Small Town Veteran: March 2006

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2006.03.31

Up against the wall, or just a dam?

(Continued from "First things first" and the sooner the better)

Dafydd and I still aren't seeing completely eye to eye on the immigration issue, but I've had to admit he has some good points in some areas. Don't miss Two Walls That Pass In the Night, and as always on Dafydd's site, don't leave till you've read the comments.

Interested in more information about those poor hard-working immigrants that just want to assimilate as quickly as possible and join us around the campfire for a hearty round of Kumbaya? Learn all about them here.

The Protests -- Whose Backlash?
Victor Davis Hanson

Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens, along with Mexican-Americans and Hispanics in general, hit the streets throughout the United States this past week in one of the largest displays of public outrage since the Vietnam-War era.

The conventional wisdom was that the supposedly spontaneous outbursts of immigrant pride and anger took lawmakers by surprise. In response, politicians may backtrack on some of the tougher proposals concerning border enforcement, from constructing a wall to deportations. The media tended to emphasize the heartfelt anguish of the demonstrators, who often on selected televised clips carried American flags and were shown reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

But here in Central California that is not the public face of the demonstrations that we saw--which were mostly angry and, in the case of truant high-school students, so often unfortunately characterized by Mexican chauvinism, if not overt racism of the La Raza ("the race") type. And while these public outbursts were for the present just noisy, the private counter-reactions to them, I fear, are going to grow larger and angrier still.

If many thousands of illegal aliens marched in their zeal, many more millions of Americans of all different races and backgrounds watched--and seethed. ...

[Read on here.]

Thank you Papa Ray for making sure I didn't miss this:

Illegal Aliens Have 'Chutzpah'
Allan Wall

They've been marching in the streets of our cities clamoring for "justice."

Throughout the land, they march - Denver, Sacramento, Chicago, Charlotte, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Phoenix and so on.

Their cause - fighting for the "rights" of illegal aliens and keeping our borders open.

The biggest march of all was March 25th in Los Angeles, Calif., where police estimated the multitude's numbers at 500,000: Half a million people.

That's impressive. Should we therefore give these people everything they want? Many of our politicians seem to think so.

The U.S. Constitution, however, doesn't include street protest as a form of legislation. In fact, the men who drafted our constitution were not fond of what they called "mobocracy." As James Madison put it in Federalist Paper #55, "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob."

[Read on here.]

Out, Fox
Mark Levin

Something astounding just happened in Cancun, Mexico. Citing a "freedom-of-movement clause" in the Mexican constitution, Vicente Fox announced that "We can't infringe upon the right of people to move freely within our territory." In other words, as a matter of law, Fox asserted that he cannot and will not stop his citizens from coming to the United States, including those coming here illegally.

More here.

Of course, this is nonsense. It’s one thing for the people of Mexico to move freely within their own territory. It’s quite another when they are moving into another country, like the United States. Every nation has an inherit right to control its borders. This is a fundamental aspect of sovereignty. In fact, Mexico has stricter immigration laws than the U.S. They have a police force as well as their military patrolling their southern border. Immigrants who cross-over to Mexico illegally aren’t guest-workers or undocumented workers. Under Mexican law, they’re felons.

[Read on here.]

***

Bush banks on guest-worker bill
Stephen Dinan

CANCUN, Mexico -- President Bush yesterday did not rule out vetoing a border security bill if it does not include a guest-worker program, but said he's convinced Congress will send him a bill that includes such a provision.

His stance puts him on a collision course with the House, which passed such an immigration enforcement-only bill in December, and particularly with many House Republicans who insist immigration enforcement must come before a foreign-worker program.

[Read on here.]

***

Flopping Aces: The Mexican Flag

Posted by Bill Faith on March 31, 2006 at 09:41 PM in Mexican-American War 2 | Permalink | Comments (1)

More details on the new Dimocrat security plan

Operation Steel Gazelle:
A Smart, Multi-Slide Plan For Toughening American Security with Smartness

HARRY: Hello, I'm Harry Reid, leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate.

NANCY: And me Nancy Pelosi.

