Goodbye to The Bear, R.I.P. Norman Schwarzkopf 1934 - 2012

I was a captain commanding a Force Recon platoon with the the 13th MEU in August 1990. We were beginning a routine deployment when orders came in diverting us to Southwest Asia. We knew something big was going down. The orders came from CENTCOM commanded by a giant bear of an Army officer, one General H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

Yesterday in Tampa Florida where he had retired, Schwarzkopf died at aged 78 of complications from pneumonia bringing an end to the life of one of the United States most celebrated generals and commander of one of the most successful military campaigns in history.

A New Jersey born Army brat, Schwarzkopf studied in Europe before attending West Point in his father's footsteps, graduating with a degree in engineering in '56. He served two tours in 'Nam, once as a battalion commander and among many other awards he earned three Silver Stars, including one for crawling through a minefield to rescue his wounded troops.

Schwarzkopf stayed in service after Vietnam. During the 70's he attended U.S. Army War College and served on the Army General Staff at the Pentagon. Later he was Deputy Commander of U.S. Forces Alaska and then commanded, 1st Brigade, 9th Infantry. After getting his first star, Brigadier General Schwarzkopf served at PACOM, later Assistant Division Commander (Support) of the 8th Mechanized Division in Germany. 

Major General Schwarzkopf was commander of the 24th Mechanized Infantry Division, at Fort Stewart, Georgia and became Deputy Commander of the Joint Task Force which invaded Grenada in 1983. Lt. General Schwarzkopf commanded I Corps before gaining his fourth star and taking command of CENTCOM in 1988.

General Schwarzkopf capstoned his impressive career as combatant commander of Operation: Desert Storm, a U.S.-led international coalition of 30 nations organized by President George H.W. Bush, that succeeded in driving Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi forces out of Kuwait in 1991.

Schwarzkopf declined an appointment as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army to instead retire. In his best-selling autobiography, “It Doesn’t Take A Hero”, of his Gulf War role, he said: “I like to say I’m not a hero. I was lucky enough to lead a very successful war.”

Throughout his career Schwarzkopf earned Distinguished Service Medals from The Department of Defense and all branches of the armed forces including 4 from the army, three Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, three Bronze Stars [and Combat 'V'], two Purple Hearts, seven Meritorious Service Medals, four Army Commendation Medals [and Combat 'V'], The U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, Knight Commander of Most Honourable Order of the Bath from the UK and Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour from france.

He is survived by his wife Brenda and children Cynthia, Jessica and Christian.

Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas to all readers, followers and friends. 

Have a good one.

A Corps of Stars

On Saturday the former head of Marine Corps Forces Command, Commander, U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe and Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force Atlantic Lieutenant General John "Jay" M. Paxton Jr. of Chester PA. pinned on his fourth star to become the 33rd Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.

At a ceremony at the Marine Barracks in Washington D.C., Paxton was promoted by Marine Corps Commandant General James F. Amos and replaces 32nd ACMC General Joseph F. "Fighting Joe" Dunford Jr. who has been confirmed as the next Commander of the International Security Assistance Force and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan.

In his remarks Gen. Amos addressed a crowd which included former CMCs James Jones and Alfred Grey and said that the ACMC's job was difficult having had first hand experience of it himself before becoming CMC.

Gen. James F. Amos, CMC and Debbie Paxton, pin on Gen. John M. Paxton Jr., ACMC his current rank of general during a ceremony, Dec. 15. - Photo: Sgt. Dengrier Baez / Marine Corps

Gen. Paxton became the Corps sixth currently serving 4-star general, nearly unprecedented for the service which only got it's first 4-star in 1945 after 170 years of existence. U.S. Code of law normally limits the Corps to two 4-star generals - the CMC and the ACMC. Currently, however there are four other USMC generals currently serving in Joint Assignments which do not count towards this limit: 

- Gen. Dunford, as aforementioned who is awaiting assignment and preparing for his new position as COMISAF/COMUSFOR-A. 

