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I wrote the following, on February 22, 2003, as a sort of pep-talk for myself.

Courage

I'm not a hero.

That is to say, I don't think of myself that way. I don't seek out danger. I'm not the type of guy who is always looking for the next adrenaline rush, or the latest thrill sport. I generally avoid dangerous activities.

I'm not a coward, either.

I'm not fearless. I realize, every day that I am here, that my life is in danger.

There is no way to avoid this conclusion. I'm told to wear body armor and a helmet. I carry a weapon. We build fortifications. I lug a pack full of chemical protection gear everywhere I go. I've received so many shots, I feel like a pincushion. Sometimes, when I have a moment or two to think about it, I feel a little bit scared. Frankly, only an idiot would not be afraid under these circumstances.

But I do have courage.

Courage is not the absence of fear. To the contrary, courage involves recognizing danger, but acting on the realization that danger must be confronted -- or it will find you when you are least prepared.

I didn't come here looking for a thrill.

I'm here because there is a hole in the ground in New York, where a couple of the world's tallest buildings used to be.

I'm here because I knew some of those people in the Pentagon.

I'm here because my seven-year-old nephew has nightmares about terrorists.

I'm here because whether Saddam is responsible or not for those terrorist attacks, he has the will and is developing the means to do much, much worse.

I'm here because if History teaches us anything, it is that evil men cannot be deterred by sanctions, containment strategies, diplomacy, resolutions, or weapons inspections.

I'm here because I don't believe in appeasement.

I'm here because someone has to be.

I'm here because I was called.

I'm here because I have a job to do.

This got a lot of positive feedback. One high-school girl later wrote to tell me that she had memorized and recited it as part of a public speaking contest, and had earned a standing ovation.

A rare "rant" from me on the practice of "plussing up" mobilizing reserve units with untrained, unqualified, or otherwise undesirable personnel. First published February 10, 2003:

The Second String

Our unit didn't deploy with 100 percent of our allotted manpower. This is not uncommon. In fact, it's pretty rare to find a reserve unit that is fully manned. The people that we did bring with us, for the most part, are motivated volunteers, despite the financial and other hardships that many of our personnel face. We can perform our mission with our own folks, no problem.

Of course, that's not a good enough answer for the pencil-pushers back home. Since we're not fully manned, they're sending us some extra bodies to get us up to 100 percent.

This is mostly a good thing. We can always use new blood. While they didn't all volunteer to come here, most of the "augmentees" have taken to their new jobs with, if not with eagerness, at least with some degree of professional pride.

The notable exception is a guy that I will call "Tom." Tom volunteered to come here. I'm always happy to have another volunteer, but I had to wonder why he chose to leave his own "safe" unit to come halfway around the world and perform a somewhat dangerous mission. I suspected that he was running away from something. As it turns out, Tom has a whole menu of personal issues, including a recent painful divorce, a run-in with law enforcement, and a diagnosed case of clinical depression.

Tom was acting strangely, and was displaying a little bit of a short temper that surfaced under stressful conditions. I asked a few of his fellow augmentees if they had any insights into his behavior, and that's when the stories started to emerge.

(Memo to the personnel folks back in the rear: please don't send me anyone who will create more work for me than he actually performs).

Tom had stopped taking his medication, because he "ran out and couldn't get a refill."

I sent him to a doc for a psych eval. The doc said to "keep him away from the weapons" until he has "stabilized" and could be "re-evaluated." Needless to say, this somewhat limits his usefulness in a potential war zone. In the meantime, I've found a "safe" job for him to do, and continue to evaluate his behavior. He seems to be improving, but how can I be sure he won't suddenly regress?

Then there's the guy I'll call "Frank." Frank does his job, and does it well. At the same time, he makes it absolutely clear that he doesn't want to be here. His current plan to get back home involves taking advantage of the archaic "last surviving male in the family" exception. This one dates back to the Civil War era, when it was critical for every family to have a male heir to carry on the family business or mind the farm. Those days may have long ago faded into memory, but Frank doesn't care. He'd probably wear a dress like Corporal Klinger if he thought it would get him home.

