Tales From The Travels

The reason I was recalled that winter of 2003 was to help support the invasion of Iraq. The invasion was rapidly approaching and we were fully ramped up providing targeting support. By the time the war was over we would provide support on over 10,000 targets.

With all of the reservists that had remained on active duty from the previous year plus the active duty people normally assigned, we had enough people for two full teams. My years of working with the active duty people there, plus my experience from the Afghan campaign (even if limited), put me in the position of being qualified to be a team leader. I am usually on the night shift, wherever I go, and that is where I landed this time. I have the magic words in my evaluations – ‘works well without supervision,’ and ‘self-starter.’ Plus, I was single and they tried to give the dayshift to people that had families. This was ok with me because I generally like the night shift. Sometimes I have some difficulty because of the hours (it can very difficult sleeping during the day, at times), but the nightshift is a good time to get some work done.

After I was cleared in the business with Major Mike, I took over as supervisor of the nightwatch and was very happy with the assignment. Like I said, the night watch is a good time to get things done because all of the muckity mucks are gone for the day, so they can’t come in and give you a line-of-sight tasking (I’ll give this to whoever falls in my line-of-sight). The people are also typically pretty motivated. The atmosphere is more relaxing and conducive to production.

As an example, there was one night I was working and the team was bantering around. I was sitting in an area where I could hear them, but lines of filing cabinets prevented me from seeing them. I let them goof off for awhile, but eventually decided it was enough and went to get them back to work. A little break is a good thing, but it has to end at some point. When I checked on them, I found they had been working the whole time. They were sitting at their workstations, working away, but joking around with each other at the same time. Production was good, moral was good, I didn’t see any reason to interfere and just kept walking.

We were cranking out data like crazy. The day shift was unable to keep up with us. But no one lost sight of how important our work was. We were going to be blowing things up and killing people. We wanted to make sure we were blowing up only the right things and killing only the bad guys. This takes a lot of work. You have to carefully select the targets in the first place. Every nominated target has to be researched to verify that it really is a target. All of the targeting data is calculated with great care and verified to ensure its correct. Then, the area around every target is examined to ensure that we are not going to blow up something we don’t want to in the process.

Many people think the term ‘collateral damage’ is a euphemism for human casualties, which is incorrect. Collateral damage is any unintended damage, something other than the intended target. It is even possible for it to be a good thing. For instance, suppose we bomb aircraft refueling stations at a military airbase and there just happens to be some fighter jets parked there at the time. The jets would be collateral damage because they weren’t the target, and we probably wouldn’t object. Of course, if we’re targeting the refueling stations we are probably also targeting the jets, so this scenario is a little farfetched, but it makes the point.

That being said, most collateral damage is something we want to avoid, especially if it involves human casualties. There are people we target – members of the military that are involved in the fighting – and there are people that are not involved and we would like to avoid injuring them.

Then, there are special places that we go to great lengths to avoid damaging, such as religious buildings, hospitals, schools, housing, and historically significant places. The city of Kyoto in Japan escaped being bombed in World War II because of its historical significance.

When we did our targeting on Iraq, we worked very hard to avoid any collateral damage. Certainly, we were avoiding as many human casualties as we could, but we were also very diligent about avoiding mosques, schools and any housing. In addition, we would not bomb infrastructure locations that would normally be targets, such as railroad yards, bridges, and power grids. We wanted to replace the Hussein government with a democracy and we wanted it to have a country to run, which meant it would need all of those infrastructure targets we would normally blow to smithereens.

And, our bombs will blow things to smithereens, too. It is hard to imagine the amount of damage a 2000-lb bomb will do. There was an incident during the war when a bomb landed in a market place and killed a bunch of people. It was all over the news and they were claiming it was an American bomb. We took one look at the TV footage and the size of the crater and we knew it wasn’t one of ours. If it had been, there wouldn’t have been any market place left to show on TV and they would’ve been estimating the number of casualties by the number of people they could no longer locate. It was finally determined that it was an Iraqi surface-to-air missile that hadn’t exploded and had fallen back to the ground.