HARRY: Like millions of patriotic Americans, Nancy and I, along with our Democratic colleagues in Congress, are concerned about our rapidly deteriorating national security situation. Nearly five years after the tragic events of 9/11, not only is our country wracked by record economic misery, low teacher salaries, expensive senior prescriptions, and widespread leprosy, it also remains at risk for illegal attacks from the terrorist Osama bin Laden. Meanwhile, the Bush administration has us mired in a disastrous unrelated civil war in Iraq, consuming billions of your taxpayer dollars that could be spent on preserving Social Security and community health care block grants for America's starving teachers.

NANCY: We can better do!

HARRY: You bet we can, Nancy. That's why we've purchase space on America's abandoned and neglected websites to present the Democratic vision for a smart, yet tough new national security concept that makes a clean break with the discredited and dangerous policies of this administration.

[Read on here.]

***

Don't miss Captain Ed's posts here and here for more evidence of how serious the Dims really are about our nation's security.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 31, 2006 at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blog Template Changes

After using the same blog template for about a year and a half I had it brought to my attention a couple of days ago that it doesn't work well for a substantial part of my "target audience." So, I'm playing with it. If you're using Internet Explorer with this window maximized, your screen resolution set to 1024x768, and your text size set to medium, I don't think you'll see any difference at all; that was my goal, anyway. However, if your screen resolution is set to 800x600 and/or you have your text size set to "large" or "larger' I think you'll notice a major difference. I think I've stopped the right sidebar from overlaying the center column and hiding part of what's there; that was the whole purpose for the redesign. You'll now have to use the scroll-bar at the bottom of the window to select which column you want to see, but at least there's one there now. I'm not done tweaking things but I'm going to go ahead and change to the revised template and clean some more things up within the next few days.

If there's anything on my blog that doesn't seem to work right, as opposed to just not being pretty, I hope you'll send me an email or leave a comment on this post telling me about it so I can try to fix it. Thanks.

2003.04.01 Update:

I just switched back to my old blog template while I play with the new one some more. I've had some feedback that I still didn't fix some of the problems at screen resolutions below 1024x768, and my daughter just informed me the new template doesn't work right at resolutions higher than that either. I have some ideas about what I need to do but it's going to take some work, assuming I'm smart enough to pull it off at all. I'll do another update here when I think I'm done and ask y'all for more feedback at that time. Thanks for your patience.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 31, 2006 at 03:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

2006.03.30

"First things first" and the sooner the better

First things first
Paul Mirengoff

George Will argues in favor of a fence to seal the Mexican border and a guest worker program to supply what the U.S. economy demands. I agree in principle. However, ... [Read on here.]

Paul questions whether we have the "resources, will, and competence" to do what needs done. As I see it, this is still America and if we have the will, we can make it happen. Step 1 is to make George Bush and Congress realize that the majority of the American public wants it done.

George Will: Ich Bin Ein Ost-Berliner?
Ed Morrissey

George Will makes his conservative case for the moderate approach to immigration reform, giving enough room for hard-line enforcement while arguing for eventual absorption of the illegals already inside the US. However, he starts out with an almost unforgivable analogy that will have border-enforcement readers seeing red before they ever get to the rest of his arguments:
America, the only developed nation that shares a long -- 2,000-mile -- border with a Third World nation, could seal that border. East Germany showed how: walls, barbed wire, machine gun-toting border guards in towers, mine fields, large, irritable dogs. And we have modern technologies that East Germany never had: sophisticated sensors, unmanned surveillance drones, etc.
[Read on here.]

Ed thinks Will would have been better off using Israel as an example instead of East Germany, but the East German example doesn't bother me a bit. Good fences make for good neighbors, and as Harold Hutchison points out it in Ed's comments, "Walls can work both ways." We aren't just talking about hard-working people wanting to come here for a better life; as long as the border's open to them it's also open to drug runners, jihadis, and other assorted scum. After we get the border under control, using whatever means necessary (we know how), and only after that, we can start talking about a system to sort los buenos from los malos and decide who we want as neighbors.

GET BIN LADEN (Updated & bumped)

So, the Democrats have finally come up with a plan, a platform for national security: Get bin Laden.

One awaits the rest of their party platform with baited breath. Here’s a preview:

[Read on here.]

***

Dafydd has more here.

***

Armed Liberal has an excellent analysis of the Democrats' plan here.