- General John R. Allen, the current COMISAF/COMUSFOR-A and who has been nominated to replace Admiral James G. Stavridis as Supreme Allied Commander Europe [although the nomination is on hold pending the outcome of an Inspector General's investigation of Allen's involvement in the Petraeus affair].

- Lt. General John F. Kelly was promoted to general and took command of U.S. Southern Command in November.

- General James N. "Mad Dog" Mattis is currently Commander, U.S. Central Command but his replacement, Army General Lloyd Austin has been announced and Mattis will have to be appointed elsewhere or retire early next year. Two possibilities under wild speculation are that he could be SACEUR should Gen. Allen's nomination be withdrawn or that he could once again replace David Patraeus [as he did as Commander CENTCOM] as CIA Director.

The bad news is Brasso is now out of stock at Wamart!

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I am personally deeply saddened by the tragic loss of life in the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut on Friday. My condolences to the families of the victims during what should be the joyous of seasons.

Once again, I am abhorred by the media frenzy which surrounds an event like this. This is exactly what the sick, twisted and mentally disturbed individual who perpetrated this crime wanted so he didn't die a nobody. Sadly the media seems to be all to eager give him the attention he desired.

His name will not be uttered here, nor will his image be published as I wish nothing but for him to experience pain in the fires of hell for all eternity.

Whopper

Argo

During the Iran Hostage crisis of 1979/80, six staff at the U.S. embassy escaped and hid at the Canadian Ambassador’s residence. The White House and the CIA had a number of different ideas to retrieve them from Iran but the extraction mission was given to Tony Mendez who would go into Iran posing as a Hollywood Movie producer doing a location scout for Argo, a middle-eastern themed science-fiction adventure film. The plan was that he would then leave with his “crew”, the Americans holed up at the Canadian embassy.

Unlike Matt Damon or Tom Cruise, Ben Affleck doesn’t have people running into the movie theatre to watch him act anymore but after his success behind the camera with The Town, I’d be one of the people running into said theatre to watch a movie he directed.  As the subject matter was very close to home [intelligence agent creates an elaborate and precarious plot to get the job done] and based on a practically unbelievable true story that only came to light many years after the fact [much as my own will I hope] this was something I was really looking forward to.

I doubt anyone was disappointed. Affleck’s attention to detail in recreating the period was staggering, even down to the old red-background Warner Brothers logo. Knowing what the story was may have prompted an idea that the film would drag a little. However, through Affleck’s superb direction and focusing on the significant events [with a few elements of creative licence near the end] in this dramatic tale meant that the tension was nail-biting from opening to climax. Affleck’s portrayal of Mendez was clinical yet empathic. Alan Arkin as Lester Siegel and John Goodman as John Chambers as were superb and gave the project the air of controlled levity preventing it from descending into farce.  Special mention for the usual stony-faced Victor Garber as Ambassador Taylor who even smiled during one scene.

I normally dislike true stories as often a directors ego or opinion [or in worse cases a studio’s political agenda] will get in the way of the truth, but I can’t find any evidence of deliberate mischaracterisation or misinterpretation here save for changes required for dramatic licence and to fit the movie into a reasonable run time [sorry Brits, New Zealanders you got the asshole stick due to pacing]. Thanks for being honest and true to the important facts Ben and for giving us this gem.

Colonel Creedon Rating: ****1/2

Skyfall reviewed

Daniel Craig’s stewardship of the mantle of Bond beginning with 2006’s Casino Royale brought with it a sense of realism that was not a staple of the franchise. However despite dropping the laser watch and exploding pen, Bond is probably the best he’s ever been. Audiences have evolved and there is now so many other “spy-gadget” movies like the Mission: Impossible series that people no longer feel there is anything missing from a Bond movie when our hero’s car doesn’t turn into a submarine. Much to our benefit, Skyfall’s creators have chosen to fill the void vacated by the improbable and infused the series with a… dare I say the over-used word ‘gritty’ realism that modern audiences seem to demand now from their action thrillers.

