictionary.html copyright 2002-2005].” Yes, the source was me.

The dictionary got its start as a 12-word glossary for members of my Yahoo group, MyMarine. The group is for parents, relatives and friends of Marine Corps Recruits—we help them to get through the often mysterious 13-week roller-coaster ride that is Marine Corps Boot Camp. It can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mymarine/.

The Unofficial Dictionary for Marines is just exactly that. It is FOR Marines and it comes with a warning that the information contained within it is not politically correct, is sometimes obscent and somethimes even borders on the pornographic—but is is the lexicon used by Marines from 1775 to yesterday. Please don’t check it out if you are easilly offended.

Marines love it. Others think it is just in bad taste. I’ve enjoyed collecting it, verifying it and publishing it.

How many Hectacres in a Rod?

If you had to remember a series of numbers and your ability to buy groceries, build a house or even talk with your neighbor depended on remembering them, which of the following sets would you choose?

1-12-3-5,280

1-10-100-1000

Now consider that in the first set, there is no true universal value for the 1.

In the second set, the 100 represents a fixed length which is a specific fraction of the length of the equator.

The first set of numbers is also only used by you and your family.

The second set is used by everyone else on the planet.

Now, which one would you logically choose? Unfortunately those of us living here in the good old U. S. of A are stuck with and hide bound to the first set of numbers that was invented by the British. Even the British have stopped using it.

Originally, a foot in length was exactly that—the length of the King’s foot. Somebody decided to divide that length up for smaller measures so they used 12. Why? Well, because the length of the King’s thumb from the tip to the first knuckle was what they called an inch and on most Kings it required 12 thumb lengths to measure the King’s foot.

Three of the King’s feet combined to make a measure they called a yard (the distance between the King’s nose and his out-stretched hand) and 5,280 of the King’s feet constituted a mile (it had originally been 5,000 Roman feet but the British wanted their own system after they kicked the Romans out). For property measures they even added in the acre and the hectacre, along with some perches and furlongs just to provide a fudge factor.

The British, not the brightest candles on the international cake, in my opinion, were smart enough to dump that ridiculous and cumbersome system of measure for the much simpler and more logical metric measurement system. In metrics, every measure is ten times the size of the previous measure.

We fought two wars with the British to end their heavy-handed influence over us and we became a sovereign nation. So why do we fight so hard to hold on to a British tradition that even the British realize was terminally flawed?

The biggest reason, I am told, is that it is so difficult to convert from a mile to a kilometer—is it 1.62 kilometers to a mile or 62 or .62?

Who cares? A kilometer is a measure just like a mile is a measure. I know that a mile is about the distance between my house and Route 26. I make no effort to convert that distance—it is just a distance and I have a reference for it.

A kilometer is about the distance from my house to the entrance to Bethay Bay. I don’t need to convert it to or from anything—it is just a distance and I have a reference for it.

Even our own military measures things in metrics and most soldiers know that a “klik” is the difference in distance that an artillery round flies when the elevation is adjusted one click. It is almost exactly a kilometer. Why are we holding on to a confusing, antiquated system that the rest of the world, including the British who invented the system, has already given up?