Cool Blue: Contract On Osama

Flopping Aces: The “New” Democratic Plan

*** 2005.03.29

Other minds better than mine have done such a good job of analyzing the Dimocrats' new "plan" that I'm not going to bother with it beyond saying to go read these posts:

Dafydd ab Hugh: Democrats: Real Security Plan part Deux

Jim Geraghty: A Democratic Proposal On Iran That Seems A Mite Optimistic

Ed Morrissey: Color The LA Times Unimpressed

The Rolling Barrage: The Democratic Plan To Fight Terror: First Strike Doctrine!

***

Commissar: Democrats Pledge to Invade Pakistan

Posted by Bill Faith on March 30, 2006 at 06:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Chaos Theory

Click the image to see the blog post that goes with it and don't forget to follow the links to the Krauthammer and Ledeen posts. "Iran has been at war with us for 27 years" and it's past time to start fighting back.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 30, 2006 at 05:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Patriots, Then and Now

Read it. Twice. Hat tip: Bruce Kesler.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 30, 2006 at 12:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2006.03.29

More lies at al-NYT (Updated)

John Hinderaker has the story here and here.

***

Curt at Flopping Aces has a great related post here.

Ed Morrissey: Gray Lady Misrepresents FISA Testimony

*** 2006.03.29

Scott Johnson: The verdict, take 2

Stephen Spruiell: NYT Abandons Reporting for Assertion

Posted by Bill Faith on March 29, 2006 at 09:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Democratic Image On Security A Hit!

Just read it.

Michelle Malkin has more here.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 29, 2006 at 08:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Common Name, Uncommon Valor

The MilBlogs did a pretty decent job with the Sgt. First Class Paul Ray Smith story a while back but I'm glad to see it getting some exposure via other channels. Click here.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 29, 2006 at 08:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Duty

With all the ISP, circuit breaker and nephew problems I forgot to post a link to Duty. Read it and follow the links.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 29, 2006 at 03:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2006.03.28

Muy Caliente

Dafydd ab Hugh has three excellent posts on the issue of the day here, here and here. Read them in that order and, as always with Dafydd's posts, read the associated comments.

I have a nephew looking over my shoulder anxious for his turn online but I'll have more to say on the matter later.

***

Said nephew got impatient with a slow-loading site and turned the computer off with no warning. ScanDisk (DskChk?) deleted a bunch of corrupted files when he turned it back on and I don't know what we may or may not have lost that matters. I guess I'm still going to have to let him use the computer for a little while -- I'll be back later. While you're waiting, check out Emperor Misha's solution to the car-theft problem here and RightWingDuck's solution to the bank-robbery problem here.

***

Between blown circuit breakers and impatient nephews I'm not going to be up to doing as much with this tonight as I'd hoped, but maybe I can get some of my thoughts down tonight and do a follow-up post sometime soon.

I should point out before I go on that while most of the attention lately seem to be focused on illegal immigrants from Mexico and points south, we also need to be concerned about immigration, legal and otherwise, from other areas of the world as well. I'll even be so un-PC as to say I see Muslims as another problem we need to get under control before it gets out of hand.

Dafydd list the three legs of his "immigration stool" as follows:

1) Improved border control;

2) Rational reform of the entire system of immigration law, from who gets in, to who can work, to who can stay.

3) A much larger focus on assimilation, which must be made mandatory for permanent residency and citizenship.

I can't improve a bit on Dafydd's list and after reading all three of his related posts today I'm surprised to find that he and I agree on a lot more than I thought we did after reading just the first one.

1) Border Control and Immigration Enforcement

I don't see how anyone worth even trying to carry on a conversation with could disagree with the need for much stricter control of our borders and other points of entry into the country. Where I'm to the right of Dafydd, and no doubt some others, is that I think it's time to use whatever means necessary to stem the flood. If we can do it with increased funding and staffing for the Border Patrol, so be it. If it takes razor wire, minefields, and airborne gunships, then I don't have a problem with that either. Please bear in mind when reading this that poor hard-working Mexicans aren't our only only border concern -- Drugs and WMDs are at least as big an issue. Once the word gets out that we really do mean business we won't have to prove it very often. Considering the number of people who've died recently lost in the desert with no water or locked in the back of abandoned 18-wheelers a razor wire/minefield/gunship approach might well even save lives.

