blog.McEagle.com

Once many moons ago, I took photographs of two French helicopters landing in a clearing near a rice paddy to re–supply and air–evacuate wounded North Vietnamese soldiers from a battle which was raging on the other side of a mountain valley just across a border. The helicopters were clearly being flown by Frenchmen; at least they were speaking French to the Vietnamese and to one another. That was circa–1967.

If my memory serves me correctly, it wasn’t too many years earlier that the United States stood by the French and supplied them in their fight against the North Vietnamese up to and through the truce which resulted in the repatriation of French fighters who otherwise would have been lost to POW camps at Dien Bien Phu.

Also, my same memory is the CIA played a major part in much of that action, albeit covertly, as well as much of what lead up to it on behalf of the French. I’m making a serious point here, because that specific agency along with some others, has taken some serious historical hits for past actions in a number of countries vis-à-vis hindsight.

I’ve also looked through the lens of my camera and taken photographs of American GIs who at times appeared to be collaborating with the enemy. Were they? I haven’t a clue. But if I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s this — things are never what they seem. If you believe they are, then you are probably naïve and the Intelligence business shouldn’t be your first choice for work. Secondly; just because I saw Frenchmen flying a helicopter behind the lines in Vietnam, didn’t give me cause to write off the entire country of France and all of the people in it.

I get hundreds of web sites recommended to me on a weekly basis as places to go to for the ultimate truth. I check a lot of them out because I do search for the truth, even knowing full well how illusive it can be. Few carry it. Almost without exception, they are selling something that appears to be “truth” wrapped in a very fine veneer of mystical illusions, slightly twisted half truths, and of course encased in a lot of very well crafted omissions. It is their version of how they would like you to believe it actually happened, when it is not that way at all. “You don’t believe me,” they say, “then check the facts” – and they give you facts that are checkable, but which have no actual bearing on the issues they are selling you — the true reality, the reason why it happened in the first place, or the context behind the act.

What you will usually find is that explaining something in hindsight is far easier than explaining why something happened in reality. All the proceedings leading up to the event or the action, the very nexus for actions causation within space/time are sometimes so complex as to defy explanation. They are impossible to understand, even if you were standing there and observing them as they occurred. If you doubt that, then try explaining how you happened to fall in love with someone on first sight. It just happens. There is no explaining it.

Actions are sometimes a nexus of events that come together only one time in history, a complex issue of events that result in something happening, usually under extreme duress or pressure of events at the time which cannot be explained even when all the facts are known. You cannot go back and study them in hindsight and say this is why it occurred and this is who is at fault. Unless you were standing in the room, or taking part in the action, you have no business commenting, and even then making a judgment call is a complete impossibility.

So, how, then, can someone say the President made a mistake invading Iraq?

There are a number of things America has had in its favor in the view of the world court. In the past, America has occupied and maintained the “high ground.” America has tried to work well with its world neighbors, never taking major actions without first consulting with its major allies. America has typically had a good foreign policy. And lastly; America has never taken any action of war without first debating it across the aisle within the House and Senate, and reaching a consensus.

In the case of the invasion of Iraq; America gave up the higher moral ground by invading a nation for no good reason (or at least a shallow manufactured one). Yeah, yeah, I too heard all the arguments — and even saw some of the pictures — the Spetsnaz moved them at the last minute. They were all shipped into Syria or Iran. What the Spetsnaz moved into Syria were munitions for use by the insurgents. And if anyone believes for a second that there weren’t special teams swarming all over the locations that WMD materials would have been stored in the second they crossed the borders . . . well, you need lessons in military tactics. There were NONE. They — multiple agencies — looked hard, before, during, and after the invasion and none were ever found. End of story.

We did so (the invasion) without the consent of our allies. And I know many of you are thinking — what? The French, Germans? Give me a break. All they knew how to do was drag their feet. Well, that’s an interesting attitude to take since they were staunch allies for sixty years against the Communist hoards across the eastern borders. They let us park our tanks, planes, and people in their countries, cities, parks, and towns, drink their wine, beer, and trash their pubs, marry their women, and call them friends and buddies for quite some time against a common European enemy. But, they suddenly don’t agree with us when their intelligence tells them the same thing our intelligence is telling us and we dump them very dishonorably on their asses in a major public way. I sat in mud holes with a lot of those guys. I’ll watch your back, you watch mine. And suddenly we have an attitude and we don’t need their sage advice anymore. Give me a break.

