| Tuesday, July
22, 2003
On Mozilla
Hi Jerry - you write
"People whose views I respect think highly of Mozilla, but if I ever
had a comprehensive but brief account of why I should prefer it to
Explorer other than "it's not Microsoft" I have lost it."
Well, this is not a comprehensive answer, but it
certainly is brief.
"Tabbed browsing and bookmarked tab sets."
That probably requires some explanation, which will,
sadly, be less brief.
I set tabbed browsing prefs to open links in new
tabs in the background when I click with my scroll wheel button. Then when
I am surfing, I merrilly click on any interesting links I find and keep
reading the page I'm on. When I finish that page, I close it, and right
behind it are all the links I've clicked, no waiting for them to load. In
IE I don't seem to be able to open a new page in a window without having
it come to the foreground, which means I need to click again to get back
to the page I was reading. To summarize, Mozilla's tabbed browsing (same
goes for Safari) makes my web browsing experience more pleasant because 1.
I don't often watch pages loading anymore; they load in the background. 2.
I don't have to click and watch my screen redraw to get back to the page
I'm currently on after clicking a link. 3. I don't finish reading a page,
then scroll back up to find the link I was interested in following, then
click that link, wait for the page to load, click back, find the next
link, lather, rinse, repeat.
This is particularly helpful when investigating
google or other search results.
Bookmarked tab sets - once you have a selection of
webpages open in tabs, you can bookmark them all as a tab set. When you
select this tab set from your bookmarks, all the pages open in their own
tabs and load simultaneously. I have tab sets grouping together various
sites I like to hit. Again, net result is I spend less time staring at
blank browser windows waiting for pages to load.
So, I suggest trying out Mozilla Firebird (the
browser-only piece of Mozilla). Current version is 0.6 but I greatly
prefer it to IE. Available from http://mozilla.org/, download link halfway
down the left side of the page. It's a 7mb download. Everyone with Mac OS
X 10.2 has surely tried out Safari by now and fallen in love with the same
two features. I suspect some of the other linux web browsers have the same
features but I haven't tried them.
I don't know what to tell you re taking over your
defaults. I don't do web authoring on my Win2k/XP machines. Haven't really
had a default browser war on those platforms, certainly nothing like what
I used to run into with Netscape 4.x vs IE 5.
I doubt MS will add tabbed browsing to IE before
IE7, which as you know won't be arriving until Longhorn.
Sincerely, Dan Becker
All right. Thanks.
Subject: "Battle-Scarred
Author Takes On Web Pirates" WSJ p.1
Say what one will about Harlan Ellison, he's always
entertaining.
===== Tiomoid M. of Angle JD MBA
---- "Been there. Done that. Don't
remember most of it."
Well, Harlan has always been tilting at
windmills, and sometimes he wins. I suspect short story writers are far
more threatened than novelists -- this year. But the nature of publishing
is changing, and I don't know what will come of it.
Hi Jerry,
You mentioned in your Byte column that peoples
reading habits will change when a small portable reader is here... I think
it already is! Check out the Palm Zire 71 - it's small, cheap (relatively)
and has a superb display. It has become my new bedside and train journey
companion and it even plays MP3s as I read. It's big brother (the
Tungsten-T) even has the wireless connectivity but is a bit too expensive
for a PDA.
Regards, Alex
BTW it's been a few years since I read it but I
loved the Moties!
=================================== Conqueror Design
and Engineering Ltd., 68 Meyrick Avenue, Luton, Beds. LU1 5JR, UK Tel.
01582 412701 Fax. 0870 7062460 WWW: http://www.eaziform.co.uk
And if that one doesn't float your boat,
inevitably there will be one that will; and I don't think technology can
protect us for long. It's just too easy to scan in books.
Not that I have a clue as to what to do
about it.
Nor do others:
Subject: Intestinal fortitude.
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/203/region/
MIT_Boston_College_say_subpoen:.shtml
--- Roland Dobbins
=====
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
Referring to the investigation of the cartoon in the
LA Times; The journalist has a Constitutional right to publish his
beliefs, and the Secret Service (SS) has a regulatory obligation to
investigate threats to the president. Regulatory obligation supercedes
Consitutional right; theres a regulation that says so. It was in the
Congrssional Record. What? you don't read the entire Congrssional record
every day for notices of prposed rule making?