As soon as we have our borders under control we need to get to work on getting rid of about about 10 million illegals that are already here. I don't think anyone to the left of David Duke wants to see jack-booted Storm Troopers marching into our immigrant neighborhoods and rounding up people to be placed on south-bound boxcars, but there are other ways to get a huge portion of the illegal population out of the country. We need laws with serious teeth in them against employing anyone who can't produce proper papers. Serious teeth. To accompany such laws we should establish conveniently located gathering points where illegals can voluntarily turn themselves in for free transportation home; no courts, no jails, no hard feelings, just Adios. Once they're home they should be free to apply for legal reentry.

2) Rational reform of immigration law

It may surprise some of my regular readers to hear me admit that we probably really do need some sort of "guest worker" program. If you read Dafydd's posts that I linked to earlier I think you'll come away convinced. I'll admit that we do, but only as long as it doesn't involve any sort of amnesty in any way, shape or form. "Guest Worker" permits should be issued outside our borders. Period. Issuing them to people who entered the country illegally is an amnesty, no matter how you cut it. If we end up, as it looks like we may, allowing people to simply pay a "fine" for entering illegally, the fine should be substantial enough to cover all reasonable estimates of what their illegal presence has cost us in lost taxes, public aid, educational expenses, etc. The numbers I've heard mentioned so far don't even come close.

I was pleased to see Dafydd come out against "anchor babies." I agree with him completely that babies born to non-citizens should not automatically be granted citizenship.

3) Assimilation

I think a basic requirement for citizenship, or even legal permanent residency status, should be proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing English. In addition applicants should be required, in Dafydd's words, "to accept, or at least tolerate, the core beliefs of America: liberty, democracy, responsibility, duty, capitalism, and equal justice." I suspect that may come a little harder for our Islamic friends than it does for some others, but if they don't like it they're welcome to leave.

***

Michelle has some pictures you're absolutely going to love here. The Freepers have even more here.

Ed Morrissey: A Virtual Wall Brings Virtual Amnesty

***

Leon Wolf at RedState doesn't think the McCain-Kennedy bill's quite as bad as some of what I'd heard, but after saying that he turns around and lists some reasons not to like it, primarily the fact that it doesn't put nearly enough emphasis on border controll and allows the Executive branch way to much flexibility in deciding how to implement it. Read his posts here and here.

***

Ed Morrissey has another great post on this matter up here and Tony Blankley has an excellent related editorial here.

***

Curt at Flopping Aces has an excellent related post here.

***

Don't miss Greyhawk's latest Open Post.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 08:10 PM in Mexican-American War 2 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

¡No! ¡No se pueden!

¡Nuestro país no es tus país!

All those peace loving little pobrecitos who just want to live in our country to earn an honest living and do the jobs Americans don't want? Don't believe it for a minute. Click the image above and learn a little bit about them. What they really have in mind is to chase all the gringos out of "Aztlan" and take it over for themselves. They were here, first, don't you know, just like the "Palestinians" were there before the Israelis. We're just trespassing till they're strong enough to throw us out. The Senate Judiciary Committee sold out yesterday and started down the path of letting their numbers increase so they just might do it someday. Let's hope others in Congress have more sense than that. Wake up, people, before it's too late. Wake up, George, and grow some balls. We're being invaded.

***

Don't miss Greyhawk's latest Open Post.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 05:07 AM in Mexican-American War 2 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Reconquistas Inside the Federal Immigration Bureaucracy?

Just go read it.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 03:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How Dare You Release The Truth!

I find that they are whining a bit too much here, dont you think?
MOSCOW (AP) - Russia’s foreign minister accused the United States on Monday of having “hidden political motives'’ for a report that said Moscow turned over information on American military plans to Saddam Hussein during the invasion of Iraq.

Sergey Lavrov’s comments were the first formal statement from President Vladimir Putin’s government about the Pentagon report, though a spokesman for Russia’s foreign spy agency over the weekend denied the report’s allegations.

[...]
[Read on here.]

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 03:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Pro-Taliban militias clash in Pakistan

Militias loyal to rival pro-Taliban clerics have clashed in Pakistan's restive tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, leaving at least 23 people dead, officials say.

Tribesmen fought street battles with automatic weapons from late Monday until early Tuesday near the town of Bara, in Khyber district, tribal areas spokesman Shah Zaman said.

