Fox and Friends

Obama's election has apparently rendered the Bush administration the lamest of ducks. "Lame" might even connote too much activity - Bush is more like the duck enjoyed by Ralphie and family in "A Christmas Story." He's been roasted and served on a platter, patiently awaiting carving at the hands of historians, and yet he's still got that goofy, incongruous grin on his face.

Suffice it to say that it seems Bush retired, and I'm 98% sure he won't do anything between now and Inauguration Day. That does leave a wary 2% that fears preemption of CBS' broadcast of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," at which time Bush, clad in a Santa suit, jeerily announces that he's sent our zoom-bombers to drop their boom-boomers on all the Whos still asnooze in the town of Tehran. That spine-chilling scenario aside, I'm pretty sure that nothing of substance will get done before Obama takes over.

This surprises me. The Bush administration has been nothing if not industrious over the past 8 years. I'm not sure you would score everything the administration accomplished as an "achievement," but starting multiple wars, squandering both international good will and budget surpluses alike, deregulating the economy, rewriting the Constitution, and turning the Vice President into Emperor Palpatine - all of this takes time and effort. Especially because Bush did all that in the fewest proportion of working days of any president ever. He took more vacation days than any other president, including FDR, who served almost twice as long. Understandable though - that brush in Crawford doesn't clear itself.

I mention Bush's industriousness, and the current lack thereof, because of all the underhanded things Bush did, he didn't do the most obvious one. Sure, he redefined torture, then outsourced it when CIA agents expressed moral qualms about torture; he removed the transparency required for democratic government; and he sent soldiers to die for questionable causes. And it is that, the purported justifications for the war in Iraq, that brings me to the point of today's posting: the one devious thing that Bush did not do. He did not order the planting of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Why not?



Why draw the line there? W. thought it was ok to willfully misinterpret WMD intelligence, browbeat poor Colin Powell into selling it to the UN, bully Congress into supporting a war based on the misinterpreted intelligence, then send soldiers to die for it, right? So why not seal the deal, and plant some WMDs in Iraq? We have chemical weapons in our own arsenal. Would it have been so hard for a few clandestine operations to scatter a few chemical weapons around Iraqi arms depots? The short answer is no, it would not have been that hard. Here's why:

In the very early days of the Iraq war, the hunt was on. Every U.S. soldier was looking for 4 things: Saddam, Uday, Qusay, and WMDs. And we looked everywhere - every truck, every factory, every weapons depot, every hillside, and every nook and cranny in a country that is nothing but nooks and crannies.

At one point, probably in April or very early May 2003, my unit arrived at a large airfield west of Baghdad. It was an enormous facility - dozens of bomb-proof bunkers and jet hangers, plus luxury facilities like a swimming pool and gym. We were not the first ones there, though. We were the third. The Air Force had swung by and dropped their share of boom-boomers. Shortly thereafter, the super soldiers showed up. You may remember having met some of them in my previous post, "Duck!" These were the guys who rode horses and ATVs around in Afghanistan, wore sporty wrap-around Oakleys, favored moisture-wicking outdoor gear to actual uniforms, and went by "Fox" and "Duke" and, probably, "Snake Eyes." [FN 1] Men wanted to be them, and women wanted to be with them.

By the time we arrived on site, the super soldiers had been there for a few days. We pulled in, circled the vehicles in a defensive posture, and got the humvees ready to begin a sweep for WMDs. My commander, Stumpy [FN 2], had spread his map on the hood of his humvee and called First Sergeant, me, and the other officers over to divvy up the sectors. As we pored over the map, naming the sectors cool things like Red, White, and Blue, another humvee full of super soldiers came through our defensive perimeter (there's another story in there about one of my soldiers almost killing them because they didn't know the challenge and password, but Stumpy let them in essentially because they were white and spoke English. Ah, racial profiling. I digress).

The super soldiers came over to our little coffee clatch, which was gathered around Stumpy's humvee. Their leader strode over. He looked remarkably like a mustached Michael Phelps decked out as a Guns And Ammo centerfold. "Hi, y'all, I'm Fox," he said. "Which one a y'alls in charge?"