About the lawyers getting nailed for rivilous suits,
the article says in part: " With class action lawyers under attack by
defendants, judges and attorney generals, some lawyers have jumped on the
bandwagon and are chasing other lawyers. Dubbed as
"professional" or "serial" objectors, some lawyers are
making their money by threatening to hold up class-action settlements by
raising objections in what some describe as extortion-like threats. Why
does this remind me of a feeding frenzy of sharks?
Patrick A. Hoage
====
Jerry:
The story about the British contingency plan to bury
nuclear land mines in Germany to head off a Russian invasion was a prime
example of cold war stupidity. Anyone who has read DOE's "The Effects
of Nuclear Weapons" would immediately realize that using a subsurface
burst actually minimizes the blast and heat effects that would have the
most impact on an invading army. However, the intent here seems to have
been to blanket the invasion corridor with radioactive fallout which would
presumably deter the invaders. While this might work against infantry,
troops in tanks and IFVs would be well shielded from the Alpha, Beta and
Gamma radiation emitted by the radioactive fallout. The German civilians
would be dead unless they had effective fallout shelters which they'd have
to stay in for weeks. Your mention of Sam Cohen's reaction suggests that
you've read his book "The Truth About the Neutron Bomb." As
Cohen so eloquently explains, the neutrons released from an enhanced
radiation device would be devastating against tanks because the neutrons
would easily penetrate several inches of tank armor. Providing enough
shielding to stop neutrons would severely compromise the mobility of any
armored fighting vehicle with the possible exception of a Battleship. As
has been demonstrated in a number of above ground nuclear tests, as well
as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, high altitude airbursts do not produce large
amounts of fallout. While some elements in the soil will absorb neutrons
and become radioactive, these isotopes have very short half-lives and most
of the radioactivity is deep enough in the soil that it is already
shielded. Of course it is impossible to explain any of this to the average
citizen, much less the anti-nuke crowd. Some of them are still painting
"shadows" on sidewalks to commemorate the people who were
allegedly vaporized at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Anyone who has done the
calculations will find that while lots of people received massive, third
degree burns, none were subjected to enough thermal flux to actually
vaporize their bodies.
As story that you would find interesting appeared on
the front page of the July 20 issue of GunWeek. It seems that in its
ongoing investigation into the as yet unsolved murder of Thom Wales, who
was a Federal Prosecutor, the FBI has been rounding up any Makarov pistols
whose owners have purchased replacement barrels from Federal Arms
Incorporated. What is appalling to me is that rather than demonstrate
probable cause to obtain a warrant for these searches and seizures, the
FBI is merely obtaining subpoenas. This case is almost as blatant an
infringement of the right against unreasonable search and seizure as the
tactics recently used by New Orleans's police to solve a series of rapes.
Rather than go to the trouble of identifying suspects and obtaining search
or arrest warrants, they simply began to coerce every, African American
male of a certain age who happened to fit the very vague description they
had to submit to the taking of a blood sample for genetic fingerprinting.
There was once a time when I could use such a scenario as an analogy to
demonstrate the dangers of gun registration, but now it seems to have
become acceptable to the public. While I have a bit less sympathy for
convicted toe suckers than you do, I agree that our civil liberties are
very much in peril.
One final comment. After watching the press
conference with Kobi Bryant and his wife, I have to conclude that he
wasn't thinking with either head during that incident in Colorado. You'd
think that any man who had a wife who looked that good so soon after
giving birth wouldn't be so eager to cheat on her that he'd have an
encounter with some hotel employee within an hour after checking in.
James Crawford
Well, I have heard that it's possible that
the nuclear "mines" wouldn't have gone off in place and
underground, but I make no comment whatever of my own knowledge nor I
think will Sam. Sam and Possony were friends for decades.
As to Kobe, well of course he wasn't
thinking, and in one sense he'll get a life sentence out of it: I doubt
his wife will let him forget.
On the New World Economy:
A little reporting and some opinion too, but surely
what the 'New World Economy is' bringing. Dave Krecklow
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10613
Dave
But Free Trade will set you free! Won't it?
If you work in this industry, worry.
=====================
On The XP Firewall:
(Note: see below before you do anything. Roland
Dobbins says it is not safe, and provides links.)
Hi Jerry!!
I was reading (as every week) your column in Byte
online. This time it was the Column named “Technology That Changes Lives”
dated July 21, 2003.
I’m so glad to read about you finally having high
speed internet connection. Being spoiled by ADSL 2.5 MB since two years I
know how wonderful it is to finally use Internet the way it was supposed
to be – quick and accessible.
