[...] We watched the enemy flee Afghanistan to Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. We stopped them in Tajikistan. Flopping Aces has more. However, neither Gateway Pundit, Flopping Aces or CQ Politics has what I have in my head [...]

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[...] on the Iraqi Prewar Intel Report and Troopergate would be at the top for sure followed up by the proof that AQ was in Iraq, and Word’s “Were We Greeted As Liberators,” Skye’s great posts [...]

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[...] We watched the enemy flee Afghanistan to Pakistan, Iran and Iraq. We stopped them in Tajikistan. Flopping Aces has more. However, neither Gateway Pundit, Flopping Aces or CQ Politics has what I have in my head [...]

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You are right of course Missy;

Yes, absolutely the military is risky business, even in peacetime. Hope it didn’t sound like I was “sugar-coating” it. The flightline is a particularly dangerous environment and carrier decks even more so. Any number of things can go wrong even if you do keep your mind on your work, while remaining keenly aware of everything going on around you, and take proper precautions. On carriers; Arresting cables have snapped and cut people in half, aircraft have crashed into carriers coming in too low in landing mishaps, and people have been lost at sea from being blown overboard by jet exhausts. It’s an understood risk that if you end up overboard from a big ship like that, chances are nobody is going to turn around to go look for you or your body. Especially during night operations. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.

You have to be ready to content with munitions mishaps, antenna radiation & chemical hazards, being sucked into jet intakes, or caught in movable surfaces. I remember one of our wing’s specialist lowered and F-4 ejection seat onto a live electrical panel, causing the rocket motor to fire. It caught him in the chest ripping him apart as he and the seat were pushed past the canopy. We lost another individual when he tried to service a wheel assembly with excessive pressure and it came apart blowing the rim through him.

Both of those were “dumb” accidents (i.e. preventable, had they read the danger entries in the aircraft’s forms or followed technical orders). Yet such things happen every once in a while. I recall another time when some idiots found some A-10 rounds and decided they would try to use a shop vice and “disarm them” by drilling a holes in the casings to get the powder out. One shell went off. The projectile went through a locker & two cinder-block wall, totally destroyed a toilet. Their chief certainly wasn’t a very happy camper. Had it gone off a couple of hours earlier, it might have nailed him reading his morning paper. Another time a couple of troops were somehow ejected down into the runway during a B-52 take-off. And It’s no picnic for pilots either. I’ve had my share of “camping trips” out gathering pieces from aircraft crash sites.

I’m sure your bro has lots of similar stories as well. Those I listed were only some of the Class 1 reportable type mishaps, but all-in-all such mishaps are fortunately fairly rare. We all get our share of “lesser” scars. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been burned on hot components, gotten bonked on the head by a flight surface, “Eagle bites” while rushing to get an aircraft airborne, or all the “near misses” and I’m about as deaf as a doornail from hush-house and hardened aircraft shelter engine runs.

Then you can add in the complication of sometimes having to wear bulky full chem-warfare ensembles with gas masks for several hours while attempting to do the same job. Just imagine doing that on a hot summer day in a desert environment. For a civilian to experience the novelty of this, try donning downhill skiiing garb & a diving mask. Then take turns playing cards and volley ball for 8-12 hours on a Florida beach at the height of tourist season.

Yes, military life can be quite the adventure. Even during those times when you don’t have an enemy intentionally trying to “do you in”.

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Well Rocky, I enjoyed your story. My brother was career Navy doing the same thing you did. You forgot to mention that the work could be dangerous as well. In the late 60′s my brother lost an eye while recharging some kind of air conditioning unit on a plane, the unit exploded. He was retired from the Navy after recovery much to his disappointment. He said he would even take a desk job to stay in, but he also has memory loss, blackouts and is disabled, he just doesn’t like to think of it that way.

Thank you for your service, didn’t in anyway mean to frighten young ones from military service, we have danger in civilian careers too, Rocky, your job was a bit riskier than getting your hands stained. Got a feeling that might be an additional reason the flight crews respected you guys.