So, it was with great care that we targeted something. We had teams of targeteers with extensive training and put in place as many as seven levels of quality control to verify every little bit of the targeting data. Everything was looked at by numerous sets of eyes before it went out. We had a very good track record, too. We did not hit anything that wasn’t supposed to be hit. The amount of undesirable collateral damage from our work was very low, possibly even zero.

In addition to managing the team, I was one of the quality control inspectors. I spent several hours every day looking over the data, ensuring all of the proper steps had been taken and bombs were going to be falling on the right points. We use a lot of GPS-guided bombs nowadays. These are plain, old-fashioned iron bombs, similar to what has been used since WW II, but have a new tail-assembly attached, called JDAM. This allows us to deliver weapons with amazing accuracy, even within inches of the target coordinates. In prior campaigns, we dropped lots of bombs on a target with the hope that one of the bunch would actually hit what we were targeting. Now, we could drop just one bomb with confidence it would hit the target. This is a very good thing. As a result, we can reduce the number of bombs we drop and limit the damage more effectively to only the area we want. This greatly reduces the amount of collateral damage.

We were in a meeting one day and someone bragged about how they were the one that had found a mistake that I had missed. That’s when I learned I had become this benchmark. Almost nothing was getting by me, but that wasn’t the only thing that had caught people’s attention, it was the map in my head that got the most attention.

I would make these little maps in my head of the target area and I could look at the coordinates and tell if they were consistent. I couldn’t tell if they were correct just by looking at them, but I could, say, tell that a square of targets had a corresponding square of coordinates to go with it. Well, I found some that weren’t consistent and would ask the targeters to verify the coordinates. It had become something of a running issue that I could look at the data and find coordinates that were wrong. I started getting these quesions, asking me if I had a coordinate grid in my head.

I could also go through a lot of targets. This is very tedious work and most people can’t do it for long stretches, but I could sit down and go through the data for hours without a break. I think grading homework for all those years had prepared me for it. Compared to that, checking the targeting data was pretty exciting!

This was my life for a couple of months in early 2003 and we blew up a lot of targets. Some people take offense at this and have some very rude things said to me. I was on a date with this woman and she started in about the military and how disgusted she was with ‘those people’ and the way they waged war. I let her go for awhile and when she stopped I quietly told her that I was one of ‘those people.’ She said, ‘No, you said you’re a professor!’ I told her, ‘I am, but I’m also a Navy reservist and I was involved in the targeting for Afghanistan and Iraq.’ She was stunned. I’m sure you can imagine that there was not a second date.

Some people ask me if it bothers me to have been involved with this. Not at all. If anything, I’m very pleased with my contribution. The American people had trained and paid me to do things like this and they were counting on me, and all of those like me, to step forward when the country needed us. I was just doing what I was supposed to do.

I was opposed to the invasion of Iraq, and got fired because I said so. If the decision had been mine to make, we would not have invaded. I did not, and do not, see any overriding national interest to do so.

Having said that, I hear a lot of arguments opposed to the war that I know are not true, and will say so. There are plenty of valid reasons to be opposed to the war without coming up with false ones. I firmly believe in keeping the facts straight, and this is not happening in this debate. The country has become so polarized that false arguments are being thrown around with great frequency and are being accepted as true without any thought. They fit pre-conceived conclusions of many people, so these people feel they must be valid.

Some of the claims are that it was an illegal war. No, it was not illegal. Iraq was given multiple demands in the form of U.N. resolutions that it refused to comply with. These resolutions allowed the use of military force to put Iraq in compliance if they refused.

A major one is that the evidence for weapons of mass destruction was manufactured by the government to deceive the American public and the world community. This is not true. I saw this intelligence and it was very valid. There was no other conclusion in my mind, Iraq was hiding WMDs.

As the troops invaded Iraq in March, 2003 and progressed towards Baghdad I expected to hear that they had found the weapons of mass destruction we were all convinced that were there. I would watch the invasion on TV, sure that the next announcement was going to show the troops standing over chemical or biological weapons. But, it never happened.