Craig has already made Bond his own and I think despite another long gap in the series due to legal woes, he’s got a couple more 007 outings left before he should be replaced [with Michael Fassbender if I or an equally competent producer is calling the shots]. In Skyfall Dame Judy Dench returns as M, matriarch of MI6 and Ralph Fiennes made an appearance as Mallory. I cannot fault the performances of Naomie Pirates of the Caribbean Harris as Eve, Ben The International Whishaw as an new Q or Javiar Bardem as Silva, the villain of the piece -  although the latter performance in places left me a little uncomfortable. Even the score from Thomas Newman, one of the most unremarkable composers in Hollywood today, was top notch and despite not being up to the standard of David Arnold it sounds good on screen and off.

Skyfall is still unmistakably a James Bond movie but with an alternative focus on the Bond character not seen since George Lazenby’s sublime performance in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. In that movie, Bond was prepared to end his womanising ways and commit himself to marriage, here in Skyfall we are treated to a significant slice of the character’s history before he became the world’s greatest secret agent. Sam Mendez has done an incredible job with the material and has crafted a movie to rival Casino Royale in perfection as well as correcting the flaws of Quantum of Solace. It does seem like he’s not quite finished with what he wants to do so I hope he gets to continue the tale he started.

Final verdict: Bond as good as he has ever been - and more.

Colonel Creedon Rating:  *****

Did Medvedev drop the ball on UNETIDA protocols?

UNETIDA, the UN sponsored international military organisation tasked with protecting the planet from would-be extraterrestrial aggressors has had it's top counter-intelligence and disinformation specialists working overtime this weekend as Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev revealed seeing top-secret files on extraterrestrials on Earth.

Reports in the associated press reveal that in footage recorded Friday after a TV interview, the former president said that Russian leaders "are given a report of the absolutely secret special service that exercises control over aliens on the territory of our country". Unseen on camera footage, he was heard telling a Ren TV journalist he could not tell “how many of them are among us, because it may cause panic.”

Colonel "Whopper" Creedon, UNETIDA/UNPASID Director of Intelligence said that "a UNETIDA representative meets with high ranking world leaders, explains the situation to them and informs them of their emergency powers granted under UN laws as well as the rare situations where their military command can be superseded by UNETIDA for the good of the planet".

Creedon said UNETIDA will not be giving an official response, but instead has altered press reports to include terms that made the Prime Minister seem "like a goofball" by referencing Barry Sonenfeld's Men In Black movies and making it clear from the wording of the news reports that he was joking.

"It's not too far fetched that the man was joking" said the Colonel "During his presidency he showed that he had a sense of humour. Now if this was stony-face Putin doing the talking we'd be fucked. Royally fucked!"

Source: AP / MSNBC / The Telegraph

Vampire awakens in Serbia!

Garlic has become the most sought after product in the area of the hamlet of Zarozje in Bajina Basta, Serbia. Apparently the local council advised all villagers to place garlic on their doors and windows and to put a Holy Cross in every room, to ward off the legendary vampire, Sava Savanovic.

Savanovic is understood to have been 'reawakened' after an old watermill in which he was believed to have lived collapsed recently according to news reports. The mill had become a tourist attraction, but was left in disrepair by the family who owned it because they feared disturbing it's undead inhabitant.

Villagers are now terrified that the vampire, one of the country's most feared and most famous, is roaming the countryside looking for fresh blood.

Colonel "Whopper" Creedon, Director of Intelligence for UNETIDA/UNPASID said he was aware of the reports but was confident that it was simply a bid by locals to attract visitors to the impoverished region. He had no comment when asked if an UNPASID Paranormal Eradication Unit had been dispatched to deal with the potential threat.

Villagers who cashed in catering to tourists fascinated by the legend of Savanovic say they now wish they had left the place well alone.

Source: The Telegraph / Daily Mail / AP

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When the head of a major intelligence organisation leaves the fold as it were, the top-tiers of all major security protocols are rewritten so only those in active service know what they are. As you can imagine this takes some time but as more often than not the people are political appointees that may or may not survive complete changes in government - individuals in my line of work know that we have lead time to get things done before the changing of the guard.

