Other-Eggs

Other's Eggs

5-17-05

How the hell did I ever get here?
Pat Brennan

Couldn't sleep thinking about Vietnam and some liberal professors, my joy at finding the name of my interpreter, Nguyen Tan Thahn on google led me to and .edu site full of crap about Vietnam and then eventually to the Sixties project. I feel sorry for you younger people - you missed it all. The Beatles, Bob Dylan, riots, war and on and on. You think you know what is was like, but you don't.

I was a Lieutenant, served with the 1st Cav Division and then with the Ruff Puffs. With the Cav it was no sweat, the invaders from the North couldn't match us in anyway. But with the Ruff Puffs there were only five us us and Nguyen Tan Thahn (not the one I googled however, a major bummer) we lived and roamed among the fishing villages and hamlets along the coast. The people loved us and looked to us for their safety. We provided air support and anything else they needed and they showed us good times and lots of laughs. I wish I could see them now living under Uncle Ho, but I'm afraid of what might have happened to them, the ones that were slaughtered probably made out the best. Oh well Jane Fonda, the Berkeley crazies, and John Kerry won it for the invaders. Kudos to them and I could care less now. Its like a dream.

Don't try to be like us. You have your own fights. The world is full of Saddams.

6-30-2003
"Are U.S. journalists truly spineless?"

David, I just read your article regarding the BBC journalist who posed the question "Are American journalists spineless?"

Mr. Hunter,

Its obvious that journalists inject their own opinions in their writings, just as you have. I find that the questions you and Justin Webb raised are slanted and very misleading. For example - I would not call Dick Cheney's statement "You did well - you have my thanks" lavishing praise on the ARTCA, as Webb saw fit to phrase it. That alone is very poor journalism - very slanted in its nuances and totally misleading. And you called him a "real journalist" .

Personally I think the embedded reporters did do an excellent job. They saw firsthand the battles and bloodshed unlike the whiney critical homebound pundits that have no clue what a real war is like or even understand the importance of what we were doing. Their only agenda was to attack the President regardless of what he did! Was Cheney supposed to say "You did a crappy job because you didn't criticize us enough"? Give me a break- please.

Oh and by the way, its the soldier not the journalist who is the guarding of liberty. Aren't you giving yourself a little too much credit?

Lets go on - Ashcroft grabbing for power? He receives no power from the patriot act. Maybe the justice department can now obtain phone taps on suspected terrorists faster than before, but isn't that what we all want. I do. And its not the so-called patriot act, it is the patriot act.

Don Rumsfeld insulting the intelligence of the journalists? Apparently you haven't been listening to their questions. Rumsfeld is one of the sharpest people ever to accept a government position and he has to put up with the idiotic press sessions. I particularly liked it when he tried to pin down the source of questions when reporters said things like "People are saying" or "The Whitehouse said" or when they phrased questions like the standard "Have you stopped beating your wife" Actually no reporters called his hand as you put it because they are mental midgets compared to him.

You did spell out the some truth when you said "I'm just a worn-out old cop, a jackleg journalist without a degree in journalism, political science or constitutional law" - and it shows. I left out the remainder of the sentence to show how you and Webb and many if not most of the BBC twist the truth. I could go on and on but I think you get the drift.

Sincerely

Pat Brennan -

just a worn out old HVAC guy, a Vietnam Veteran without a degree in journalism, political science or constitutional law

Edwards Stays True To Today's Democratic Form

First let me say thanks to Gregg and Jody for allowing me to step up on the proverbial soap box, and I'll try not to discredit this terrific bully-pulpit.

I place fingers to keyboard today, even though I enjoy Gregg's usual reporting and respect his keen eye for the Liberal "hoodwinking", I just couldn't hold my patience nor my tongue upon reading about Senator John Edwards' latest political tactic. Senator Edwards is deeply concerned, that the constituents he cares so patriotically for aren't being protected well enough. Yes, the great men and women of this country would never survive without patriarchs like John Edwards to tuck us in, sing us our lullabye, and kiss our collective forehead goodnight.

Edwards has introduced legislation to create a new Homeland Intelligence Agency. This "new" brainchild would focus on intelligence gathering more so than law enforcement. His administration released this nugget two days after FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the greatest threat to Americans at home are al-Qaida cells in the United States that haven't been identified. This concerns me, but it's not the al-Qaida extremists that are the root of my fear, but the quick-to-wave-the-flag, coat-tail-hopping-crusaders like Democrat John Edwards who fail, as usual, to see the big picture.

First of all, the FBI's main goal in life isn't to just gather intelligence. We already have a little division in our government specific to those needs. You might have heard of it, it's called the CIA or the Central Intelligence Agency, in case some of you like Edwards have forgotten what those initials represent. We all know, however, that after September 11, all government roles have changed in order to re-focus our information gathering (more on that later). In this case though, (referencing this WRAL article http://www.wral.com/news/1977732/detail.html) Mueller's comment has been taken out of context. The other interpretation of Mueller's comment is that they know or have an idea of who these people are, but have yet to physically identify them. Thus, Mueller might not necessarily be saying that they are clueless and are throwing their collective arms in the air with no source of intelligence to these cells. For all we know, that could be a tactic utilized to draw these cells out.