You are so right about reminding people to protect
themselves from the hazards of Internet with a decent firewall. A lot of
my friends ask me for advice as I work with Security issues in my
professional daytime job. I usually also recommend people to get a decent
router with firewall functionality, BUT I always emphasize on the need for
UPnP (Universal Plug and Play). Because as more and more software get UPnP
aware that means that all those non-techie friends doesn’t need to set
up port-holes in their Firewall to be able to use the games and other
software that regularly want to connect though a port that is closed by
usual firewalls. UPnP makes all that techie mumbo jumbo about port numbers
to disappear and just work. Yes I know a professional business should not
use this technology because a professional company usually wants
documentation on which ports are open and why. But for normal people this
is a godsend invention that makes their lives (and mine) so much easier.
So when you write and recommend routers, don’t forget to mention the
ever so important feature named UPnP.
For people that just use a single computer connected
to Internet and run Windows XP there is just one advice: use the built in
firewall!
When I first read about the built in Firewall in
Windows XP I (like so many others) was a little bit skeptical. Microsoft
and security were not the two things you used in the same sentence. But I
thought, give it a year and if the security flaws in the built in firewall
keeps to single digit numbers it would be ok. Now XP has been out for over
one year and I have realized that if you just run Windows update (as XP
does by default) then your built in firewall will be up to date. So far I
haven’t seen any news articles screaming out about the bad security in
the built in Firewall. By now some hacker would have hacked this you would
believe. But not one flaw has appeared. It just works and it works
excellent. I have my home machine connected to internet and are always
updating all recommended fixes from Microsoft. So I tried the shields up
utility on my machine. Here are the results:
Shields UP! is checking YOUR computer's
Internet connection security . . . currently located at IP:
Please Stand By. . .
Attempting connection to your computer. . . Shields UP!
is now attempting to contact the Hidden Internet Server within your PC. It
is likely that no one has told you that your own personal computer may now
be functioning as an Internet Server with neither your knowledge nor your
permission. And that it may be serving up all or many of your personal
files for reading, writing, modification and even deletion by anyone,
anywhere, on the Internet!
Your Internet port 139 does not appear to exist! One or
more ports on this system are operating in FULL STEALTH MODE! Standard
Internet behavior requires port connection attempts to be answered with a
success or refusal response. Therefore, only an attempt to connect to a
nonexistent computer results in no response of either kind. But YOUR
computer has DELIBERATELY CHOSEN NOT TO RESPOND (that's very cool!) which
represents advanced computer and port stealthing capabilities. A machine
configured in this fashion is well hardened to Internet NetBIOS attack and
intrusion.
Unable to connect with NetBIOS to your computer. All
attempts to get any information from your computer have FAILED. (This is
very uncommon for a Windows networking-based PC.) Relative to
vulnerabilities from Windows networking, this computer appears to be VERY
SECURE since it is NOT exposing ANY of its internal NetBIOS networking
protocol over the Internet
Quickly Check for Connectable Listening Internet Ports
This Internet Port Probe attempts to establish standard
TCP Internet connections with a handful of standard, well-known, and often
vulnerable Internet service ports on YOUR computer. Since this is being
done from our server, successful connections demonstrate which of your
ports are "open" or visible and soliciting connections from
passing Internet port scanners.
Your computer at IP:
194.236.143.155
Is being 'NanoProbed'. Please stand by. . .
Total elapsed testing time: 10.258 seconds (See "NanoProbe"
box below.)
Port
Service
Status Security Implications
21
FTP
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
23
Telnet
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
25
SMTP
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
79
Finger
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
80
HTTP
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
110
POP3
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
113
IDENT
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
135
RPC
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
139
Net BIOS
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
143
IMAP
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
443
HTTPS
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER that a port (or
even any computer) exists at this IP address!
445
MSFT DS
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER
that a port (or even any computer) exists at this IP address!
5000
UPnP
Stealth! There is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER
that a port (or even any computer) exists at this IP address!
As you can see this site believes that I have some
very good and cool Firewall that keeps my machine so very shielded. But I
am only running the standard vanilla Firewall built into Windows XP. Good
work Microsoft, I would say. So after these results and not even one
security flaw heard of about the firewall in Windows XP I would
confidently recommend it to anyone running just one computer against the
internet ore sharing internet through a Windows XP computer.
By the way I do have one port open on my machine…
and that is the Terminal Server port, to be able to use my home computer
when away from home. Looks like Shields up doesn’t test that port. That’s
the only evidence that there is a machine on my IP address.