What Frank has failed to realize, no matter how often we tell him, is that the time for him to claim this exemption has passed. It's obvious to everyone involved that he is trying to "play" the system. His situation today is the same as it has been for several years, and he never said a word about it until he was mobilized. By volunteering to remain in the Reserves, he declared that he was willing and able to fight for his country in a time of need.

That time is now.

"Frankly," I feel like strangling the sumbitch. It is clear that he was only in the Reserves for the extra money and the pension. Like many others, he was gambling that he would never be recalled to active duty. He lost that bet.

Now it's time to pay the banker. Sorry, Frank.

Despite the early headaches, most of these reservists were able to make meaningful contributions later in the deployment. We kept "Tom" away from the weapons, and had him drive a shuttle bus for most of his tour.

I was on watch in the port when the Space Shuttle Columbia exploded on re-entry, on February 2, 2003.

A Moment of Silence

The XO broke the news. “We just heard over the radio that the Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on reentry. Seven astronauts were lost. I don’t have any more details.”

We were frozen for a moment, speechless. Then we went back to work.

We’re reservists, and we come from a wide variety of civilian backgrounds. We have mail carriers and small business owners, laborers and engineers, cops and attorneys. And we have one guy, Brian*, who works for NASA. He trains astronauts.

I saw him a few hours later. He appeared to be in shock.

“Hey Brian, I heard. Were they your crew?”

“Yeah. They were my friends.” The pain was evident in his voice.

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you talked to anybody back home?”

“Yeah. I talked to my wife, and some of my friends at Johnson.”

“What happened?”

“They’ve got some theories, but I don’t want to speculate until I have more information. They said they had some real wacky telemetry data and then…”

“This is a real tough blow.”

“Yeah. The program will probably shut down for a while. I’ll have to find a new job when I get back. But my problems are nothing compared to…”

“Yeah, I know. Kind of puts things in perspective, huh?”

“Yeah.”

*Not his real name.

I still vividly remember this conversation. The pain in his voice was heartbreaking.

We arrived in Kuwait on December 31, 2002. The place where we spent the month of January, Camp Arifijan, was (at that time) overcrowded, with most people living in tents or crammed into warehouses. Access to the Internet was severely restricted, and for official use only.

The following was the first of the two posts I put up that day:

The Big Stick

I apologize for the long dry spell. No, I haven’t been captured, killed, or injured in some horrible accident. I arrived safely “in country” about a month ago, and I’m doing just fine, thank you very much.

Since I last posted, I have made an effort to keep some form of written journal, but I have lacked the one thing that I needed to post updates on this site: access to the Internet.

I realized that getting to the Internet might be problematic long before I began this journal, but I was determined to give it a try, anyway. I imagined that I might have long dry spells, and that I might have to post several days of entries at once; but I never thought it would be quite this difficult. Yet, here I am, over a month into this grand adventure, and today was the first time since I left home that I have been able to get on a computer with Internet access.

The good news is that I have kept some written and electronic notes over the past several weeks, and I will be recreating, to the best of my memory, the entries that I would otherwise have posted on those dates.

The bad news is that I can’t post all of it, for reasons of operational security. The Internet is an open forum, and I’m not willing to give away any information that might be of use to our enemies. I do plan to come home alive, you see.

Today I got my smallpox vaccination. I didn’t get one as a child, so this was my first exposure ever to the “original” vaccine. Smallpox was the first widely administered vaccine in history. The virus that they use for the inoculation isn’t actually smallpox, but vaccinia (also known as cowpox) a related strain that stimulates a similar immune response (hopefully without all the nasty side effects). In fact, the word “vaccine” is derived from vaccinia.

Unlike most modern vaccines, this is a live virus, and rather than inject it deep into your tissue, they poke it into the surface of your skin several times with a thick needle, much like a tattoo artist might use. Because this was my first vaccination, I only got three sticks. The Smallpox veterans got fifteen. For some, this was their third time. Others were exempted, because they had been previously had eczema or other skin conditions that might indicate an adverse reaction. The docs have to be careful in the screening process, because one of the more severe possible side effects of the Smallpox vaccine is “death”.

So far, I’m just experiencing some mild soreness in my shoulder as I type. I’m guessing I’ll live, but it’s too soon to tell, really.

