LEATHERNECKM31

OTR

... in DFW's Cowtown Bar yesterday afternoon, and on the road to Portland, Wash State and then Seattle.

I just spent $15 on two beers.

At Lake Quinault, southwest of Seattle .... my lovely niece, Danielle, will be getting married to a very solid young man named Oliver.

Both are in grad school at U Portland, MSW and PhD, respectively.

It's been said that on the West Coast... all the crazies eventually end up in San Frisco; those too crazy for The City end up in Portland and Seattle.

Regardless..... though they're still on the shy side of 30, Dani and Oliver both have their heads screwed on right.

Dani loves Elvis and Oliver collects Artie Shaw records (Editor: for our younger readers... "records" are large dinner plate-size vinyl discs with microscopic groves in them which produce sound when played on a "turntable" or "record player"----popular in the 1920s-1970s.)

Anyway, times like these I reflect on my five full decades and a bit more. Knowing people since they were born will do that to you.

I am worried.

My generation has failed; I will leave my beloved country to Dani and Oliver in much worse condition than when it was given to me by The Greatest Generation.

I cannot cavalierly shrug and say, "oh well" and mean it. "My bad" is far from adequate as I hand off the baton.

My vain, self-absorbed and narcissistic generation has helped ruin the American family--in particular, the black American family.

We have given you the Crips and the Bloods and MS 13.

We have given you a nation in which one million babies are murdered in the womb every year while hundreds of millions of our tax dollars are used to feed, clothe, provide health care, legal services and therapy for some of the most vile, murdering, psychopaths in the world.

We've turned logic and law so upside-down that we protect the guilty and kill the most innocent.

The first president of my generation, a lying draft-dodger, soiled the Presidency far more than Dick Nixon's tape recorder; he violated The People's House in a most despicable fashion.

And for this his popularity grew.

But other than that, how'd we do?

I hope that ten years from now, I have been shown to be the most pessimistic of all cynics, for their sake.

... but, I don't think it will happen.

A small man... a very small man

McCain spokesman Admiral Leighton Smith didn't waste time over the weekend; he fired a broadside.

When that slimy little weasel Wesley Clark who carries water for Obama--The Messiah--dismissed John McCain's military service with, “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president”--Smith hit back.

"If Barack Obama wants to question John McCain's service to his country, he should have the guts to do it himself and not hide behind his campaign surrogates," Smith said.

Quite true, but he didn't go far enough.

BTW..., that's L'il Wesley on the cover of the gay rights magazine "The Advocate" when he was debasing himself for any kind of support during his pathetic run for the dem presidential nomination. 

If this puke has the stones to dismiss McCain's torture over five years as a POW under some of the worst conditions possible, let us take a look behind his glossy 8x10.

Probably from his earliest days at West Point, Clark was recognized as a potential "water walker"... military slang for a hot shot destined for at least one star.   

That means before he was old enough to vote, he was a politician; class valedictorian ('66) and of course, the obligatory Rhodes Scholarship followed.

He chose armor as a career field; and as Vietnam heated up and his fellow West Pointers were sweating their asses off in triple canopy jungle, L'il Wes was in Oxford's PPE Program... studying Philosophy, Politics an Economics and the local "birds" as the Brit slang had it back in the Sixties.   

All that, combined with armor training (he also worked in a Ranger tab) ... delayed his Vietnam for three years... until 1969. By that time John McCain already had 25 combat missions and two years in the infamous Hanoi Hilton.

And there L'il Wes became what was know in those days as a "ticket puncher", a junior officer who polished up his resume by adding the Vietnam Service and Campaign ribbons. Failing to get a "combat" assignment in those days was a serious detriment for a career officer.

Captain Clark finally arrived in-country on 21 May 1969 and was promptly assigned--this highly trained armor officer--to the rear as a staff officer, collecting data and helping in operations planning.

For his work inside the wire he was awarded his first Bronze Star.

After six months in an air conditioned office and the "O" club... this highly trained staff wienie and tanker was given command of A Company, 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division.

See how four stars are eventually gathered? Yeah, it's a thirty-year plan--kinda like Bill and Hillary Clinton's.

January of '70, as the war is grinding to its inevitable whimpering conclusion, finds Capt. Clark on patrol with his troops.

As Clark tells it in his 2007 autobiography, A Time to Lead ...

... but as I turned, I sensed that I had dropped my rifle and suddenly became aware of a loud buzzing noise. I was confused. I never dropped my rifle. Not ever. Cardinal sin! And the buzzing must be hornets. Had I hit a nest? As I turned back to get my rifle, I saw something small and white on the back of my right hand, and glimpsed a dark stain on my jungle fatigue trousers right below the right knee. It was like my brain had been bypassed.

"I've been shot!" I shouted, still in the act of reaching down for my rifle.

I'm sure his seasoned troops were glad he finally figured it out and alerted them to the firefight which was already in progress.

Apparently, despite being stitched with four AK rounds, Clark finally had to be knocked from his feet by a real grunt as he continued to walk around looking for his rifle. To his credit, Clark praised the man who saved his life.

Despite wounds to his right shoulder, right hand, right hip, and right leg, Clark writes, "... a few heartbeats later, my training came flooding back and my responsibilities as company commander took over.

"'Get the machine gun up! Set up a base of fire!' I had to shout the commands, and of course that attracted more enemy fire." (Poor deluded FNG... he actually thought his yelling rose above the sounds of the firefight, and the gooks were trying to pinpoint him as a result.)  

..... you can draw your own conclusions, but the combat vets among you are arching both eyebrows right now.

My corporal chevrons say that if he did say this, some grizzled 19-year-old fighter yelled, "somebody shut that son of a bitch up." 

I can grantee you... the kid manning the M60 didn't need some rear-echelon staff puke, armor officer who just joined the company yelling commands out of his brand new "Basic Infantry Officer Training Manual." 

I served under this exact nightmare... a ticket-punching armor captain with no "bush" rifle company experience. His incompetance is directly responsible for the death of one of my friends and for my eight months in the hospital. 

Clark's narrative goes on... starring himself in the title role of his very own Audie Murphy fantasy... ordering his machine gun team around, taking full command while flat on his back and calling in artillery fire into "thick jungle".

Uh huh. The man watched too many WWII movies.

He claims to have actually yelled: "'Machine gun, shift fire to the left. You men on the right, on your feet, move forward and get them!'  This was my command, and I was in battle. The don't-want-to-be-here feeling was gone. I knew we could do this!"

Well now.. that's telling, a commanding officer admits he didn't want to be there...; he didn't have to admit that to his troops... I assure you they already knew.

That apparently was L'il Wes' most important, or more likely, his entire combat experience. Getting shot and causing his men to risk their lives to protect an inept newbie.     

Looks like the man never fired a shot in anger.

For this he was awarded the Silver Star.

Resume complete with a combat tour of less than a month, he went home for medical treatment... and the rest of his water-walking.

Today his MySpace page lists every last medal, ribbon, badge, tab and do-dad he has, including his Commander of the Legion of Honor... the same one the French awarded comedian Jerry Lewis.

Ninety percent of his awards are the result of the higher and higher rank he achieved.

Captain McCain lists only... Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Silver Star and Distinguished Flying Cross.  Just the ones that matter.

McCain's service to this country had been attacked seven or eight times now by the Magic Negro's hatchetmen including Tom Harkin and George McGovern. 

So, next time L'il Wes/Obama shoots his/their mouth off about McCain's military experience... consider the source. 

THIS JUST IN:  Maverick has just fired back... clicked here.