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You’re welcome Scott, and I thank all the vets who are with us here on FA and those who are not;

If I had my service career to do all over again, I would. I feel I got all the thanks I needed while I was in. And in those special few who were willing to carry on the torch, the sacrifices of those who served with me, those that went before, and those who never made it to become veterans. Our proud smiles and the distant glint in a vet’s eyes around this time each year are for them, not ourselves. I’m glad we have a venue like this where we can freely tell of our experiences and stories once in a while and relate them to the topics.

I joined during an era of double-digit inflation after post-high school a 4-year job fell through and left me in and overqualified/underqualified quandary for over 6 months. Though I admit to joining to learn a new marketable trade, I entered with the full intention to make it a career and never looked back.

I selected the daily challenges of being an aircraft crew chief. It had always looked on the recruitment commercials like fascinating work; marshaling and caring for aircraft much like a member of an Indy 500 pit-crew. In actuality, the job entailed busting butt working the longest hours of just about any other enlisted career field. Frequently sitting down in permanently stained uniforms scarfing down cold meals between tasks with gritty hands that you could never quite get clean. Still, it was an exhilarating experience to come back in the next day to find the fruits of your overnight labors resulted in successful missions at the end of the flying day and accepting the appreciation of the aircrew for ‘loaning them your damned fine jet’ to fly (The aircraft may have pilot names on one side, but ours were on the other. A dedicated crew chief sees their aircraft as ‘their baby’ and frets over them like a mother hen). Every day there were always new challenges to test your mettle.

Even though I am no longer physically employable in the occupation for which I was trained (which is ironic as before I went in it was ‘what I knew’ that once kept me unemployed). I know that in my time I did my damnedest to always do the job right the first time. And I got to meet a lot of great people in the process. Not only in my own branch, but in our sister services, NATO ally personnel, and with citizens of other countries. Some of us still keep in touch, others never were good with that sort of thing, and some are gone, but linger in our memories.

For those reading this considering the military, I can say it is personally (though perhaps not financially) a rewarding and life-changing choice. It’s difficult to find an occupation where one is so respected if only for having the courage to volunteer to be a part of something greater than oneself. Even if you only join for a single term, you are still a patriot. In this “gimmie mine” world we live in, you would be of the few that giveth back. I will forewarn you, that it won’t be an easy job regardless which career field you chose. It takes drive, determination, and dedication to succeed. It ain’t like flippin’ burgers at Mickey Dee’s. From the moment you enter basic training, you will be pushed to excel even despite yourself. You will be assigned tasks, locations, and work with or for people you not of your choosing. It’s won’t be those issues, but what you make of them that will define your successes or failures. You will discover capabilities that you never knew you had in you. There are some fringe benefits, yet if you are thinking of entering the military solely for those, you’re doing it for all the wrong reason and may want to reconsider. For you are joining a brotherhood and accepting upon your shoulders risks and burdens the vast majority of a population might never dream of or willfully take part in. And you would have truly earned your citizenship and that of your children and your children’s children.

And I’m sorry if I took us off topic again LOL.

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@wordsmith:

If anyone has clicked on the 4th trackback, or if there are any visiting readers from Thinking Meat (Welcome to FA!), you should all know that Meatbrain is no longer publishing responses from us. So much for intellectual honesty and courage to debate.

wordsmith jumped the gun. meatbrain’s published Scott’s responses as well as my comment above, fished out of the spam filter.

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If anyone has clicked on the 4th trackback, or if there are any visiting readers from Thinking Meat (Welcome to FA!), you should all know that Meatbrain is no longer publishing responses from us. So much for intellectual honesty and courage to debate.

Here’s my comment from last night that did not get published:

Meatbrain:

Let’s examine this claim, shall we? Here’s one of the statements made in the Media Matters excerpt I included in my post:

[A] classified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report published the in September 2002 had found “no reliable information” to substantiate the claim that Iraq was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons.

What exactly did Malensek say that described how this statement was false?

If you click on the actual report link provided, you’ll see an example of just why media matters is to be held suspect for partisan spin. From the link:

The Defense Department released on June 7 an unclassified excerpt of
an earlier Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) study on Iraq’s chemical
warfare (CW) program in which it stated that there is “no reliable
information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical
weapons, or where Iraq has — or will — establish its chemical
warfare agent production facilities.”