[Read on here. Hat tip: Power Line News.]

Gee, wouldn't it be a crying shame if things got out of hand and a bunch of people ended up dead?

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 03:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Immigration Reform Is
Critical to National Security
Bill West

The national debate about how to reform and improve America’s massive immigration problems is heating up dramatically. There are many competing interests in all this that will seek their own agenda. What should be remembered are how critical immigration issues are to national security.

[Read on here.]

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 02:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

They ...

Read it. Hat tip: Andi

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 02:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

AP's Mainscream Media Bias

I'm too upset about the Judiciary Committee sellout to spend much time on anything else but I can't let you miss Dafydd's post here.

While you're in the neighborhood, don't miss Sachi's report on the beginning of the end for al-Sadr here.

***

Alexandra von Maltzan has an excellent related post here.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 01:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Judiciary Committee Amnesty Sellout

Panel OKs 'amnesty' bill
By Charles Hurt, The Washington Times

The Senate Judiciary Committee last night approved a plan that would put millions of illegal aliens on a path to U.S. citizenship, would let them stay here while applying and would not punish their unlawful entry as a felony, contrary to a House-passed bill.

"A path to earned citizenship is what this bill is all about," Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, said after joining all Democrats and three other Republicans on the panel to approve the plan, which many consider an "amnesty."

The sudden approval -- after weeks of negotiations that often had appeared fruitless -- likely will lead to a showdown with the House, which last year approved an immigration bill that only tightened border security.

"If the bottom line is that all people that came here illegally have got to be made citizens, then we should have the vote now," Sen. Jon Kyl, the Arizona Republican who fought the proposal, said in the seven-hour committee meeting yesterday.

"That's amnesty, and that won't work. And the House won't even go to conference with something like that," he said.

[Read on here.]

We just lost a skirmish in a war that's not over by a long shot. What the Judiciary Committee voted for still needs to be approved by the full Senate, and even if it is there's little chance of the House agreeing to it. You just got another damned good reason to pay attention to who you vote for this fall, people, and a reminder that John McCain is not fit to run for President in '08 or any other year.

Ted Kennedy's thrilled, Michelle's pissed, and Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.

***

Posted by Bill Faith on March 28, 2006 at 01:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

2006.03.27

Before You Go

Via email from Henry Mark Holzer

Inspiration

For we veterans,and patriots, the following is worth pasting into your browser and watching.

HMH

http://www.managedmusic.com/beforeyougo.html

Don't miss it, friends.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 27, 2006 at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Q and A with Greyhawk

Don't miss it.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 27, 2006 at 05:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

It's past time to turn back the illegal invasion

Update:

Watch this, then tell me more about those peace-loving immigrants who just want to come her for a better life living peacefully among us. (Hat tip: William Page)

End update

Rebuilding the Welfare State (Illegally)
By Jed Babbin

I used to live across the street from a wonderful Dutch family. The father was an economist at the World Bank, the mother a linguist for some government agency, and their two daughters honor students at the local high school. They're probably back in Holland because -- as the father explained to me -- his years-long employee visa was expiring and he was told he'd have to move his family back to Holland before he could reapply for permanent resident status leading to citizenship. And there was a long wait because the quotas for Dutch immigrants were filled years in advance. I think of him every time I hear about the millions of illegal immigrants in this country. And so should every member of the Senate as they take up that subject this week.

Why is it so hard for politicians to understand that the differences between legal and illegal immigration have to be real and carry real consequences for those who break our law? ...

[Read on here. Hat tip: Rurik]

An immigration brouhaha
Poison for both parties?
Glenn Reynolds

It looks like illegal immigration is shaping up to be the issue of the week, in the wake of mass rallies opposing new immigration legislation in Los Angeles, Chicago, and elsewhere.

Mickey Kaus has been paying a lot of attention to this subject and thinks it will be bad for Democrats. I think it may well be bad for everyone.

As I've noted here before, I'm in favor of pretty easy immigration -- my family includes immigrants from Nigeria. But they're legal immigrants, who jumped through numerous hoops to get here and who are, if anything, more unhappy with illegal immigration than most native-born Americans. If we're going to have open immigration, let's change the law, not achieve that end through failure to enforce the laws we have.

