Warriors and Patriots

President Bush stirred the Democrats into a feeding frenzy with his remarks during the TV interview when he said the war on terror was not winnable. Perhaps he needed to draw a better word picture for the critical mass fermenting as it awaited any showing of weakness or a misstatement by President Bush. I agree with our President. In our present compassionate and politically correct world, the war against terror is not winnable. However, I offer a better description of our position in this war.

The word picture everyone needs to see is that of a long distance race. One where the finish line, the tape, is not in view at this time in the race or in the foreseeable future. We are ahead in the race but our opponent, the Muslim terrorists, are close behind, always striking at our heels. Yes, we are winning the race. But the race is a long way from over. As long as the United States is not crippled we will stay ahead in the war on terror. We must remain ever vigilant to the positions and intentions of those who wish to overtake us. President Bush is our preferred leader for this critical contest of good over evil. America will never falter or never fail and will keep on winning the race until Islam sleeps peacefully. 

Semper Fi
Mofak
Intruders Forever for Bush

Arabs Kill Palestinian Peace Activist
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1090466087097 

Yasser Arafat's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade this morning killed a 15-year-old Palestinian Arab boy "after the youth tried to stop them from setting up a Kassam rocket launcher near his family's home," the Jerusalem Post reports: 

*** QUOTE *** 

Members of the Arafat-linked terrorist group were trying to plant Kassam rocket launchers next to the Zanin family residence in northern Beit Hanun, when the family, concerned over IDF retaliation, argued and ultimately struggled with the terrorists. 

In the ensuing scuffle, the terrorists opened fire on the Zanin family, killing Jamil Zanin, 15, and injuring 5 others. The Kassam crew gathered their launchers and missiles and left the scene. No Kassam rockets have been launched out of Northern Gaza so far Friday. 

*** END QUOTE ***

Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. 

Will this murder draw the same level of outrage as the accidental death of Rachel Corrie, who styled herself a "peace" activist but in fact was trying to prevent Israel from stopping the smuggling of arms to terrorists? Don't hold your breath.

This is purported to be the truth, the absolute truth, on CPL Hassoun USMC.
I do not have the details as they are TS.
Semper Fi
Mofak
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As near as we can tell, this is the straight scoop on Hassoun.  I've sanitized the originator!

Some of you know the type of activities I supervise at the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) or the Joint Service SERE Agency (JSSA) for you more senior gentleman. My staff and I have been directly involved in the repatriation and debriefing of Cpl Hausson. Obviously, I can not discuss the intimate details of his plight. I can share with the MILINET Community that this Marine's story is legit. He was abducted from his place of duty, interrogated, abused, threaten with death, yet upheld the traditional of the Marine Corps, protected his comrades, and abided by the articles of the Code of Conduct. It's possible some of you have fallen victim to some official and unofficial mis-statement about Cpl Hassoun. We call it the "CNN effect." In the coming days, weeks, or months you will find the media and people who just basically made up shit are wrong. The Marine Corps got one of its own back from the jaws of certain death. He should be welcomed back as a returning warrior, better yet as a Marine who has seen more than his share of hell. Semper Fidelis, words that Cpl Hassoun clung to in his darkest hours.

Not much change in carrier pilots over the years--different equipment/speeds but same philosophy. 

11 July 04. Intended to send this out at the end of June but was unable for various reasons. Hope you are all well. We are doing much better now that we are headed home. We will be back sometime near the end of the month. Can't wait. I suspect that I'll be talking to or seeing some of you very soon. 

20 June 04. Five months down, one to go. More than ready to get home. After a little bit of excitement in April, it has been very quiet for us. We do our daily transits up to Iraq but upon arrival over Baghdad, Fallujah, Mosul, etc., there is very little specific tasking, mainly just "presence" type missions. Four to five hour hops. That's OK, though. If that is what it takes to keep the Americans on deck safer, then so be it. 
As usual those young airman slugging it out up on the flight deck, day after endless day, continue to amaze me, spending 12-14 hours a day up there in the blazing heat. It is brutal up there - 110 degrees, high humidity, 5 acres of sun-baked steel, nuclear hot jet engine exhaust everywhere. Yet every time you man up, those crazy bastards are always smiling like it's flippin' Christmas morning and have your jet looking immaculate and ready to go. 