But the excerpt, drawn from a classified DIA study published in
September 2002, also Stated that “Iraq will develop various elements
of its chemical industry to achieve self-sufficiency in producing the
chemical precursors required for CW agent production.” The full
excerpt is based on the DIA’s analysis titled: “Iraq — Key WMD
Facilities — An Operational Support Study.”

The official unclassified excerpt was leaked to the media on June 6.
Navy Admiral Lowell Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA), stepped forward the same day to clarify his agency’s
2002 assessment of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, saying “DIA
joined in the intelligence community assessment … that they had a
weapons of mass destruction program in place.”

Jacoby made his remarks during a media availability on Capitol Hill at
the invitation of Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Chairman John
Warner (Republican, Virginia) following a closed hearing on the
missions of the 75th Exploitation Task Force and the Iraq Survey Group
– both of which are involved in the search for information relating
to Iraq’s WMD. Warner said Jacoby’s clarification — first made during
the closed committee session — had interest to the public at large.

Jacoby was responding to questions raised after the June 6 press
reports suggesting that in the lead-up to policy decisions about Iraqi
weapons capabilities, the DIA found there was no reliable information
that Iraq was producing and stockpiling chemical weapons. The DIA
director said the quote appearing in media reporting was actually a
single sentence lifted out of a much longer planning document.

“It talks about the fact that at the time, in September 2002, we could
not specifically pin down individual facilities operating as part of
the weapons of mass destruction programs, specifically, the chemical
warfare portion,” he said, according to an unofficial transcript of
the exchange with reporters. “It is not, in any way, intended to
portray the fact that we had doubts that such a program existed …
was active, or … was part of the Iraqi WMD infrastructure” Jacoby
added.

“We did not have doubts about the existence of the program,” the
director said. As of September 2002, he continued, “we could not
reliably pin down, for somebody who was doing contingency planning,
specific facilities, locations or production that was underway at a
specific location at that point in time.”

Asked if additional information surfaced about Iraq after September,
Jacoby said: “there was (a) continuing flow of information coming in
to us for analysis and assessment during that whole period.”

Prior to Jacoby’s clarification, media reporting about the DIA study
fueled a brewing controversy by suggesting that elements of the Bush
administration may have shaded or exaggerated existing intelligence
about Iraq’s WMD programs to gain support for the war in 2003.

Excerpt from the Silberman-Robb Report:

The Commission also found no evidence of “politicization” even under the broader definition used by the CIA’s Ombudsman for Politicization, which is not limited solely to the case in which a policymaker applies overt pressure on an analyst to change an assessment. The definition adopted by the CIA is broader, and includes any “unprofessional manipulation of information and judgments” by intelligence officers to please what those officers perceive to be policymakers’ preferences (p. 188).

We conclude that good-faith efforts by intelligence consumers to understand the bases for analytic judgments, far from constituting “politicization,” are entirely legitimate. This is the case even if policymakers raise questions because they do not like the conclusions or are seeking evidence to support policy preferences. Those who must use intelligence are entitled to insist that they be fully informed as to both the evidence and the analysis (p. 189; footnote omitted).

Excerpt from the SSCI Report on Iraq Prewar Intelligence:

The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgements related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities (p. 284).

The Committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the Committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq’s links to terrorism. (p. 363)

Senate Select Committee on Intell Phase II Report:

REPORT ON WHETHER PUBLIC STATEMENTS REGARDING IRAQ
BY U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WERE SUBSTANTIATED
BY INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION

CHEMICAL

Conclusions

(U) Conclusion 3: Statements in the major speeches analyzed, as well additional statements, regarding Iraq’s possession of chemical weapons were substantiated by intelligence information. Intelligence assessments, including the December 2000 ICA stated that Iraq had retained up to 100 metric tons of its chemical weapons stockpile. The October 2002 NIE provided a range of 100 to 500 metric tons of chemical weapons.