We’ve basically had no foreign policy, or at least no explainable one, for eight years; and the war was never debated across the aisle. It was forced down the throat of the minority membership of both the House and the Senate, outraging 48% of the American people.

We are now entering WWIII and the Administration hasn’t seen fit to alert the American People. I understand this, as I’m sure a large portion of my neighbors do.

But all that is a past nexus. Who the hell knows who was in the room when all that went down, or who was actually making the decisions? Alas, we do have another nexus coming. There has been nothing but an atmosphere of fear raised by the Administration and absolutely no action taken to give a positive direction to the American people on what they can do to help either the country or themselves to prepare for what is coming. The American people are waiting for guidance and there has been none forthcoming, just more in the way of directives on what is being taken from them — bit by bit.

I will wait and see how the Administration explains the sudden shift in gasoline from $3 to $6 a gallon, or perhaps explain why we’ve made the direct attacks on Iran? And I think the American people are just about pushed to the limit on what they are willing to give up in the way of personal freedoms. The raw edge of the Constitution is becoming a bit frayed. Maybe it’s time to take a serious look at what’s been taken so far under the odor of fear.

Was it Osama’s plot or wasn’t it? No, of course it wasn’t! This was a bunch of guys out of Pakistan who put it all together because they are half-smart and thought they could get away with it. They wanted to mimic al-Qaida, pay their dues, and join the brotherhood. These are some of the major problems you get when you stop fighting terrorism clandestinely and push it into the public eye and make it both a political as well as a public issue.

Terrorist recruitment skyrockets, and financial donations to their cause are expanding beyond belief. Splinter groups who couldn’t find their butts in a dark room forget their differences and begin to coordinate with one another, and our beloved media jump on every little detail to inform them about what they did wrong when they are caught, so they can learn from their mistakes, so they never make the same mistakes twice.

Over time, all the terrorist groups who watch the TV, take detailed notes and improve their tactics to professional levels of efficiency. We are soon forced to begin making choices between our freedoms of speech, or . . . ten lives for every free word spoken. Either that or giving in to our own form of radical response, which only leads to unbelievable blood-letting and the irresponsible deaths of huge numbers of innocent people, just because they hold a common belief.

What is Osama really up to?

It’s very clear to me what he is up to; I have passed this along both piecemeal as well in large chunks to my friends over the past year, so I might as well pass it along here, too. It is my strongest belief that al-Qaida has already crossed our southern border from Mexico as much as six to eight months ago. They crossed in groups of four to six operatives, and as many as six to eight groups. That would be 24 to 48 operatives. So, I would settle on approximately 36 operatives being currently in country. I believe they are targeting four major cities. And they are targeting the choke-points in those cities, which are the main intersecting road junctions where the main highways intersect which go from east to west and north to south, carrying primary traffic on our Nation’s highways.

Their plan is to detonate large bombs in tractor trailers surrounded by dirty nuclear materials, essentially vaporizing these materials and spreading them over a large area, making these areas hot and useless for a very long period of time. This would basically kill and harm hundreds of thousands of people and shut down our Nation’s road systems in four major cities. I obviously haven’t named these cities for a reason. If I’m correct, I’m a target. If I name them, I might create a lot of panic. Unlike the news media, I choose not to give these guys any information of value, so al-Qaida and their wannabes, can go screw themselves!

I fought a number of wars. In one of them we had our problems — Mai Lai, as an example. Yes, and we burned villages. But we burned them to deny the enemy sustenance, and we provided new buildings, land, gardens, and places for the people to live, where they could be protected from the VC and NVA. I know, because I carried babies and young children to safety in my arms, while being shot at. But the media didn’t film those parts of the story, because we were, after all, being shot at. It was an ugly war we shouldn’t have been in, in the first place. But we soldiers were, and 95% of the American military did their jobs professionally and honorably, and a lot of good men and women died because they fought it that way . . . for years — until somebody woke up and pulled them out of there.

I don’t believe it’s necessary to remind anyone that it was the American people who decided by election who was in office, and who was in office decided the policies, and it was the policies that ran the war for all those years.

Policy or the lack of policy is in action at this moment right now in Iraq, where they can’t tell the radical from the moderate Islamic believer. No one can tell until the bomb goes off in their face? But know this: just as before — 95% of our guys are fighting the war honorably and professionally, and they are dying in a place where they shouldn’t be. The rest of us are sitting back here in the comfort of our homes, talking about the merits of why blood-letting should be going on there instead of in our back yards. It’s become an intellectual pastime for the majority of the American public.