Shortly after I posted this, we moved into the newly established Camp Spearhead at the port of Ash Shuaibah. I was able to access the Internet regularly via the unclassified network at our operations center (yes, this was authorized, if a little unorthodox).

With links from Meryl and Glenn, traffic to my blog increased rapidly.

On December 6, 2002, I learned that my reserve unit was being mobilized for an overseas mission. A few days later, I opened a new weblog under the pseudonym "L.T. SMASH," a name which I borrowed from an episode of The Simpsons.

The following was the first entry on that new weblog, backdated to the day of the actual event narrated in the post.

Somewhere Dangerous

We’re being mobilized,” said the Commanding Officer. He gave us a few seconds to absorb the news.

“Go ahead and tell your civilian employers that you expect to have orders by the end of next week. Tell your families that you won’t be home for Christmas.”

The assembled officers and senior enlisted personnel looked around at each other, not certain how to respond. The news was not a complete surprise, but nobody had expected it to be so soon.

Someone managed to ask the first question that we all wanted answered. “Where are we going?”

“I can’t say.”

Telling your wife that you won’t be home for Christmas isn’t easy. When I arrived home that evening, the first thing I did was give her a big hug.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I told her, holding on a bit longer than normal.

“Why are you sorry?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“I won’t be home for Christmas this year.” She went limp in my arms.

“Where will you be?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Will it be local or…”

“Overseas. And when I do find out, I probably won’t be able to tell you--at least not right away.” We both knew what that meant. This wasn’t going to be a pleasure cruise.

I was going somewhere dangerous.

Without any publicity efforts, only close friends and family read the new blog for the first few weeks of its life.

Before the 2002 election, I issued my first series of political endorsements. Some of them won, others fell flat. But the one endorsement post I'm proudest of wasn't really an endorsement, so much as a condemnation.

Shockingly Corrupt

SOMETHING STINKS in Sacramento, and it isn’t the American River.

My first endorsement for the 2002 Election is a negative one. In the race for California Governor, I don’t care whom you vote for – as long as it isn’t Gray Davis.

Just say no.

In the past four years, Davis has distinguished himself as possibly the single most corrupt governor in the 154-year history of the state.

Simply put, Davis will do just about anything for a campaign contribution:

Despite having “sworn off” accepting campaign contributions from energy companies, Davis reversed himself last November, collecting $25,000 apiece from FPL Energy LLC and Caithness Energy LLC – both of which are seeking permits to build power plants in California.

"If it was dirty money before, it is even dirtier now," said [Harvey] Rosenfield, who heads the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. Davis is mistaken to think that the energy crisis is over, Rosenfield said.

"Tell that to the 20 million Californians who have seen their rates increase an average of 50 percent." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Davis also accepted a $25,000 contribution with software developer Oracle, which was subsequently awarded a $95 million contract by the state – a contract that auditors claim could cost taxpayers more than $40 million in unnecessary charges.

Republican assemblyman Rod Pacheco, who sits on the panel investigating the scandal, said that looks like a payoff to him.

"They just recognized that the general pervasive influence in that environment is a pay-to-play atmosphere," Pacheco said. (FOX News)

Tosco, a Bay Area energy company, donated $70,500 to Davis’ coffers. Shortly thereafter, the state approved an application by the company for a waiver against pollution abatement laws, allowing them to dump untreated toxic chemicals, inlcuding dioxin, directly into the San Francisco Bay. Tosco had been unsuccessfully attempting to obtain such a waiver for over seven years.

“I am astounded,'' said Richard Drury, an attorney for Communities for a Better Environment, based in Oakland. “The implication is that the Davis administration was willing to sacrifice the health of San Francisco Bay for campaign contributions.'' (San Jose Mercury News)

Last month television magnate A. Jerrold Perenchio, who has donated more than $900,000 to Davis’ campaign fund, directly benefited from a startling Coastal Commission decision to lift restrictions on development in Malibu’s Point Dume neighborhood.