Still there are a few parts of the debate worth stressing:

[Read on here.]

Proposed Illegal Immigration Bill Would Make Illegal Immigration a Felony — By Adding a Whopping 6 Months to the Punishment
Patterico

I keep reading about the federal bill that will MAKE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A FELONY! It sounds so drastic, and so you can see why hundreds of thousands might be protesting a bill that makes such a radical change. For example, here is an article on yesterday’s march in the Los Angeles Times:
[...]
Here’s the thing, though: illegal immigration is already a crime, punishable by 6 months in prison. By making illegal entry a felony, the bill simply increases the penalty from 6 months to a year and a day.

Big deal.

It also makes illegal presence a crime. But aside from making it easier to prosecute people who have overstayed their visas, this provision simply makes it easier to prosecute illegals whose initial illegal entry can no longer be prosecuted due to the statute of limitations having run.

In other words, it makes it easier to prosecute criminals. But it doesn’t make criminals out of illegals.

[Read on here]

Michelle Malkin has related posts here, here and here.

***

Cool Blue has an excellent related post here.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 27, 2006 at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Russ Vaughn, John Werntz: Memories of Two Wars

I'm honored to have been included in an email exchange between two gentlemen for whom I have a great deal of respect, and to have been given permission to reproduce part of it here. Even better, I've been given cause for hope that this will be the first of many posts based on input from a new acquaintance. It started a couple of days ago when I received this email:

Bill Faith:

I have a lot of nerve for a total stranger, but could I possibly persuade you to let me know how to email Russ Vaughn? I've been wading through innumerable Google hits to try to locate him without success.

I'm an old crock who put in 21 months in the ETO in the 9th USAAF Troop Carrier Command, and this "Poet Laureate" of the 101st really gets to me. I'd love to be able to express my admiration.

Yes or No, either way, you have my thanks.

Best regards,

John Werntz

I'm embarrassed to admit "ETO" and "9th USAAF" went right over my head. I sent John the standard message I send every few days to people who contact me to ask how to contact Russ:

John,

I don't give out anyone's contact information without permission but I'm blind-copying Russ on this email so he can contact you if he wants to. Since you only mentioned the one piece of his I'll also make sure you know I have a substantial collection [here].

Regards,

-- Bill

Bill Faith:

A thousand thanks. Yes, this evening was the first time I had heard of him. I am amazed by the number of people who archive his work: you, Bittersweet, American Thinker, et. al. I'll save your link, and add it to my faves.

OK, the ball is in his court, where it belongs. I'm hoping he will respond favorably. On second thought, I ought not to have mentioned the Troop Carriers -- not the Airborne's favorite people!

Best,

John Werntz

Still not realizing who I was dealing with I wrote back:

I don't think he'll hold the troop carrier thing against you. You served -- Thank you for your service and I know Russ will feel the same way. ... As of a few hours ago he was enroute home from a business trip to DC so he may be behind on his email and not write you right away.

That's basically where things stood till Russ sent John this email and copied me:

John, I just got back from a Navy medical conference on the East Coast and found Bill Faith's email forwarding your request.

I am honored every time one of you WWII guys tells me you like my writing. My dad was in the Pacific theater and I grew up in the shadow of that conflict and in awe of the men who fought in it. My bedroom walls were covered with WWII photos and largely due to that influence, I enlisted at the young age of seventeen.

I sometimes look upon the opening years of my own war as the end of WWII; we were fighting an enemy that had been continuously engaged since being invaded by the Japanese, so for them it was definitely a continuation of that war.

We often fought in the early days with weapons, ammo and supplies left over from your war. Our C Rations were packaged in the 40's as evidenced by the old Lucky Strike "Greens" they contained. Most importantly, many of our senior officers and NCO's were hardcore WWII vets.

Did you ever drop paratroopers? If so, do you remember from what units?

Regards,

Russ Vaughn

Fortunately, Russ had picked up on the things I missed and asked the right questions.

Russ:

C-rations in the 60's? Holy logistics! Way back in '44, we were mostly dropping 10-in-1's to the poor bleeding infantry. Much better chow.