When the head of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States volunteers to resign suddenly however and it can't be confirmed by a reliable or 1st hand knowledge that there was no security breach in a very short window we have to burn the top seven tiers of protocols. The CIA has access only to three of UNPASID's and two of UNETIDA's, but I've always been more conservative when secrets are concerned. After all, the Director of the CIA has access to information beyond what the general public believe. This includes what happened at Roswell in 1947, the true ballistics report on the Kennedy assassination and of course the real Coca-Cola formula, not to mention several things we have a vested interest in keeping buried.

While King David's indiscretions are unlikely to have any ramifications to shared intelligence operations, they have basically had me on site permanently at HQ for the past few weeks supervising the largest UNETIDA/UNPASID security/intelligence protocol overhaul ever. It actually couldn't have come at a better time as our organisation[s] are in a state of transition following decisions made by the UN General Assembly in it's annual sitting recently as it reviewed our tumultuous year. Thankfully we're almost done and normal blog-posting should resume December 2nd.

We shall not forget

Happy 237th Birthday USMC

The Grand Old Party needs to evolve

Come January, President Mitt Romney should have been taken to Area 51* where it would have been revealed to him that it wasn't just the belligerent nations of Earth he should be worried about. But he won't. Mitt Romney will not be the president of the United States next year because he lost the election - it wasn't that President Obama won, regardless of what the media tells you, it was because Mitt Romney lost.

Romney is most certainly not to blame however; sure he was uncharismatic and aloof and he had a cult religion but no, the responsibility for his dismal failure is firmly in the hands of the Republican Party. The GOP fielded a candidate that has more experience in practical economic situations than most others in government - yet he lost an election where the economy was really the only issue that anyone voting cared about and worse, lost to a president on whose watch people still feel they are worse off than ever. Four years earlier the party put forward a dignified gentleman, a humble war hero, at a time when America was embroiled in two major conflicts - yet lost to a man with no military experience with the middle name "Hussein".

It's obvious to many that Republican Party has lost it's ability to win presidential elections due its unwillingness to accept the changing demographics of the nation's electorate. It's clear that while fiscal responsibility is something that is most necessary for them to prove, they still have to collectively shed the image of a group of angry white males who want them damn Mexicans off their lawn, don't accept the theory of evolution and remain blind to the fact that humanity may be contributing to a few "issues" with the planet that scientists are warning us about. More importantly however, they have to eliminate their precious deity from their policy making - God did not give the American people their rights - they were given by the forefathers who believed in God and simply wrote that on a scrap of paper over two hundred years ago.

The full extent of Obama's scale-tipping Latino vote is not yet known. However if Republicans retain their strident position on immigration, the percentage of their own Latino vote will drop even further than the drop between those that voted for Bush in '04 and those that supported Romney this week. As you can imagine, asking people to "self deport" themselves probably pissed them off.

Homosexuals are no longer limited to California and areas of New York anymore and now they even serve openly in the military. If Republicans are prepared to not treat them like lepers and allow them the same basic rights to have a family unit regardless of gender, I'm confident that not only would they vote Republican but they may even join the GOP.

Republicans should make efforts to distance themselves from organisations like the misguided idiots of the Tea Party rather than pander to them. They should also denounce individuals who spew hate-speech like Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, the guys who make Bill O'Reilly sound like a liberal. They are living jokes, fossils of an age that modern politics no longer resides in.

GOP candidates must seek to define themselves in ways that go beyond merely opposing their Democratic "enemies". Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, cynically summed up the situation when he declared that his top priority was in seeing Obama defeated. People running for political office should really have more than one goal and that goal should be something more worthy than thwarting what the majority of voters decided they wanted earlier.

The GOP may also need to recalibrate their position on women's issues such as birth control and Planned Parenthood that are harming it among women and young voters. Women made up 53% of the vote and broke to Obama by a 10-point margin. Candidates with extreme positions on abortion cost the GOP some sure-win Senate seats. Scientifically ignorant and frankly reprehensible statements like Todd Akin's explanation of a females magic-shutdown of her reproductive system after suffering “legitimate rape” and Richard Mourdock's suggestion that "Rape Pregnancies Are God's Gifts" naturally cost them their races, but both were beaten by women and one of them was even a lesbian!