So what do you think, don’t you agree?
Sincerely, from one of your greatest fans
(both of the columns and of your books, keep up the
good work)
Bruno Horvat
E-mail: bhorvat @csc.com
Thanks for the kind words, and also for the
tests. I am sure we will hear from others on the XP firewall.
NOW SEE BELOW for
Roland's warning.
And from Ed Hume:
>From the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17338-2003Jul19.html
writeaprisoner.com So now prisoners have web access
too???
Serving Life, a Pen Pal Crashes the Servers
Sunday, July 20, 2003; Page A02
Looking for a new friend?
Here's a possibility. She's 31, likes
waterfalls and working puzzles. She also likes Mickey Mouse, and she loves
rainbows.
Oh, and there's just one other thing: Awhile
back, she strapped her 3-year-old son, Michael, and her 14-month-old,
Alexander, into a car and drowned them in a South Carolina lake. Then she
blamed their disappearance on a fictitious black man, prompting a huge
manhunt.
Her name, of course, is Susan Smith. She's
looking for pen pals and new friends.
The ad Smith placed on WriteAPrisoner.com
doesn't specifically mention what she did to Michael or Alexander. But it
does say she "has matured a lot" since beginning a life sentence
almost eight years ago. The ad also doesn't say anything about the scandal
she was embroiled in after having sex with two prison guards or how that
might have fit into her maturation process.
<snip>
Smith's quest to expand her social circle has
been a smashing success so far. Three servers crashed at the pen pal site
as it tried to handle all the traffic. Her ad has gotten 800,000 hits,
according to WriteAPrisoner's Jason Roberts, and 3,000 have sent e-mails
to her. The messages include dozens of marriage proposals.
I am speechless.
 And
another letter from Iraq, courtesy of Colonel William Haynes, USAF Ret.
Once again there is a leak of truth that escapes the
unremitting bad news flood we get from the regular news sources. Where
would we be without the Internet and e-mail? In the same fix the domestic
scene wound up in when I was in Vietnam and wondering which war the media
were reporting on? Surely not the one my pilots and I were fighting!
Bill
============
Subject: Fwd: GREAT -- A Special Ops view
from Iraq
Begin forwarded message:
Forwarded from a Special Ops guy who gives
his perspective.
Date:Tue, 01 Jul 2003,11:09:09 GMT
Hey Guys, sorry it's been so long since I've
sent anything but a quick note to you individually. However things have
been pretty hectic since the end of hostilities and the start of the real
war. Despite what the assholes in the press like to say over and over:
1) We did expect some armed resistance from
the Ba'ath Party and Feydaheen;
2) It isn't any worse than expected;
3) Things are getting better each day, and
4) The morale of the troops is A-1, except
for the normal bitching and griping.
My brief love affair with the press,
especially the guys who had the cajones to be embedded with the troops
during the fighting, is probably over, especially since we are back being
criticized by the same Roland Headly types that used to hang around the
Palestine Hotel drinking Baghdad Bob's whiskey and parroting his
ridiculous B.S.
I'm in Baghdad now, since SpOpComm 5
relocated here from Qatar. It looks, sounds and smells about the same but
at least you can get Maker's Mark at the local OC. We came up in mid-June
to help set up operation Scorpion and Sidewinder. It represents a major
(and long overdue) shift in tactics. Instead of being sitting ducks for
the ragheads we now are going after the worthless pieces of fecal matter.
I'm no longer baby-sitting the pukes from CNN
and the canned hams from the networks, but have a combat mission
coordinating a bunch of A teams, seeking, finding and rooting out the
mostly non-Iraqis that are well-armed, well-paid (in U.S. dollars) and
always waiting to wail for the press and then shoot some GI in the back in
the midst of a crowd.
The only reason the GIs are pissed (not
demoralized) is that they cannot touch, must less waste, those taunting
bags of gas that scream in their faces and riot on cue when they spot a
camera man from ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN or NBC. If they did, then they know the
next nightly news will be about how chaotic things are and how much the
Iraqi people hate us.
Some do. But the vast majority don't and more
and more see that the GIs don't start anything, are by-and-large friendly,
and very compassionate, especially to kids and old people. I saw a bunch
of 19 year-olds from the 82nd Airborne not return fire coming from a
mosque until they got a group of elderly civilians out of harm's way. So
did the Iraqis.