So, what was wrong? Like I said, I had seen the intelligence and I was 100% convinced there were WMDs in Iraq. In a situation like that, I will assume my conclusion is wrong and then search for what I did wrong. I did that here. I assumed that there were no WMDs in Iraq and I tried to figure out what was wrong with my information or my analysis. The conclusion I reached was that there were WMDs in Iraq.

I am confident in my ability to assimilate information and reach a correct, logical conclusion. There was nothing wrong with my logical processes. Therefore, there had to be another reason. Was there a flaw in the information, the intelligence, which I was provided with? My conclusion was correct based on what I was given. But, my conclusion appeared to be in error. Therefore, what I was given must have been incorrect. Whoever was responsible for collecting and presenting the intelligence appeared to have erred. And, that was mostly the CIA. But, did they really?

There is a mountain of evidence that they were hiding something. We would watch as Iraqi military personnel ran out the back door of buildings with large boxes of material as U.N. inspectors were going in the front door. There was one time when the inspectors found a cache of documents and were enroute to the U.N. station when they were intercepted by Iraqi military men who demanded, at gunpoint, that the documents be returned or they would open fire on the inspectors. There were times when inspectors entered buildings, only to have military personnel show up and threaten to shoot them if they didn’t leave. There is more, but this is all in the open press for anyone to see. Their actions and the intelligence are conclusive, they were not abiding by the conditions of the U.N. demands and they were hiding something from the inspectors.

I’ve read how many people are claiming the government lied to us, that we knew all along there were no weapons of mass destruction. This is totally false and is politically motivated. In fact, we found that they really were hiding chemical weapons. Over 500 chemical munitions were found, despite the assurances of the U.N. inspectors that there were none. See new stories about this here, here, and here. These were just the first hits I got when I did a search. There were many more, if you need to see more.

But, these were old munitions, left over from pre-Persian Gulf War days. No evidence of new munitions has been found. An interesting point about those 500 weapons, some news organizations ran that story, but others didn’t. Why would a new organization not run a story that big?

So, we were not completely wrong. While we didn’t find any vast inventory of WMDs, we did find that Hussein had put into place everything needed to make them. The industry was there, just waiting for us to leave. They would have gone to work as soon as the inspectors were gone.

So, while my analysis of the situation isn’t complete, I’m beginning to believe that the intelligence wasn’t wrong, after all. They did have chemical weapons they were not allowed to have, just as we claimed. And, they most certainly had the industry in place to manufacture new WMDs, which was as forbidden as the weapons themselves. They may not have had the large inventory we thought they did, but they clearly had some forbidden WMDs, and the forbidden means and intent to manufacture more.

In December 2002, I received a phone call from the XO of my reserve unit and was informed that all reserve intelligence personnel would be mobilized soon for the invasion of Iraq. Not just in the unit, or even the Navy Reserves, but all intelligence reservist in all branches of the military. He told me there was no proposed date, as of yet. It could be next week, or might not happen until May. This wasn’t all that surprising because the situation with Iraq had been steadily deteriorating all fall. They had consistently defied the U.N. resolutions and had defied every effort made to resolve the conflict peacefully. The end result was obvious and inevitable.

I went about getting my things in order, but I kept it to myself. It was the Christmas break and I didn’t see any reason to get anyone else worked up at this time. The recall might happen, but it might not. Why spoil someone else’s holidays? Then, at the drill weekend just after New Year’s we were told that the mobilization was on and we would be mobilized, probably before the end of the month, but February at the latest.

After the experience I had last time I decided that I was really not interested in being mobilized during the semester while classes were in session. I went to the XO and said that if I was going to be mobilized I wanted it to be before the semester began. They were ready for contingencies like that and I was mobilized very quickly, in less than a week. Since I had been mobilized just a few months earlier, I was still good to go.

Then, they didn’t mobilize anyone. Boy, they sure saw me coming a mile a way.