(U) Conclusion 4: Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing. The intelligence community assessed that Saddam Hussein wanted to have chemical weapons production capability and that Iraq was seeking to hide such capability in its dual use chemical industry. Intelligence assessments, especially prior to the October 2002 NIE, clearly stated that analysts could not confirm that production was ongoing.

Amendment 68 – Strike the above conclusion and insert Conclusion 4: Statements by senior policymakers regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities were all substantiated by intelligence information.

Comment – We dispute several of the contentions in this conclusion. The intelligence community assessed both before and after the NIE that Iraq had a chemical weapons production capability, not just that Saddam wanted one. (See the CIA SEM Dec 2001 – “Iraq in the past several years has rebuilt a covert chemical weapons production capability by reconstructing dual-use industrial facilities and developing new chemical plants ….”) Most of the assessments which judged that actual production was ongoing were contemporaneous with the NIE or slightly prior (see Tenet’s testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee and SSCI below and the unclassified White Paper), but not all of them. More importantly, prior to the production of the NIE, no policymakers said that production was ongoing. If the report concludes that such statement is not substantiated, the report should clearly identify it so that it can be analyzed.

• We assess that Iraq retains a stockpile of at least 100 tons of agent … Moreover, Iraq is rebuilding former chemical weapons facilities, developing plants, and trying to procure chemical warfare-related items covertly … Based on these construction and procurement activities, we assess that Iraq has a covert chemical weapons production capability embedded in its civilian industry. Tenet testimony before SASC and SSCI, September 16, 2002.

• The main production building at Fallujah III chemical plant appears to have resumed operation, according to _ … The Intelligence Community suspects this site supports production of CW precursors as well as the biological warfare agent ricin, extracted from castor oil beans. INR, Iraq: Suspect CBW Production Facility Active, November 5,2001.

Postwar Findings

(U) The Committee reported on postwar findings on Iraq’s chemical weapons program in its September 2006 report, Postwar Findings about Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments. The Committee found the following.

(U) Following the war, the Iraq Survey Group conducted its review of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs and found that there ”were no caches of CW munitions and no single rounds of CW munitions.” Additionally, “the ISO has high confidence that there are no CW present in the Iraqi inventory.,,81 Some pre-1991 chemical weapons munitions have been found since the end of the combat operations.

(U) The ISO found no credible evidence indicating Iraq resumed its chemical weapons program after 1991, but said that “Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a CW effort when sanctions were lifted and conditions were judged favorable.

(U) The ISO investigated whether Iraq had intended to produce chemical weapons through its civilian chemical industry. It found that Iraq had an inherent capability to use its civilian industry for sulfur mustard CW agents, but did not find any production units that had been configured to produce CW agents or key chemical precursors. The ISO found that Iraq did not have a capability to produce nerve agents.

Amendment 69 – Strike the postwar findings section.

Comment – We do not believe that postwar findings are in any way relevant to whether policymakers’ statements made prior to the war were substantiated by intelligence available at the time. This information was already reported in another Phase II report, is unnecessary, and is likely to mislead readers who might think statements are unsubstantiated if they turned out to be wrong.

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I plan on getting one at a time, otherwise I’ll be into more than one at a time and make myself mad at myself. A month or so ago I bought Fleeced/Morris and A Better Country/Borden, and had read them at the same time, ugh. Reading Fleeced has been a torture, lots of reminders in there, but don’t care for his style, looking forward to a break from Mr. Dick Morris.

With your books, I can pass them on to my nephew, he would appreciate your stuff. After he reads what books I send him, he passes them on, so, you will be circulating at Ft. Riley.

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Hi Missy! I suppose if I were really interested in selling I’d say all of em or pick which one has the most markup. That’s not my thing though. I think Iraq’s Smoking Gun is probably the most interesting. The other Sam Pender books are very good too, but they’re all chronologies w almost nothing else. They’re history books-great references (especially America’s War w Saddam and The Ignored War), but Iraq’s Smoking Gun is the most interesting. As to the Scott Malensek books, definitely The Xmas War, but maaaaaaaaaaan, be prepared to read and read and read and read and read ’cause it’s BIG (700+ pages, and it is NOT structured to let the reader stop at any one particular point).

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