They miraculously still retain the House, but the GOP is licking it's wounds after their failure in the Senate and the presidential races, a failure to move with the times or move so imperceptibly slowly that it looks like they're not moving. I guess we should be thankful they seem to have by now accepted the idea that slavery is inherently wrong. Hopefully after they see the power of the Hispanic, black, female, homosexual and youth demographics in the most recent election they'll begin to understand that unless they evolve away from their archaic creationist, extremist and evangelical views, their grand old white-boys club has about as much chance of achieving national Reagan-like acceptance in 21st century society as the KKK does.

*All the cool stuff is in Area 52, but we naturally don't show politicians that.

Let history never forget the name, Enterprise!

Since the Cuban Missile Crisis there has always been one great lady at the forefront of or in support of the many conflicts of the United States - and her name is Enterprise. The eighth United States naval vessel to bear the name and nicknamed the "Big E" like her predecessor of World War II fame. At 1,123 ft. she is the longest naval vessel in the world. Her 93,284 long tons displacement ranks her as the 11th-heaviest supercarrier, after the 10 carriers of the Nimitz class. Enterprise has a crew of some 5,828 people including the air wing.

 

USS Enterprise (CVN-65) was originally scheduled for decommissioning in 2014 or 2015, depending on the life of her reactors and completion of her replacement, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). Alas the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 slated the ship's retirement for 2013, when she will have served for 51 consecutive years, longer than any other U.S. aircraft carrier.

On Sunday the only ship of her class returned home at Norfolk from her 25th deployment and for the last time under her own power, to a parade of thousands of family members and spectators. Enterprise commander Capt. William Hamilton, said that knowing "that it is the last time Enterprise will be underway through her own power makes our return very sentimental.”

Rear Adm. Ted Carter, commander of the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group said “This has not been a victory lap for Enterprise. This has been a full combat operation. It’s been a business as usual kind of deployment.” The world's first nuclear powered aircraft carrier's final voyage was a cruise of more than 80,000 miles in a 238-day deployment to the Persian Gulf where her aircraft flew more than 2,000 sorties in support of OEF in Afghanistan.

The USS Enterprise carrier has had a well known association with Star Trek. It's WWII era namesake appeared as a photograph on the original Starship Enterprise in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, while a gold model of the carrier was set in the wall of the NCC-1701-D's observation lounge. While the USS Ranger had to stand in for her during the filming of StarTrek IV: The Voyage Home, the Enterprise had many Star Trek fans on her crew who even appeared on Star Trek: Enterprise and the vessel even hosted conventions on board.

"We have found the nuclear wessel. And Admiral... it is the *Enterprise*"

The decommissioning of the Enterprise on December 1st will leave the Navy with 10 carriers until the scheduled commissioning of the Gerald R. Ford in 2015. A four year decommission process will begin over the next six months when her equipment to be off-loaded and then will be towed Newport News, Va., to defuel its nuclear reactors before heading to Washington state to be dismantled and have her metal sold for scrap. It is a tragedy that she can not be honoured in a better way.

Source: Military.com / Memory Alpha

Hail to the chief

“We are an American family and we rise and fall together as one nation and one people. We know in our hearts that in the United States of America the best is yet to come.”

U.S. Election Day 2012

Finally after a hopelessly long and relatively uneventful campaign, devoid of the entertainment of so many previous elections, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney battle it out in polling stations across the United States of America today. The voting which begun first in the Eastern states will bring an end to a hard-fought race that began nearly two years ago and has cost more than $2bn. Both candidates are polling so close, it’s impossible to say who could have the upper hand despite the incumbent Obama holding a hair’s-breadth lead in the crucial swing-states.

The election is decided by a bizarrely confusing to many ‘electoral college’ system. Each state is given a quantity of electoral votes in “rough proportion” to the population. The candidate who attains 270 such votes by prevailing in the state becomes the nations president. Squadrons of elite election and constitutional lawyers have already descended to the critical battleground states, especially Ohio, anticipating the mire of a strong legal battle for the state’s vote not seen since Florida in 2000.