It’s time to wake up. Let’s bring them home. If it means we have to fight in our backyards, so be it. Maybe we need to renew our fight for the freedoms we have enjoyed so long here in our great country. Too many Americans talk about their freedoms and don’t really understand what it means to fight and die for them — al-Qaida does!

To answer just two questions I’ve noticed from the Blog.

Using Hemi-Sync™ on an iPod shouldn’t be a problem. The effect is that you are simply storing the digital Hemi-Sync onto a digital iPod system. Hemi-Sync went from analog to digital a long time ago. The difficulty of moving from analog to digital with Hemi-Sync originally had to do with technology in the earlier stages of digital, and had more to do with refresh rates, square wave, and just how much of the analog signal was being converted. But nowadays it’s no longer a problem that needs to be dealt with. Current chip sets are way fast enough to make it something you do not need to worry about.

The other question had to deal with Osama and if our Government really wanted to catch him or not, or whether they have taken him off the want list at all. I’m not sure that really matters. When our government decided to invade Iraq, they basically created dozens of new Osamas which we now have no specific names or locations for, so it has become a moot point. Before the Iraqi war we probably could have identified all of the known terrorists. That’s no longer possible. So, one Osama here or there hardly matters any more. We have enough terrorism to keep us busy for the next 100 years. Osama will die a forgotten old man in a cave somewhere. It’s the young, completely unknown terrorist with Bush Fire on the brain, we have to worry about now. Before we started trying to democratize the entire Middle East, they were harder to recruit. Not so anymore.

The new brace on my left leg has proven itself three times in four days. I hate to say it, but if I had not been using the cane as well, I might have gone down on my face anyway. So I take back anything I might have said about doctors in the negative.

As a result of the brace I no longer unconsciously move forward, putting weight on my left foot with my toes folded under, which previously guaranteed a forward nosedive to the pavement. Now, my toes are pointed straight up where they should be. My heel still catches however, because my foot drags just a bit, so my knee fails to lock and I kind of half stumble. But I’m able to catch myself with my cane. Without the cane, I’d probably fall over anyway, or at least do a fancy dance. Carrying a cup of coffee or cup of soup, I’d probably paint a wall or splatter people on the way down. So, the doctors are right, it’s all a good thing.

I was sort of half wishing they were wrong though and I could humor them and just throw the stuff away in a couple of weeks. Now resigned, I guess I’ll be shopping for an elegant walking stick in the near future.

Memoirs of a Psychic Spy has finally hit the street. It is the trade paperback edition of my original hardcover book Stargate Chronicles. I think the name change has helped to guide people sharing an interest in such topics to the right place just a bit faster than the original title might have, and at certainly a better price.

My wife, Scooter, has a wonderful article that’s just come out in Sidney Omarr’s Astrological Guide for You in 2007. It’s titled; “It’s Time to Think Big, by Jove!” [pg. 296] She provides a lot of very interesting detail about Jupiter and how it affects each of the signs next year when it moves into its own sign of Sagittarius. She has contributed articles for the Omarr Annual for three years running, and they are all excellent. I believe her insight as an Astrologer is exceptional, but then I might be slightly biased.

For some reason I’ve lost interest in food. This seems to have begun back when my back became a major pain issue, which can be attributed to drugs. But, since I no longer take the drugs, the loss of interest must be attributed to something else.

They inserted four segments of cadaver bone between what is left of the leading edges of my vertebrae (L1-L2-L3-L4 and L5.) Maybe the bone donor died of anorexia or at sometime in their life suffered from the terrible disease. Now that the bone is being fully integrated into my spine, well…who knows about these things?

I never dream about food any more. I used to, now and then. Or, at least used to dream of the great glass of scotch and where I used to drink it, the tavern, bistro, winery, cellar, bar, restaurant, home, country, town, city, place, etc., and the sort of vague meal, usually great company that went with it. But that kind of dreaming hasn’t happened in a long time. Hmmm. Cadaver bones?? Anyway, it’s a possibility . . . maybe.

There were two important things our cat friend Bing loved to do most in this world; he loved to watch the sun rise and he loved to watch the sun set. He would attain a kitty-like altered state as though worshiping the sun as it came up in the morning and when it would set in the evening. When it was cloudy or rainy, he missed it.

This morning, sometime after sunrise, he wandered down into the edge of the woods and curled up in a small, warm ball and passed into his next incarnation — perhaps a Bengal Tiger or a Snow Leopard!

