He was John Wayne in "Flying Leathernecks"... he had the steely eye of any "High Plains Drifter" and the Sturm und Drang of an airborne Georgie Patton...
Best of all, he was as real as the sound of 20mm canon slugs ripping into the fuselage of a MiG 21.
But after staring Death in the face since last March, the legendary triple-ace, Air Force Gen. Robin Olds, closed his eyes for the last time, passing away surrounded by his friends and family Thursday in Steamboat Springs Colorado, Major Tom reports.
He killed 16 enemy aircraft in single combat during WWII and Vietnam, notably in "Operation Bolo".
The General, who held The Air Force Cross (for his attack on the Paul Doumer Bridge in Hanoi) and dozens of other personal decorations, is remembered here.
Now... from hero to pond scum: Mike Nifong, the just now former Durham County DA, is headed for the gutter which is exactly where he belongs. He is now hearing his fate from the North Carolina Bar Association after being found guilty of 15 violations of ethical standards.
Just think what the SOB has done to citizens in his 30 year-career.
But if you think his criminal persecution of the Duke University student/athletes is an aberration, a fluke... wake up and smell the penal code.
This goes on everywhere.... the DA is not our friend, as I'm fond of saying. This grotesque miscarriage of justice and prosecutorial misconduct is present, even rampant in every municipality in the nation. The only reason this particular lawyer/bastard's situation is stage center is that the victims are innocent Ivy leaguers.
May these young men collect as much money as Durham County has... every cent, and if Nifong doesn't do hard time... it only proves my overall point.
I'll be writing more on this issue in the near future.
Like Marine sergeant and former Congressman, Zell Miller, "... I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel...."
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We have not fought a war to win it since 1945... I would have loved the smell of fission in the morning in August '45... but sadly, I missed it by three years. I would have liked to had my life overlap the pinnacle of an unobstructed, purposeful and crushing American military.
Appropriately, Owen and Bing West have co-authored a brilliant and straight forward op-ed piece in the NYT of all places, accurately laying out why we are "throwing the game" in Iraq and elsewhere... and we're in the 7th inning.
"The other major defect we’ve seen in our military strategy (in Iraq) is the consistent release of captured insurgents. Imprisonment is the dominant military weapon for quelling this insurgency. Vietnam was a shooting war; Iraq is a police arrest war. The insurgents learned years ago not to engage in firefights with American troops. American troops in Vietnam in 1968, for example, found that they killed 13 enemies for every one captured; in Iraq, one enemy is killed for every 10 captured. (Emphasis mine).
"Yet, according to Pentagon records, more than 85 percent of the suspected Sunni insurgents and Shiite militiamen detained are soon set free. The troops call it “catch and release.” The American and Iraqi jails now hold about 40,000 prisoners — by some estimates just half the number Saddam Hussein released from prison in the mass exodus of 2002. Texas, with a smaller population, has more than 170,000 in jail...."
Our civilian leadership in the war is so incompetent that right now Rep. Joe Liebrman, a rare, "maverick" (read patriotic) democrat, is the only one demanding that we attack Iran before it's too late.
When, among our leaders, his is the virtual sole voice, I fear for the future.
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