Those young men and women fire me up. We just pulled out of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, our last of three port calls there. Good liberty. Very westernized and modern. Tons of five-star resort hotels filled with Europeans on vacation. Anti-US sentiment is low in Dubai so there is little worry about eating a car bomb at a restaurant or night club. This was my eighth visit to Dubai which made me the squadron expert on haggling with the local merchants down at the "Gold Souk," which in English apparently means "worn down, smelly shopping area filled with shady Iranian guys who are trying to sell you overpriced copy watches, shwarmas and Persian carpets." It's a simple process really: Make a ridiculously low offer and start heading for the door. If the guy starts yelling "Special price for you my friend!" and tackles you to keep you in his shop, homeboy's ready to play ball. 

We hosted a heavy hitting Air Force general from the leadership cell in Qatar a few weeks back. Guess he wanted to see first-hand how the aircraft carrier thing worked because, as a former B-52 Ubersuperstratomongofortress (or whatever it's called) bomber pilot, the shortest runway he had ever landed on was four to five miles long. 

Part of his "show and tell" program was a flight in the back seat of a Tomcat to prove to him that yes, the Navy has more than battleships, submarines and spinach-eating-crackerjack-looking dudes named "Popeye." His flight was uneventful until the very end. He was briefed that during the final approach to the ship, in order to get the best view of the ship's landing area, he needed to lean forward and left in his ejection seat and look over the pilot's left shoulder. Guess he missed the part about bracing himself for the landing because as the jet snagged an arresting wire, decelerating the aircraft from 150 MPH to zero (in 2 seconds), unfortunately, the General's head was still moving at 150 MPH. The end result? The General's head slammed into the rear cockpit instrument panel, shattering his helmet visor and a cracking a few displays. 

Welcome to Naval Aviation and the Tailhook Association, sir. Now go put your goofy Air Force ascot back on and find yourself a long runway to flare on. 

The uprising in Fallujah back in April gave us a little excitement. One afternoon our flight was tasked to contact a Marine Forward Air Controller (FAC) who needed some immediate, on-call air support. His position, just north of Fallujah, was taking repeated fire from a building "filled with 10 to 20 snipers" on the northern edge of the city. 

Urban close air support can be a little dicey - inadvertently blowing up the Fallujah Day Care Center is generally not where you want to be. Target identification is always our number one priority, but in an urban environment, the stakes get just a little higher. The FAC was able to give us a very good description of the building's location and description: precise coordinates, three-story, two structures over from a major alley, large columns in front, etc.. Target acquisition in this case was a cakewalk; he was able to mark the target with assets that were visually significant both to the naked eye and our jet's various sensors. Thanks fellas. 

Did I mention that I love the United States Marine Corps? Now fully confident that we were NOT about to decimate the Fallujans For World Peace Headquarters, we extended out to the northeast, turned in and released a single 500-pound laser guided. Apparently the building wasn't quite up to code for precision guided munition attacks because on impact it literally went away, instantly becoming Fallujah's newest drainage ditch. The FAC shifted our fires to the next building over when he saw survivors reposition there. My wingman dropped a single and turned that building into a dirt parking lot. 

Immediately following his attack my aircraft had a hydraulic failure which required us to immediately turn south, declare an emergency and limp 500 miles back to the ship. Never a dull moment, I guess. Glad we could help before the hydraulics tanked. Pretty strange to be standing in the Ready Room on the ship, two hours after the fact, still in my flight gear and watching the smoke from your hits on FOX and CNN. 

Turns out those attacks kicked off the big USMC push into Fallujah. Technology...... With the limited number of air strikes taking place, honestly, our biggest challenge right now is air-to-air refueling (night traps excluded, of course). Finding the tanker is pretty straight forward, but the night/bad weather thing can make it a little sporty. With all of the US controlled airfields in Iraq getting low on gas is not quite the stress grenade that Afghanistan was where the ONLY divert was the ship, 700 miles away. The Air Force flies the two types of "big wing" tankers (basically airliners filled with jet fuel) in the US inventory, and yes, they too have to land on nice, long runways - losers. 