A bunch of bad guys used a group of women and
children as human shields. The GIs surrounded them and negotiated their
surrender fifteen hours later and when they discovered a three year-old
girl had been injured by the big tough guys throwing her down a flight of
stairs, the GIs called in a MedVac helicopter to take her and her mother
to the nearest field hospital. The Iraqis watched it all, and there hasn't
been a problem in that neighborhood since. How many such stories, and
there are hundreds of them, ever get reported in the fair and balanced
press? You know, nada.
The civilians who have figured it out faster
than anyone are the local teenagers. They watch the GIs and try to talk to
them and ask questions about America and Now wear wrap-around sunglasses,
GAP T-shirts, Dockers (or even better Levis with the red tags) and Nikes
(or Egyptian knock-offs, but with the "swoosh") and love to
listen to AFN when the GIs play it on their radios.
They participate less and less in the
demonstrations and help keep us informed when a wannabe bad-ass shows up
in the neighborhood.
The younger kids are going back to school
again, don't have to listen to some mullah rant about the Koran ten hours
a day, and they get a hot meal.
They see the same GIs who man the corner
checkpoint, helping clear the playground, install new swingsets and create
soccer fields. I watched a bunch of kids playing baseball in one
playground, under the supervision of a couple of GIs from Oklahoma. They
weren't very good but were having fun, probably more than most Little
Leaguers The place is still a mess but most of it has been for years. But
the Hospitals are open and are in the process of being brought into the
21st Century. The MOs and visiting surgeons from home are teaching their
docs new techniques and One American pharmaceutical company (you know, the
kind that all the hippies like to scream about as greedy) donated enough
medicine to stock 45 hospital pharmacies for a year.
Safe water is more available. Electricity has
been restored to pre-war levels but saboteurs keep cutting the lines. And
The old Ba'ath big shots are upset because they can't get fuel for their
private generators. One actually complained to General McKeirnan, who told
him it was a rough world.
The MPs are screening the 80,000 Iraqi police
force and rehabbing the ones that weren't goons, shake-down artists or
torturers like they did in East Berlin, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
There are dual patrols of Iraqi cops and
U.S./U.K./Polish MPs now in most of the larger cities. Basrahas 3.5
million inhabitants. Mosul is a city of 2 million. Kirkuk has 1 million.
How many and hundreds of other small towns have not had riots or
shootings? The vast majority.
The six U.K. cops were killed in a small
Shiite town by the ex-cops they were re-habbing. According to a Royal
Marine colonel I talked to, the town now has about twenty permanent
vacancies in its police force. Mick, he's a big potato eater from Belfast
named Huggins and knows how to handle terrorists after twenty years
fighting with the IRA. He sends his regards and says he'd love to have you
here. Thinks you'd make a great police chief, even though the cops would
be more frightened of you than the local hoods (then he laughed)
I heard one doofus on MSNBC the other night
talk about how "nearly 60" GIs have been killed since 01 May.
The truth is that 21 GIs have been killed in combat, mostly from ambush,
from 01 May through 30 June, Another 29 have been killed by accidents or
other causes (two drowned while swimming in the Tigris).
The MSNBC idiot is the same jerk who reported
on the air that "dozens of GIs" were badly burned when two RPGs
hit a truck belonging to an Engineer Battalion that was parked by a
construction site. The truck was hit and burned, three GIs received minor
injuries (including the driver who burnt his hand) and three warriors of
Allah were promptly sent to enjoy their 72 slave girls in Paradise. Hell
of a way to get laid.
A mosque in that shithole Fallujah blew up
this morning while the local imam, a creep named Fahlil (who was one of
the biggest local loudmouths that frequently appeared on CNN) was helping
a Syrian Hamas member teach eight teenagers how to make belt bombs. Right
away the local Feyhadeen propaganda group started wailing that the
Americans hit it with a TOW missile (If they had there wouldn't have been
any mosque left!) and the usual suspects took to the streets for CNN and
BBC. One fool was dragging around a piece of tin with blood on it,
claiming it was part of the missile.
The cameras rolled and the idiot started
repeating his story, then one of my guys asked him in Arabic where he had
left the rag he usually wore around his face that made him look like a
girl. He was a local leader of the Feyhadeen. We took the clown in custody
and were asked rather indignantly by the twit from BBC if we were trying
to shut up "the poor man who had seen his mosque and friends blown
up." I told the airy-fairy who the raghead was and if he knew Arabic
(which he obviously didn't) he'd know he was a Palestinian. I suggested we
take him down to the local jail and we'd lock him and his cameraman in a
cell with the "poor man" and they could interview him until we
took him to headquarters. They declined the invitation. Guess what played
on the Bullshit Broadcasting System that evening? Did the Americans blow
up a mosque? See the poor man who is still in a state of shock over losing
his mosque and relatives? Yep. Our friend the Palestinian.