As it was, I really didn’t mind. Things had been getting steadily worse between Keller and me and the work environment at USD was becoming increasingly unpleasant. This wasn’t new, it had been building since even my first year. Keller once told me that the more people got to know her, the less they liked her (no kidding, she really did say that to me). It was my experience that this was a truthful statement and the more I got to know her, the less I liked her. I tried, in my clumsy way, to try and get along with her, but it didn’t work very well. The worst case of my bungling occurred shortly after I returned from my first mobilization. Her birthday came up and I changed the settings on her computer to play the ‘Happy Birthday’ song every time she opened an application. I thought I was being cute, but she didn’t. She went totally berserk about it. I certainly made a mistake, but it didn’t warrant her extreme reaction. The surprising thing about this, shortly after she went ballistic about this incident, she then asked me about my dating habits during a conversation. She asked me if I was dating anyone she knew and what were my plans about remarrying. I really felt these were inappropriate questions and didn’t answer them.

By the time the mobilization came up, I had come to realize she was a despicable person and an incompetent program director. I was not heartbroken about taking a leave of absence and hoped things might improve if we took a break from each other.

But, the situation I was in was about to get much worse. I got another phone call, just a day before I was to report in, this time from my division commander, Colonel H (the same guy that had fired me a year earlier). He called to ask me if I had seen the Air Force major I had worked for the previous spring. I told him I had not and he told me the major had been caught having an affair with an enlisted woman that was in his division and had now disappeared.

This major, Mike, was in charge of the division I had been banished to after my poorly advised comments concerning the war a year earlier and we had become good friends during the time I was working with him. We had stayed in touch after I was demobilized and saw each other every time I was in Omaha for my drill weekends. I also knew the woman he was having the affair with and had worked with her during my first mobilization.

There had been a definite chemistry between the two that had made me suspicious at times, but I never saw anything to make me believe they were involved. I never saw them talking in private or exchanging looks. I was not aware that they ever saw each other outside of work, with the exception of things where everyone was invited, like organized softball games. I never saw them touching or doing anything inappropriate. I had considered the possibility, and had decided I didn’t see anything to support such a conclusion. It is true that I still had my suspicions, but I never saw anything to confirm them.

So, I was deeply disappointed, but not overly surprised when Colonel H told me of the affair. But, I was very surprised, and concerned, about the news he had disappeared. I had talked to him on the phone just a few days earlier when I was in Omaha for my drill weekend. He wasn’t able to meet with me, as he usually did, and we talked on the phone. Things didn’t sound right and I asked him about it and he assured me everything was ok. I learned later that he was already planning to run.

What I learned when I reported in is that someone had reported him and the woman to the command a couple of weeks earlier. An investigation had ensued and they were each questioned and their stories did not jive. Further investigation had unveiled what was going on. Confronted with the growing evidence, Mike went AWOL.

So, I enter stage right with my mouth and managed to get into trouble on the very first day I was back. I was in the shop and was talking to this new female Air Force captain that had joined the shop since I had left in July. We were discussing the situation with Mike when I commented, ‘What I would like to know is who ratted them out.’ The expression on her face let me know just who it was.

What I have to say here is not speculation, it is exactly as she told it to me herself. She told me that she had wanted to be assigned a project and Mike wouldn’t give it to her. So, she told me that she started following him around and would park outside his apartment and watch what he did. When she learned about their affair, she told Mike if he didn’t give her the assignment she wanted, she would turn them in. When he didn’t give it to her, she jumped several places in the chain of command and reported him.

Talking to the enlisted woman involved I learned that they were very careful about where they met and he would always make sure no one was following him. They would meet in a parking lot somewhere and she would get in his mini-van and lay down on the floor in the back with a blanket over her to make sure no one could see her. She would stay that way until he closed the door on his garage. If this was true, and I believe it was, the only way for that captain to learn of their relationship is to have sneaked around and peeked through the windows of Mike’s apartment.