The first is the KC-10, also referred to as "The Mother Ship." God bless the KC-10. It's freakin' huge, holds ten gazillion gallons of gas and is breeze to tank off of. It drags a 20 foot hose which ends in a refueling basket that looks like a badminton birdie on steroids. Drop in behind and a few feet below the tanker, put out your refueling probe (the probe sticks out about two feet outboard and forward of the pilot's head), place it carefully in the basket and fly formation off the tanker while you top off. You're doing all of this at about 300 MPH. It's "soft tanking" because it is really easy to get in the basket and that long hose is extremely forgiving. 

This is not the case for the other tanker, the dreaded KC-135 aka the "Iron Maiden" or "hard tanking." Kid you not, ask any carrier aviator about tanking off the 135 and I guarantee you that the first response will be some form of grimace followed by sweat-soaked armpits and possibly soiled skivvies. A 10 foot, rigid boom (think of it is a big ol' pole) sticks out, down and aft from the tail of the 135. A six foot hose connects the end of this boom to a basket similar to the KC-10 basket. Compared to the KC-10, the basket on the 135 is significantly heavier and that shortened hose is much, much more rigid. The basket and hose are tremendously "stiff" and are, therefore, very unforgiving. If you are not careful and the basket starts to flap around, it can become a wrecking ball and start breaking things. Refueling probes have been ripped off and gone down jet intakes (badness) or the 135's basket has been torn from the hose and been brought back to the ship for a carrier landing with it hanging off the jet (embarrassing). The 135's "stiffness" makes it fairly easy to get your probe into the basket; it's staying in the basket that gets the adrenalin and sweat glands going at full throttle. With only 6 feet of hose to play with, you have to keep the jet in a very precise location. With the KC-10, you have about a ten-foot by ten-foot window to position your jet in; with the 135, that window shrinks to about two by two. Get outside of that window and, best case, you may just disconnect and fall out of the basket; worst case, your probe gets broken off. Day tanking off the Maiden is manageable. 

Turn down the lights on a no-moon night, throw in some air turbulence and maybe a jackass Air Force pilot (excuse my redundancy) who likes to throw his tanker into random angles of bank and the basket really starts to move around. I'd rather watch the 8th inning of the 2003 Game 7 ALCS for 3 hours straight than "dance with the Maiden" on a dark night. Imagine cruising along on Rt. 128 on a snowy night when suddenly you get stuck in between two semis and the car starts to slip on some ice. You know that death-grip-on-the-steering-wheel-with-every-muscle-in-your-body-tight feeling you instantly get? Multiple that by ten and hold that feeling for about 7 minutes - yep, that's just what it feels like when you're tanking off the Maiden. 

I've met a few freaks who actually like the 135. Me? I hate it. Good news is that the only tanker in theater right now is the 135, so at least we have that to look forward to. 

Had some good old fashioned, immature, seventh-grade fun a few weeks back. Two new guys, fresh out of the F-14 training squadron, came out to join us on deployment. New guys joining a Fighter Squadron always get messed with; new guys who meet their squadron on deployment get tormented beyond belief - it's part of their rite of passage into Naval Aviation. Some other squadrons have done some really top notch work with their "nuggets" when they showed up on cruise. One guy was told that officer stateroom berthing was full, so in the mean time, he slept in a storeroom/cleaning closet for four to five days. They did at least throw a mattress on the floor for him. 

In another squadron, they sent their new guy from stateroom to stateroom, checking in with the various squadron officers. The scam was that when he entered the room, every guy was buck naked and conducted the check-in with a disturbing, business-as-usual attitude. His invitation to the all-naked poker game that night must have made him wonder what he was getting into. 

We discussed a variety of options. My idea was to alter the squadron check-in sheet that required the newbies to bring fresh stool, saliva, blood, semen and urine samples directly to the Captain of the Ship and the Admiral for their review and signature. For some reason, my incredibly funny idea was shot down. In the end we opted for a variation of the altered check-in sheet scenario that had these poor buggers running all over the ship at all hours of the day and night in every fashion of uniform (flight suit, khakis, liberty whites, and dress blues), looking for places that didn't exist (movie theaters, bowling alleys, F-14 simulators, etc.) and trying to get signatures from people that were not real. 

The girls at home are doing great. Phone calls during ports, email and a 10 minute videoteleconference back in April have kept me sufficiently up to date on 1) all of the festivities and 2) various furniture, clothes and major appliance purchases. Can't wait to see my family on the best day of this deployment, the fly-in at Oceana. 

Later.