The candidates spent Monday frantically campaigning the crucial battleground states including Florida, Iowa, Ohio and Virginia, making final appeals for votes by pushing their supporters to the polls and  convincing the undecided to vote for them. Romney kept up his attack on Obama's record, reciting statistics illustrating the president’s failure to lift the US economy out of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. In turn the president appeared at rallies with celebrities Bruce Springsteen and  Jay-Z, acknowledging peoples frustration with the still-lagging economy but told voters "our work is not done yet… We've come too far to turn back now."

Dana Milbank, writing in the Washington Post, has spotted something "new and unusual about Mr Romney". "In the waning days of the campaign, Romney was uplifting, optimistic and inspirational." According to Sam Stein in the Huffington Post, Monday's late-night rally in Iowa emphasised how President Barack Obama's "business-like" second White House run lacked the "hope narrative" of the first. Jim Rutenberg and Jeff Zeleny in the New York Times said Obama's team believed it had rebuilt its coalition of support "just enough to win".

While the change/no change in the POTUS is far less significant than last week’s acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney, I’ll still be providing a forward looking analysis of what either “staying the course” or “under new management” will mean for the world.

Best of luck to both candidates.

Source: BBC / Fox

Checking out the new digs

UNETIDA: Mexican Volcano UFO not carrying Magma-Men refugees

Mexican media company Televisa this week released footage of an apparent 1km long UFO falling into the mouth of Popocatepetl, an active volcano in Central Mexico, 80 miles from Mexico City. The video, apparently captured on Oct 25th has received much international coverage but has clearly been debunked by amateurs and experts alike.

UNETIDA issued support for this opinion that the video is a computer generated fake and there was no UFO incident. Teniente Coronel "Halcon" Sanchez, UNETIDA Air Operations Director for South America reported that there was no unscheduled aircraft [outside of the usual transponder-less aircraft from Colombia] in his region and no objects of that size which could have made planetfall.

Director of Intelligence for UNETIDA/UNPASID Colonel "Whopper" Creedon also specified that the UFO that was faked was not a spacecraft carrying a race of sentient Magma-Men refugees arriving to live in peace beneath the surface of the planet until humanity is extinct after which they will rise to the surface and develop the planet for themselves. "So don't go looking for them because they don't exist" he said.

Everything’s going to be alright

The Disney Corporation has had very few successful original ideas in the past 20 years. They fail epically when left to their own devices, but when dealing with the established franchises created by the likes of Pixar and Marvel, who both retain a measure of creative control, it’s obvious that great magic can be woven.

Case in point, The Avengers was languishing in limbo for years but it must be acknowledged that it was under Disney’s banner that Marvel were finally able to bring to fruition what everyone hoped The Avengers movie would be – one of the greatest movies in cinema history.

Star Wars may be in a completely different ballpark to anything Disney have dealt with before but that doesn’t mean they can’t handle it. Sure, many people know Buzz Lightyear and can probably name a Marvel superhero [if they're told Batman and Superman are not Marvel superheroes] but Star Wars is bigger than all that - it's arguably as big as Disney itself!

Every living being on the planet knows something about Star Wars. It is not just a lucrative franchise, it is an international phenomenon, a way of life, a religion, and yes - at it's core - a cash cow that will never run dry - it is an empire and one that it's creator and emperor has sought to house somewhere where he believes it will flourish before he relinguishes his crown. As he is infallible, we must abide by his decision.

Disney should put everything they have now into Star Wars [but leave some energy for Marvel sequels and new character-movies, we still want them too] and forget all of the shit they make with Nicholas Cage and any more Pirates of the Caribbean sequels etc. - no one wants to see more of them.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me during this crisis, I have drawn strength from your own positivity and I will bring you all further developments in this wondrous new chapter in the world's history as I have them.

Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?

Didn't Disney already try to make Star Wars?

Yes they did, quite recently in fact! And look how that turned out!

  

ARRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!! I'M GOING TO FUCKING KILL SOMEONE!!!!!!!!!!