The very next day, I was called before the general in charge of the intelligence directorate and placed at attention in her office. She sat behind this desk that was big enough to land aircraft on and told me, ‘I’m going to talk and you’re going to listen.’ That was the high point and it went down hill from there. When she was finished I was dismissed without being allowed to say a word, which was a good deal for me since I was sure to have said something stupid. I was placed on administrative probation while I was investigated and not allowed to be involved with the work. I told the investigators exactly what I’ve already said here; I had my suspicions, but never saw anything to support them. I did not know they were having an affair.

Eventually, I was cleared and allowed to return to my duties.

The enlisted woman involved got out of the Air Force and went back to Florida to take care of her ill parents soon after this. Later, she got a job with a contractor and returned to STRATCOM as a civilian. Boy, you better believe that created some tension. We were still friends and I didn’t mind being seen with her, which only made my situation there more perilous. But, that was ok. She was a friend.

Nothing was heard of Mike for a couple of months and we were left to speculate, until the day we were all called into a meeting. A farmer in the area had been getting his fields ready for the spring planting when he spotted a car parked under some brush and found a body inside. The remains were identified as being Mike’s. There was a gun and a single bullet wound to the head. A suicide note had been found when he first went missing, but we all hoped that he didn’t carry through with the threat. But, he had already made up his mind that last time I had talked to him on the phone.

I was, and still am, deeply saddened at the loss of my friend. I wish he had given me a chance to talk him out of it.

The Air Force captain that turned him in was transferred that spring to a base in Arizona. She received a commendation and a high ranking medal before she went. We were all ordered to attend the ceremony, but I refused.

The war in Afghanistan ended shortly after I got to STRATCOM, about Thanksgiving 2001. You would think they would then send all of the mobilized reservists home, but that isn’t what they decided on. They figured it took so much work and money to mobilize the reservists that they weren’t going to let them go. We were going to be there for a while. Our mobilization orders were for a maximum of two years and they planned on keeping us for the duration of those orders.

We were crawling with people. We had so many people we didn’t have enough places for them to work, or enough work for them to do. I was in both categories. I was the fifth Lieutenant (O-3) in a division that needed three of them. There weren’t even enough desks for everyone and those of us that didn’t have a place to work would shuffle around between open places. It was gold whenever someone was gone for the day. An open desk!

This is when I ended up changing the way they did business.

They had this metric they used every day in their morning meetings to keep the brass informed of the progress being made on our product. It was a small thing, but also important. The higher-ups always wanted to see it every day and kept track of the progress. Small, but highly visible. It was also difficult to work with and more of a guess than anything else. The supervisors would say, ‘Well, we said we were 15% done yesterday, and we made some progress since then, so I guess we must be around 20% today.”

This was ok, but everyone understood the nature of the beast, that it was only a very rough estimate, and they wanted it to be better. So, they gave it to me with instructions to find a way to make it less than a guess. While it wasn’t exactly a glamorous job, I was glad to get it, simply to have something to do. Then, as is frequently the case with me, I stumbled onto something of significance.

In order to gauge how much progress was being made, I went around to the various teams and learned exactly what it was they were doing and how much work each step took. What I found out was that no one fully understood the process. The leader of each step knew their area of responsibility, and there a was a general understanding of all of the steps, but no one could say exactly what was being done for the entire process, I was really the first person to get all of the details and I found out there was an easier way of doing things.

When I was finished I took my findings to my chain of command. Initially, they said it couldn’t be done the way I was suggesting, but I came prepared and showed them how it could. I was proposing a radical change in the way we did business. At the time, our product took so long to get to the battlefield that it was mostly useless by the time the area commanders got it. I showed them a way to get it to the operational commanders so quickly that it would be valuable and useful.

They were impressed with what I showed them and proposed it up the change of command. Eventually, what I proposed was implemented and changed the way we did business in time for the Iraq War. As things go in the military, someone else got a medal for the work. I didn’t mind that, it wasn’t the first time I’d seen it, but it miffed me a little that I wasn’t even acknowledged as the guy that originated the idea and showed them how to do it.

As for me, I got fired shortly after that.