Thank you for taking the time to get back to me so quickly. Did I ever...? Jeez, you asked for it. Don't you know how garrulous us octogenarians are? Especially those who, like me, were participant observers rather than combatants. I was a lowly 1LT navigator in the 434th Troop Carrier Group, stationed at Aldermaston, near Reading, and later at the Camp de Mourmelon, near Reims, where we shared bivouac with the entire 101st Division, plus a huge concentration of DP's from Eastern Europe.

My huge contribution to the war effort consisted of helping jumpmasters shove sticks of troopers out the the door, or standing in the plastic bubble on top of a C-47, flashing an Aldous lamp at some poor devil of a glider pilot to tell him it was time to cut loose from the tow rope. C-47 was one thing, your watermark is something else!

Yes, we dropped paratroops at Carentan at midnight of D-day, towed US gliders at dawn and Brit Horsa gliders the afternoon of June 6. I was about as nonmilitary as anyone in pink trousers could be in those days, so I really don't remember the units. Between D-Day and Operation Market Garden in Holland, we dropped or towed people from both the 101st and the 82nd. You may have heard the sad tale of a Brigadier who was killed on D-Day by an improperly lashed jeep that broke loose and ran over him when his glider made a rough landing. I regret to say it was my group -- not my squadron, that towed the unlucky general. That would pinpoint the regiment--506, 507, something like that?

What with D-Day, Market Garden, re-supply of the 101st at Bastogne, and a jump across the Rhine in early '45, I got to watch a lot of other people do their stuff. Met some brass, like Maxwell Taylor, whom we flew to Brussels just before Market Garden. He wore only two stars in those days, but I was pretty damn' awed. Also awed by President Benes and Jan Masaryk whom we flew to Czechoslovakia in the Spring of '45. That gave me some idea of how lucky I was to have been assigned to transport duty. The whole countryside of Bavaria was carpeted with the corpses of B-17's and B-24's from the Schweinfurt and Regensburg raids, glittering in the sunlight. I was also pissed off that our great Russ allies made us land in Pilsen, which was then occupied -- I believe -- by the 101st. They would not permit us to land near Prague, which they controlled. Finally, immensely awed and humbled by the sacrifice of the infantry. We transported hundreds of guys too severely wounded to be treated at field hospitals, bringing them back to base hospitals in England. The nurses who cared for those men were the only heroes in my outfit.

OK, now you know all. Saw a lot--including the invasion fleet lying doggo in the pre-dawn twilight of June 6 -- did next to nothing. Witness to History, that's me. Your dad would have had a lot more in common with my brother Howard, a tank-driver in the 1st Marines, who survived Guadalcanal and a bout of malaria only to take a direct hit from a Jap mortar at Cape Gloucester in New Britain in December of '43. I shudder to think of what my mother, who had 4 sons in action, would have thought of today's exemplar of "moral authority" Cindy Sheehan.

I'm immensely pleased that people like Bill Faith and American Thinker are archiving your poems. Some day, when the history of this sorry era of appeasers and collaborators is written, your work will do much to round out the picture.

Best regards,

John

Russ wrote back to John:

John, what an account! You are far too self-deprecating about your role; when you consider the number of those C-47's that went down during operations, it took brave men to crew them.

I have a favor to ask. I have several Airborne buddies who would love to read this. May I share it with them? Also, I subscribe to an Airborne newspaper called "Static Line" which is extremely popular with WWII Airborne vets. I would like to send your email to Don Lassen the publisher, himself a WWII paratrooper, and see if he'll print it.

Lastly, I'd like to see if some of the milblogs might be interested. I can tell you for sure that there aren't too many octogenarian WWII vets with your nack as a wordsmith.

What say you, Sir?

Airborne!

Russ

After sending that to John, Russ wrote me:

Bill, you know what is truly great about these old guys? They don't brag about their contribution to the war effort. Here this old warrior is saying he did nothing but fly around in troop carriers towing gliders and dropping paratroopers. Trust me, that is one hell of a dangerous thing to be doing.

Remember what I wrote about Kerry before the 2004 election? I knew the bastard was a phony simply because he talked about his exploits under fire. The genuine heroes don't unless it's among themselves and then it's almost always in a self-critical, humorous way, playing down their own importance while emphasizing that of their comrades.

Question: did you ever hear John Kerry building up anyone but John Kerry?

Nuff said.