He was just a few days short of his eighteenth birthday. He didn’t make a big deal about it. He slept with us as usual last night. Got up as usual, ate his breakfast and generally talked to us and the walls like he always does, went outside and laid in his favorite bushes for a bit. He then sauntered off to a favored spot in his woods where he made his transition.

Scooter and I both wish we could have been with him, holding him when he passed, but it was his choice and we have always supported him in his choices because he was our dear friend. We will miss him as we miss all our fur friends who have left us. But we learned a lot from him about gentleness, kindness, and unconditional love. We also learned how to create and protect our home and space, and equally how to share with others.

Interestingly, Bing didn’t leave us high and dry. We watched him diligently and carefully train his own replacement for three or four months prior to his departure. His name is Butler. He trained him to the point that Butler also sleeps where Bing slept, also does exactly what Bing did, exactly, to the letter, no deviation. Any deviation while Bing was training him was never tolerated. When Butler came into our life, he was totally wild. Any attempt to pet him resulted in a severe wound to your hand. He is now just as gentle as Bing ever was. He is our parting gift from Bing, who was not only our dearest and wisest friend, but who surely knew our hearts would be broken with his departure.

Wherever you are, Bingman, we send all our love and Godspeed to your next destination.

Welcome to the “Dead Zone!” Some know that I participated in helping to write one of the plots for a Dead Zone show. It was titled “Hunt for Osama.” Wish that it should be so easy to bag the old fart and put him into a 4×8x8. The problem seems to be as much two-sided disbelief as it is his insisting on moving around too much, too often, for little reason. I mean, let’s face it, do we really want to find this guy? After all, it’s the devil you know — right?

My Grandfather used to go out to the edge of the field every now and then with his .22 and pick off a groundhog or two, but he never seemed to hit the crusty old feller with the gray whiskers. I was only seven at the time and wondered why he never seemed to hit the big guy. I finally couldn’t stand it any longer and asked him one night; “Grandpaw, are you blind? When are you going to nail the big guy?” My grandfather looked at me and smiled; “When he stops leading all those little fellers to the same places to feed.” I don’t know, maybe Osama has a purpose. Maybe it’s time he became a martyr and his own folks took him out. So, if any of you are reading my blog…

Anyway, I am recovering from my surgeries and I’m coming out of this with very little of the pain I went in with, which is a very good thing. I am coming out of it with some keepsakes however, like the need for a walking stick (that’s eastern for decorative cane) and a light brace on my left ankle. The brace isn’t too bad. It’s constructed of carbon fiber and is hard as nails, so I should now be able to kick a soccer ball out of the park by hooking it off my left shin. The brace is also constructive, since it keeps me from falling on my face. The walking stick is in case my ankle fails anyway. Given what I walked in the hospital door with, I think I made a great trade.

Sadly, I must give up riding my Kawasaki Vulcan, which brings an ever increasing calmness to my lovely wife’s mind and spirit. No more slightly rising front-wheel off the ground, instantaneous jolts of adrenalin. No more 1/2 oz bug in the Adam’s Apple at 80 mph. No more yellow jacket up the sleeve, across the shoulder, and down the back of my Kevlar riding jacket. No more should I go left or should I go right, when someone pulls out of a side-street and stops in front of me — in the rain. Sigh. I’ll miss it.

If anyone out there is interested in an absolutely cherry 800-A 2001 Vulcan with less than 2500 miles on it, roll bars, riding lights, and saddlebags, let me know. Only $4,600.00. It gets somewhere between 38 and 48 MPG, depending on how you like to ride it — and you’ll have to pick it up. An extra $450 will get you the barely-used trailer as well.

I guess I’ll just be forced to hump around town now in my Dodge Magnum HEMI RT, with the leather heated seats, adjustable pedals, Boston Sound System, GPS, and Satellite. I got it for my back. Honestly, I did. I really did. It’s very cool. It runs on only four cylinders when you are cruising. If you watch how you drive in traffic, it always hovers between 1100 and 1700 RPM — 0 to 45 mph, and never goes over 2000 rpm on the open road — 60 to 75 mph. With careful fuel management, I average somewhere between 24.5 to 26 mpg. However…

Remember that guy from Star Wars, a heavy breathing dude, dressed in black — Darth something? Well, there truly is a dark side, and it lives in my right foot! Once in awhile, not often, but once now and then, when, well, you guys know what I’m talking about. A guy simply has to…well… I think it has something to do with a lot of extra body hair on the back of the neck or something!

What you get from 400+ horses is two solid black lines, a lot of smoke and a KAWASAKI on four wheels…and of course ZERO mpg.