When we came back from Christmas, it was so painfully clear that we weren’t needed that I asked to be released and allowed to go back to the university. By January of 2002 it was already understood we would be invading Iraq and they wanted to keep all of us around for it. My division officer asked me about this when he interviewed me about my request. I said that I would be just up the road and come back if they needed me. He made a comment about how the invasion was going to be soon. I disagreed and said there was no need for the invasion and that it would be a mistake because there was no support for it. It was going to take the government at least a year to justify it. Of course, I was proven correct.

Next morning, I came in to find out my request had been denied and I had been reassigned. The division I was reassigned to was the equivalent of the Gulag and was the dead end place to park people. As is my knack, I ended up turning this into a significant job and was heavily involved in a very cool experiment.

But, even with that, I had work to keep me busy for only a couple of hours a day. This was very typical around the command. Most of the reservists were without any official duties and just sat around all day, trying to find something to do and hoping for news about demobilization. STRATCOM wasn’t alone in this regard and wasn’t even the worst offender. Some commands in the D.C. area were much worse and Central Command (CENTCOM) in Tampa, Florida was so bad it was making the news. We knew people in all of these different commands and everyone was talking to each other. The morale of the reservists at CENTCOM, in particular, was really bad. They were so crowded they couldn’t even fit everyone in the building. They put a bunch of trailers in the parking lot and used them as overflow office space. People were sitting around answering phones or playing cards all day. Eventually, Congress and the Attorney General did an investigation of the situation.

This all dragged on for months. For me, the pay was actually a payraise over what I made at the university, but I was the exception. Most people had taken a significant pay cut when they were mobilized. When the war started and it became common knowledge reservists would be mobilized there were scores of reservists that bailed out and quit the reserves, something I take an exceptionally dim view of. We were the guys that stayed around and went on active duty when the country needed us. We gave up our private lives, faced financial disasters, and endured all sorts of personal hardships, all in order to serve the country when it needed us. Many of us knew we were going to lose our jobs when we returned (against the law, but still done anyway). Now, we were being treated badly in return for our loyalty. It wasn’t right. And, it wasn’t cheap. There were many thousands of us that had been mobilized and it costs millions of dollars a day to keep us on active duty, and we were, mostly, not making any sizable contribution. We were beginning to feel like hostages.

Something needed to be done, and after more than six months, something finally was. The order finally came out in late spring that we were to be processed for demobilization. Some would reservists would still be needed, but they were able to fill this requirement with volunteers (there were those that were happy to be on active duty and wanted to stay). In July, 2002, I was discharged and returned to Vermillion.

But, everything was different and things were about to be set for both another mobilization and my eventual firing from USD.

My orders for mobilization instructed me to report in for duty at Strategic Command, Offutt AFB, just outside Omaha, Nebraska. When I got there I found out they had been trying to get hold of me to change my orders. This was yet another example of just how bad the mobilization process is. They had already lost the mobilization orders for our entire command and delayed us for six weeks. This whole thing was already reminding me of my experience during the Persian Gulf War where someone tossed my orders in a safe and left them there for two months. Not to spoil the story, but this was an early warning of how badly we handle the mobilization process.

What I learned that first morning at STRATCOM was that they wanted me to report to the airport in Sioux Falls for a flight to Minneapolis. There were seven people in our group going through the process together and we were to go to the Reserve Center in Minneapolis to get our records, then fly to Chicago and go to the Navy Base at Great Lakes for processing. Then, fly to Omaha to report for duty. It only made sense that we would leave from Omaha so that our cars were at our final destination. Instead, they wanted everyone to leave from their home of record and arrive with no transportation. Getting to the base from the airport isn’t a big problem, just take a taxi, but it is nearly impossible to get to work at Offutt without a car. All housing is a long distance away. Fortunately, for me and one other person in our group, they weren’t able to get hold of us in time and they flew us out of Sioux Falls. All the others had to take leave first thing after reporting in to go home and get their cars.

Our time in Minneapolis was ridiculous and a waste to time and money. They only thing we did there was to get our records and then leave for Chicago. This is something that could have been by overnight mail. Actually, considering how long they took to get everything done, they could have sent them by snail mail and they would have still been waiting for us. But, hey! We got a little vacation across the street from the Mall of America at taxpayer expense.