Hey, I hope we can get Mr. Werntz to open up and write some more accounts for us. This gentleman is a walking history book. You know, you might want to contact him and let him know you've read his response to me and found it worthy of publication. He hears that from both of us, maybe he'll agree.

Regards,

Russ

I wrote John at that point to reinforce what Russ had said and was pleased to receive permission to pass on their exchange to my readers. At that point Russ wrote Mr. Werntz again:

John, Bill Faith and I would be ever so grateful if you would just start writing to us whenever the Muse strikes. Anything that comes across your mind; it doesn't matter how trivial it may seem to you; it seems you have a wonderful recall of war's detail, something that I sadly lack of my time in combat.

No matter how frivolous some anecdotes might seem, your unique perspective on times of momentous events may provide valuable insights to those of us who want to know how it really was.

Thanks, John, for what you did then and what you have the ability to do now. You, Sir, are truly a window to our past as well as a beacon to our future.

Regards,

Russ

I again wrote to say I was in complete agreement with Russ. After a few more emails we don't have any firm commitment from John for anything in particular but we do have an agreement in principal that he'll keep us in mind when he gets in a writing mood, which I hope will be often. I'm also trying to use John as an opening to pry some untold stories out of Russ, but so far I haven't had much luck with that -- an email I know a bunch of people would find interesting but which I've been forbidden to pass on. We'll have to wait and see if his mood changes about that. Developing ... (I hope.)

***

When aviation history author George Mellinger saw this post he immediately emailed:

Bill,

In the most respectful sort of way, John Werntz is full of it when he says he didn't do anything, and contrasts himself negatively to all those B-17 & B-24 bombers he saw. Those guys had ten to thirteen machine guns on each aircraft, and even if we know now that they overclaimed their air-to-air kills, at least they were able to shoot back, sometimes successfully. The C-47s had to just sit there and take it, flying straight and level in formation to complete the mission. And then the bombers got to see bombs exploding on the enemy targets below. John's motto might have been, "all the FLAK and half the satisfaction". John did get one compensation, a lot of hours flying in one of history's greatest aircraft, a legend in its own day, and an even greater legend in retrospect. One of my private thrills of my brief tour came during my first days in RVN. On one of the flights working my way to my new temporary home, I was carted in a C-117 Super-Gooney, a C-47 re-engined with turboprops. I suspect that most of the other cargo didn't know, care, or appreciate what they were riding in, but as an airplane nut, I was thrilled. Later I rode in C-130 Hercules, and once in the C-123, but I still preferred the C-117.

- Rurik, aka George

***

Welcome Mudville fans! Won't you please take time to leave a comment and help Russ and me convince John he should keep writing? (Comments are moderated but I'll try not to go too long at a time between checking for new ones.) If there's time after that maybe you'll click here to check out the rest of my site.

Posted by Bill Faith on March 27, 2006 at 02:30 PM in John_Werntz, Russ_Vaughn | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

Sen. Clinton Solves Illegal Immigration Crisis
by Scott Ott

(2006-03-27) -- After a House-passed illegal immigration bill sparked massive protest rallies in Los Angeles and elsewhere over the weekend, Senator Hillary Clinton today introduced legislation that would grant all illegal aliens a new, "less judgmental" status.

[Read and listen to the rest here.]

Posted by Bill Faith on March 27, 2006 at 01:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Payback Time

It's Payback Time

March 26, 2006: Deaths from revenge killings now exceed those from terrorist or anti-government activity. Al Qaeda is beaten, and running for cover. The Sunni Arab groups that financed thousands of attacks against the government and coalition groups, are now battling each other, al Qaeda, and Shia death squads. It's not civil war, for there are no battles or grand strategies at play. It's not ethnic cleansing, yet, although many Sunni Arabs are, and have, fled the country. What's happening here is payback. Outsiders tend to forget that, for over three decades, a brutal Sunni Arab dictatorship killed hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shia Arabs. The surviving victims, and the families of those who did not survive, want revenge. They want payback. And even those Kurds Shia Arabs who don't personally want revenge, are inclined to tolerate some payback. Since the Sunni Arabs comprise only about 20 percent of the population, and no longer control the police or military, they are in a vulnerable position.

After Saddam's government was ousted three years ago, the Sunni Arabs still had lots of cash, weapons, and terrorist skills. Running a police state is basically all about terrorizing people into acce