"I am," said Stumpy. Fox lowered his Oakleys, looked down - far down - at the 5'4" dumpling that was our fearless leader, laughed, and said, "Really?"

This made me laugh, along with First Sergeant, who I'm sure would have happily killed Stumpy were it not for all the paperwork that would ensue. Instead, he satisfied his bloodlust by taking Stumpy's boots when he slept and super-gluing them to the ceiling, where Stumpy couldn't reach them.

"Yes, really, I'm Captain Stumpy, I'm the commander," Stumpy fairly squeaked. "Ok," said Fox, still smiling bemusedly. I couldn't tell, what with the black Oakleys, but I thought he gave the rest of us a sympathetic look, one that said, "You have to obey this guy?" Anyway, Fox continued, "We thought we'd save y'all some trouble. We've already been through here, searched and cleared everything. No need for you to look for WMDs, place is clean."

"Well, we're going to search again," said Stumpy defiantly. "No, you don't understand," said Fox. "You won't search again. We cleared it, it's our AO [area of operations]. You sit tight here. Bear's orders."

Huffy at having been told what to do by someone obviously much cooler than he was, Stumpy snapped back with, "Yeah, who's Bear? He's not in my chain of command."

A hush fell.

"Son," Fox replied, a steely edge coming into his voice as the folksy "y'alls" fell away, "Bear's the boss here, and I don't give a flaming pile of shit about your chain of command. But, if it makes you feel better, I'm sure Bear will meet with your old man, and you'll be told to sit tight here. Like I said, just trying to save you some trouble. Understood?"

So let it be written, so let it be done. In less than 20 minutes after Fox and crew took off, the radio beeped, and we were informed that all units were to cease movement and remain in their current positions. Which we did.

But here's the point of all this. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Bear and Fox and the rest of them to have planted chemical and biological weapons at that sight. Fox could have rolled up to us in his humvee and taken us over to see Bear. Bear could have been seated on a big pile of chemical weapons, all stamped with Iraqi markings. He could have told us, "Here it is boys, Saddam's stockpile." We would have called our commander, he'd have called his, and in a matter of hours God and everybody would have descended on the site. In the meantime, Fox and Bear would have disappeared into the desert, and Mission would actually have been Accomplished.

Do I want my government to lie to me? No. But they lie anyway, so they should make it a good lie, one that at least convinces me of the rightness of their decisions. Imagine the difference - if we were told WMDs were found, everything else would have been so much easier to stomach. The insurgency, the mismanagement, the loss of life - all just a small price to pay for keeping those weapons away from America, and we'd all have been happy in our ignorant bliss.

Interesting, isn't it? That Bush is so incompetent that he could be criticized not only for doing so many bad things, but also for not doing enough bad things? Oh well. Incompetence is as incompetence does - the Bush administration isn't even good at being bad. Let's hope they don't try to fix it in the last few months. The end.

[FN 1] I would have been Snake Eyes if I was a super soldier. He was the best G.I. Joe ever. However,if someone else had already taken Snake Eyes, then I would have been Panthro.

[FN 2] Stumpy was a different commander than the Rock With Lips, who you met in "Iraq Story #1." Stumpy was an equal pain in the ass as Rock, however, and you'll hear more about them both, I'm sure.

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Duck!

The front page of the New York Times recently reported that U.S. commandos killed civilians during a raid into Syria. The thrust of the story was not the civilian dead (lamentably, civilian casualties stopped being news in 2001 when airstrikes commenced in Afghanistan). Rather, the story focused on the cross-border nature of the raid, likening it to increased “commando” operations in Pakistan. Not to demean the venerable NY Times, but cross-border commando ops in Syria aren’t news either. The military has been doing cross-border raids since we’ve been in Iraq. In fact, we’ve been doing it in the exact same spot as the most recent incident, namely where the Euphrates crosses from Syria in to Iraq.