A couple of interesting notes about this leg. I took a shuttle from the hotel to the airport when I was leaving for Chicago and these two guys got on after me. One sat next to me and the other was across from me. I wasn’t really paying attention, but I noticed the guy across from me had the biggest ring I had ever seen. They were talking to each other, but when they paused I asked the guy if it was a Super Bowl ring and he told me no, it was Stanley Cup ring (hockey). Then, he told me the next to me had one also. I looked over and saw another one, but from a different team. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen a sports championship ring.

The other note had to do with airport security. We were all flying on one-way tickets purchased at the last minute. The profilers went crazy with us and everyone one of us was pulled aside for complete searches and pat-downs. It didn’t bother me any, it wasn’t personal. But, several of our group was upset that we were being mobilized to fight the war and we were being treated like terrorist suspects.

We told that when we reached O’Hare Airport there was company that would shuttle us to the Navy base for $20 each. What we learned when we got there was that it was a Chevy Suburban and they were going to cram all seven us, and our luggage, in there for the hour plus ride to the Navy base. We asked them if they would give us a discount, considering how many there were and they refused. So, a guy in our group got on the cell phone and found us a limo service that would take us up there for the $140. So, we showed up at the base in this stretch limo. It was great. We enjoyed it so much that we had the guy take us into Chicago that evening for dinner at Lowry’s Steak House. At the time, it was the most expensive meal I had ever had. (This was before I moved to New England.) It was also excellent and worth every penny.

We ended up spending a week at the Navy base and got about one day’s worth of work done while we were there. We would report in every morning to just sit around and do nothing before they set us loose. It was a shining example of inefficiency. Most of what we did could have been done online before we ever even showed up. Considering how many people were mobilized, the total expense had to be millions of dollars. Meanwhile, while we were sitting around in Great Lakes, the people we were supposed to be supporting were desperate for our help.

Even in this situation I found a way to get in trouble. I frequently have a severe reaction to flu vaccines, so when we were at medical I told them about this and asked if it would be ok if I got my vaccination at the gaining command so I wouldn’t be traveling sick. I said I didn’t want to make a fuss and if they wanted me to take the shot there I would understand. The medical people said it wasn’t a problem and they were ok with me getting the shot in Omaha. A couple of days later I was called in to see the base executive officer who told me medical wasn’t going to release me because I had made a big scene and yelled at them about how I wouldn’t take the flu shot. I told him my side of the story and, this time, I had six witnesses that told him the exact same story. I swear, it’s a gift of mine. I think it must be my superpower – constantly get in trouble whereever I go and whatever I do. It keeps things interesting.

I finally got out of there and reported for duty at STRATCOM. It took a couple of days to take care of the paperwork (And get my flu shot! You better believe I made sure to get one!) and get an apartment near base. Finally, two and half months after the terrorist attacks I was ready for duty. By that time the war in Afghanistan was essentially over and they gave us the Thanksgiving holiday off. When we came back after the weekend, we found out they really didn’t need us anymore. Once again, it took longer to mobilze me than to fight the war.

That doesn’t mean they let us go home, though. The Reservist Hostage Crisis was about to begin.

I was at Offutt AFB outside Omaha a few years ago and stopped by the exchange to buy some condoms. It isn’t that I really need them. I mean, I have to check the expiration date on them before I use them. They’re only good for six or seven years, or something. But, it makes me feel manly to be ready, just in case. Anyway, back to the story.

So, I get this box of condoms and go to the checkout counter and strike up a conversation with the checkout girl. Nothing special, just a little chit-chat. Then I take my purchase, get in my car, and go back to work. That evening I realize I can’t find my box of condoms anywhere. It finally dawns on me. When I drove back from the exchange I grabbed some garbage in the car and threw it out. Being the airhead I am at times, I must have grabbed the condoms and threw them out with the garbage.