Our search and destroy missions are largely
at night, free of reporters and generally terrifying to those brave
warriors of Allah.
The only thing that frightens them more is
hearing the word "Gitmo". The word is out that a trip to
Guantanimo Bay is not a Caribbean vacation and they usually start
squealing like the little mice they are, when an interrogator mentions
"Gitmo".
No wonder the International Red Cross, the
National Council of Churches and the French keep protesting about the
place. They know it has proven to be very effective in keeping several
hundred real fanatical psychopaths in check and very frankly would rather
see them cut loose to go kill some more GIs or innocent Americans, just to
make W. look bad.
We have about 200 really bad guys in custody
now and probably will park them in the desert behind a triple roll of
razor wire, backed up by a couple of Bradleys pointed their way, if they
decide to riot. Maybe a few will get to Gitmo but most are human garbage
that wouldn't take on your five-year old grandson face-to-face. The more
we go after them and not vice-versa I think we will see the sniper attacks
go down. Yeah, they'll get lucky now and then, but it's showtime, fellows.
Our first objective is to get the die-hards
off the street (or make them too scared to come out in them) and destroy
their caches of weapons (we have collected more than 227,000 A-47s and
that is only the tip of the iceberg; Curly bought nearly a million of them
from our pal Vladimir), then cut off their money supply, mostly from Syria
and Lebanon. We must continue to get public services up and running, so
the local families can get water, sewage and garbage service; electricity,
public transportation; oil fields and refineries working and a dinar that
won't halve in value every month.
It's going to be a long haul (remember it
took 10-15 years in Japan and West Germany) but if we don't stick with it,
nobody else will, and we'll have some other looney running the place
again.
This place has greater potential than Saudi
Arabia (bunch of goat-herders who struck black gold) or Iran (weird dudes
who can't run a rug bazaar much less a major country).
I keep telling myself even the Democrats
can't be that self-destructive. But then I look at the current line-up.
The cream of the crap. If that lying bitch ever gets elected we're really
in trouble. By we, I mean the whole world. She'll slide just plain Bill in
as the Secretary-General of the U.N. and then the whole world will be
trying to take our great country ... the greatest ever (and that's coming
from an ex-Canuck) ... down and civilization with it.
Armageddon, here we come. Remember, it's
located on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
Enough of that cheery speculation. The good
news is that General Schoonmaker is going to appointed ChiefArmy and the
old man is coming to Tampa to run the SpOps desk at CentComm. He's tops
and will be getting his second star.
To me it means that SpOps will be more
predominant in future operations and after 18 years as a GB maybe I'll
have a shot at a bird-level combat command.
The old man asked me to come to MacDill and
be his ACS but I told him after I spent four months changing the diapers
of the media types, I wanted to go back to action. Hence, my current gig.
As the movie quoted old General Patton,
"God help me, I love it." I do. Nothing more satisfying than
working with the BEST damn soldiers in the world, flushing real human poop
down the drain and giving some folks a chance at trying freedom for a
change.
They may learn to like it and then my
great-great-grandson won't have to worry about some maniac trying to
destroy the planet.
My tour is over at the end of August, and I
plan to return to Tampa, brief the old man, then head to San Rafael and
see my two sweethearts. I'd like to visit my parents in Toronto and my
brother in London, before taking on a trip across the country. Just like
any other family. It will charge my batteries before I end up back in some
other interesting and challenging location. I hope to see most of you and
ask for some advice, not support. I know I've had that all along. Thanks.
Now about that Maker's Mark.
God Bless America
P.S. A couple of you asked me about Curly and
his two sons, Dumb and Dumber. I still think we got him and one son, but
the slugs may have gotten away. If they are alive, I can't believe they
are hanging around here. Even Curly isn't that stupid ... then again. He
might be in Syria or Lebanon. If he is, he's too moronic to keep quiet,
then we'll get him. I promise.
=============================
Forwarded by William E. Haynes
I will comment another time. Tell your
friends to read this.
But also this:
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories
/I/IRAQ?SITE=WIMIL&SECTION=HOME
And THIS JUST IN:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030722/
wl_mideast_afp/iraq_us_sons&cid=1514&ncid=1480
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