Cross-border ops are no secret. Newsweek reported such operations in 2003, when elements from my unit chased suspected insurgents into Syria. Since it’s on the front page of the Times, it’s also no secret that U.S. commandos are venturing into Syria, and that their mission is to fight the influx of insurgents from Iraq into Syria.

Thus, because major publications have already blown the lid off any secrecy these missions may have had, I have no problem telling you about the foibles and follies of US commandos in Iraq:



On the base I lived on in far, far western Iraq, there was a road. This road was not quite a mile long, but it was straight, flat and well paved. It connected the two halves of the base, which themselves were essentially two clusters of concrete buildings separated by empty desert. There were 3 entrances to this road – one entrance at each end, and one near the middle.

On our base lived secret soldiers – the kind that have beards, wear baseball hats instead of helmets, and call themselves “Bear” and “Jackal” and “Dave.” Sometimes Bear and Dave and their compatriots would get nighttime deliveries, brought in by small planes. Think Cessnas – prop-driven, two-person, civilian-type aircraft. I can’t say for sure what was on those flights, but since I have a picture of one of my soldiers holding a Burger King Whopper – and there were no Burger Kings in Anbar province – you can guess what was usually on the plane. [FN 1]

Usually, when one of these burger-bearing birds was inbound, a call would go out on the radio telling all units to stay off the previously-mentioned road, because that is where the plane was going to land. Additionally, some secret soldiers would park their humvees at the road entrances, just to make sure no one went on the road. It was a good system all around.

However, secret soldiers, being secretive, stopped informing us lowly, non-special forces when their Whopper Express was inbound. Instead, they’d just send humvees out to block the road. Blocking the road was all fine and good, provided that all the entrances are blocked. You remember that there were 3 entrances to the road, right?

One night, in anticipation of some delicious cheesy burgers, America’s elitiest fighting force sent humvees out to close the road without telling anyone. They closed one end. They closed the other. They looked up in the sky and waited to Have It Their Way. No doubt they listened intently for the far-off drone of a propeller, because the plane would approach and land without lights - the friendly neighborhood islamofascists had taken to shooting at anything that flew, requiring lightless landings for aircraft. However, in their eagerness for fast-food goodies, the commandos forgot to close off the center entrance, which, as it happens, was where my soldiers accessed the road.

At about the same time as the incoming plane swooped in for its final approach, Sgt Hooper and Spc Kinsey [FN 2] hopped into a humvee, turned it on, put on the blackout drive lights [FN 3], and drove up to the road-cum-landing-strip. Spc Kinsey, the driver, looked left, then right, and saw nothing. Reasonably, he did not look up, likely having concluded that left and right were the only possibilities for approaching traffic. He stepped on the gas and pulled out onto the road.

Imagine Kinsey’s and Sgt Hooper’s surprise, then, when from the murky darkness in front them appeared two rubber tires, suspended in the air. They didn’t even have time to duck – the front landing gear bounced off the humvee hood, ripped through the center windshield, and tore off the canvas roof. Then, the plane landed safely! Even more unbelievable, Kinsey and Sgt Hooper’s heads were still attached. The landing gear had passed right in between them and converted the humvee to a drop-top, but had missed them completely. Other than scratches, bruises from the seatbelt, and the super-elevated heart-rate that one gets when the lizard part of one’s brain pumps out a quart of adrenaline, they were basically fine. It was basically a miracle that they were alive and that the plane had not flipped and crashed on impact.

Naturally, when a plane in flight collides with a humvee, it causes a commotion, as well as a number of investigations. The net result: no more night time flights bearing cheeseburgers for the super soldiers, and two soldiers had a pretty good story to call home with.

And that is how Spc. Kinsey and Sgt. Hooper became the only soldiers in Iraq to get run over by an airplane. The end.


FN 1: We don’t have universal health coverage, but gosh darn it, our special ops troops will have BK Broilers on demand.

FN 2: As you may have noticed, I do not use real names.

FN 3: Blackout drives are very low level lights on military vehicles that are barely visible to the naked eye, but shine like glorious Archangels if you wear night vision goggles.

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