This really irked me, so I went back the next day to get another box. When I got to the checkout counter there was the same girl! I could tell by the way she said ‘hi!’ that she recognized me from the previous day. Then she picked up my box of condoms and as she was ringing it up, I could see in her face she was wondering if I had really used that entire other box in a single night. I was about to explain, when I thought,

Naaaaah!

The President gave our commencement address this year. It was a great experience and I really enjoyed the whole show. Regardless of your political beliefs, you have to agree that having the President of the United States come to your commencement is a big deal.

It was easy to see why he has been successful as a politician. He was very personable on the stage and interacted with the crowd very well. Each graduate got to shake his hand and get their picture taken with him and he played right along with the ones that wanted to do something a little different. If they pointed out where their family was sitting, he would turn and wave to them. It was a lot of fun.

He also gave a very effective address, part of which dealt with the continuing struggle with Al Queda and detailing their efforts to strike at us and our efforts to thwart them. It was memorable to hear these details directly from the President like that.

Another memorable thing of all of this was the protesters. The city said they issued 1200 permits for protesters and they were lining the road leading up to the campus. I don’t think there were 1200 of them, but there was a crowd. The pro-Bush group was on one side of the street and the anti-Bush people were on the other side, and they were just going at it. They had megaphones and blaring music and were waving signs and people were taking pictures and the news vans were out there. It was great! I could’ve stayed out there and watched the show and been happy.

As someone that has defended the Constitution for so long, it brings me great happiness to see people engaging in peaceful demonstrations like that. It doesn’t matter to me what they are protesting and whether I agree with them or not. The point is, they are excercising their right of free speech and there are a lot of places where they wouldn’t be allowed to do what they were doing. It gives me a sense of satisfaction and makes me feel like I have been doing something worthwhile. What a great country where people that are so opposed to each other’s viewpoints can get together and demonstrate in public. I loved it!

When I was mobilized for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq I was stationed at Strategic Command (STRATCOM), just outside of Omaha, Nebraska. STRATCOM is the latest incarnation of Strategic Air Command (SAC). SAC is famous for being the Air Force command in charge of bombers and missiles in the event of a nuclear war. If you’ve never seen the movie, Dr. Strangelove, you have missed one of the greatest movies ever made. Part of the movie centered on SAC. STRATCOM is the same thing, except it is now a joint command and also has control of the Navy’s Trident missile submarines. The head of STRATCOM now rotates between an Air Force and Navy four-star.

Being the central point for a nuclear war, it is also the target of many protests. There is some saint’s birthday between Christmas and New Year’s. I can’t remember who it is, but this saint is the patron saint of peace, or something like that. There is an anti-war group headed by this Catholic priest in the Omaha area that has an anti-war demonstration every year on this saint’s birthday and marches to the gate of Offutt AFB, where STRATCOM is located. It turns out that this is one of the best run demonstrations I’ve ever seen.

They will send letters to the media, the base, and the law enforcement community detailing their exact plans. They will tell them the group is going to gather at such-and-such address at such-and-such time and they expect this number of people to show up. They then detail the exact route and timetable for their march, ending at the line in the street that marks the beginning of the base. They inform everyone that they will be making their anti-war speeches and, at a specific time, a specified person will step across the line in a demonstration of civil disobedience. The person will be arrested by base security and everyone goes home. It used to be the priest that stepped across, but he has been arrested so many times that any additional arrests would be a felony. And, they follow this schedule exactly.

I just have to feel this is the most perfect example of how to hold a protest. I’ve seen some protests, and have seen news reports of other protests, that have gotten violent, or where someone has thrown something. Then, the message of the protest becomes that someone got violent, or someone threw an egg or a rock. The message of the protest gets lost in the images of violent clashes. If you want to send a message in protest, it seems to me the method of these protesters in Omaha is the perfect way to do it. When these protesters in Omaha make the news, and they always do, it is that they are voicing their message of peace and anti-war, not that they are engaging in violence.

It was a really great demonstration of freedom of speech at work. I didn’t agree with them, but I certainly applaud their methods. And, I love living in a country where you are allowed to do something like that.