Secondly, we already have the structure in place to produce the necessary intelligence to find these evil doers. "But what about 9/11?!!!!" shouts the liberal wearing his or her anti-Bush sign pinned to their eybrow. Well Mr./Mrs., pardon me, Ms. freedom fighter, you were either too young, too light-headed from all those piercings, or too busy defending the right to receive adulterous oral sex in the Oval Office to know that it was the Clinton administration that we have to thank for the lack of intelligence and also the monumental task of re-focusing our intelligence agencies.

I refer now to an excerpt from a transcript of the nationally syndicated television talk show "Meet The Press" hosted by the always investigative Tim Russert. Mr. Russert is interviewing Vice President Dick Cheney post 9/11 regarding intelligence gathering procedures during the Clinton years.

RUSSERT: "There have been restrictions placed on United States' intelligence gathering – a reluctance to use unsavory characters, those who violate human rights – to assist in intelligence gathering. Will we lift some of those restrictions?"

CHENEY: "Well, I think so. I think one of the by-products, if you will, of this tragic set of circumstances is that we'll see a very thorough sort of reassessment of how we operate and the kinds of people we deal with."

"If you're going to deal only with sort of officially approved, certified good guys, you're not going to find out what the bad guys are doing. You need to be able to penetrate these organizations. You need to have on the payroll some very unsavory characters if, in fact, you're going to be able to learn all that needs to be learned in order to forestall these kinds of activities."

Still not enough evidence that the Clinton administration is to blame tie-dye boy? Below is a transcipt of an article (full article at http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/9/16/151505.shtml) that shows just a couple examples of how the Clinton Administration thoughtlessly changed our intel gathering policies in the name of the "feel-good" politically correct 90's.

......Just hours after the terrorists struck, a CIA source told Ruddy, NewsMax.com's editor in chief, that spy recruitment policies put in place by the Clinton administration had devastated the agency's ability to gather human intelligence.

Ruddy reported late Tuesday:

A regular NewsMax reader, "Roger," was a CIA spy in the Mideast.

I met him almost two years ago. Roger wanted to tell me why a gung-ho American quit the CIA in disgust.

Roger said the CIA was not interested in recruiting spies.

Clinton and company knew they could not just tell the CIA to stop recruiting spies. That would look stupid and embarrassing.

So they just changed the rules of how spies are recruited, raising the bar on requirements to such a high degree that the most valuable spies could never meet CIA standards and couldn't work for us.

Previously, I wrote how Clinton effectively stopped the recruitment of Chinese nationals by demanding that only high-ranking embassy officials could be recruited knowing this is almost impossible. Roger told me that. Roger reminded me again of this today.

He noted that Clinton policies reached their zenith under CIA Director John Deutch and his top assistant, Nora Slatkin. The pair ran Clinton's CIA in the mid-1990s and implemented a "human rights scrub" policy.

Here's how Roger described it in an e-mail Tuesday evening: "Deutch and Nora, Clinton's anti-intelligence plants, implemented a universal 'human rights scrub' of all assets, virtually shutting down operations for 6 months to a year. This was after something happened in Central America (there was an American woman involved who was the common law wife of a commie who went missing there) that got a lot of bad press for the agency.

"After that, each asset had to be certified as being 'clean for human rights violations.'

"What this did was to put off limits, in effect, terrorists, criminals, and anyone else who would have info on these kinds of people."

Roger says the CIA, even under new leadership, has never recovered from the "Human Rights Scrub" policy.

And finally, to point out and justify the title of this egg, is that this is also another perfect example of how the Democrats want to create more government at the cost of Joe Taxpayer. Just because Senator Town Cryer has the benefit of being able to ring his "Here Ye, Here Ye" bell at the current administration, we supposed be impressed at yet another re-invention of the wheel?!. In short, we do not need more agencies Mr. Edwards, it's simply (albeit not simple) a matter of repairing the damage that has been done due to the "almighty" Clinton presidency. Rome wasn't built in a day, nor will our new home defense. However, in the meantime, it is every American's duty in this day and age, including you Mr. Edwards, to look beyond the headlines and come to an educated understanding of what the real needs are in this country. I believe we are currently still susceptible to another attack, but hopefully, with continuing efforts by Tom Ridge and the benefit of an eight year Bush Administration, our Department of Homeland Security will have risen to the challenges of the twenty-first century.

So thanks but no thanks Mr. Edwards, we won't be needing that glass of water while you're up.

United We Stand.

John B.
Raleigh, NC
2-14-2003

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