"Jerry has given more than $900,000 to the governor," said Steve Uhring, Malibu Coastal Land Conservancy president. "That gets a lot of attention, and it seemed to have worked in this case." (Sacramento Bee)

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) governs the nation’s largest pension fund. Gray Davis personally appointed two of the board’s thirteen members: San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, and insurance consultant Sidney Abrams. Other prominent members include Democratic State Treasurer Phil Angelides and Democratic State Controller Kathleen Connell, both key Davis allies.

In March, the CalPERS board made the unprecedented decision to invest $100 million in Priemier Pacific Vineyards, betting the pensions of thousands of state employees on the future price of wine – a risky proposition to say the least.

Richard Wollack, the CEO of Priemier Pacific, subsequently hosted a $2,500-per-head campaign fund raiser for the governor.

Wayne Johnson, the president of the California Teacher’s Association, has been lobbying Davis to approve an agreement for expanded collective bargaining. The governor’s response?

"We were just sitting there talking and he just out of the blue said, 'You know, I really need a million dollars from you guys,'" Johnson said. "It was really very funny. There was this awkward silence."

Two weeks later, at a Read Across America event in Compton, Davis again pulled Johnson aside.

"He says, 'I need a million dollars for my campaign. I'm running against (GOP candidate Bill) Simon and you don't want Simon. I know that,'" Johnson said. "Just like that. There's little subtlety. He'll look you right in the eye and hit you." (Contra Costa Times)

The CTA has refused to donate the requested $1 million to Davis – and the collective bargaining agreement has not been approved.

In contrast, the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which has donated over $2.6 million to Davis since 1998, recently won a raise of over 30 percent for its members. By 2006, the average salary for a California Prison Guard will be $65,000 – before overtime and other generous incentives are factored in.

Steven Fama a staff attorney with the Prison Law Office, a legal advocacy group for California inmates, said the contract appeared to have sped through the Legislature, and the “public review was as skimpy as it gets.''

“And that says nothing of the huge deficit that the state has,'' Fama said. “The bigger picture, of course, is that the contract and the pay raises are a test to the political power of the guards' union. And if this is business as usual, it doesn't serve the public interest.'' (San Jose Mercury News)

Indeed.

Nontheless, Simon will receive my vote on Tuesday -- if only by default.

Davis won re-election in 2002. But the very next year, California voters recalled him by an overwhelming margin, and installed Arnold Schwarzeneggar in his place. Why was Davis recalled? Gross incompetence, and corruption.

I told you so.

On the morning of October 3, 2002, a two-man sniper team began a month-long killing spree in the greater Washington, D.C. area. The first set of murders happened in Maryland's Montgomery County, were I graduated from high school.

This was my first effort at live-blogging a news event, which resulted in a flood of traffic, and marked the beginning of several long-lasting relationships with bloggers such as Glenn Reynolds and Susanna Cornett.

Murder in Maryland

THE KILLING SPREE this morning in Montgomery County, Maryland hits uncomfortably close to home for me. I lived in the area for several years, and graduated from a local high school. One of the murders took place less than a mile from my former home.

A truck similar to the one from which the shots were
believed to have been fired. Police are urging anyone in
the area with information to call (240) 777-2600. There
is a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest
and conviction.

Reading about these shootings in the online edition of the Washington Post today, several thoughts come to mind. I apologize in advance if these are random and non-connected, but I don’t really know enough to draw any hard conclusions yet.

The killings took place between 6:00 am and 10:00 am. This is morning rush hour in suburban Maryland, and the roads would be packed. (Correction: the first shot, which missed, was at 5:40 pm Wednesday. The first fatal shooting occured at 6:04 pm the same evening).

All of the murders took place on or near one or more of the following major thoroughfares: Randolph Road, which runs East / West; Connecticut Avenue and Rockville Pike, both of which run North / South. Traffic on these streets would have been particularly heavy, making a quick getaway problematic. See the map on the Post website.

The times between shootings were 97 minutes (Correction: overnight), 31 minutes, 25 minutes, and 81 minutes, respectively. With the possible exception of the second time interval, these periods are somewhat longer than the normal travel times through this area at this time of day (it may be much worse now, it’s been several years). This would seem to indicate that the killers were cruising the area, picking their victims carefully.

The report of a man being shot while riding a mower in his front yard on the 11000 block of Rockville Pike seems wrong to me. This was the area near my former home, and I’ve refreshed my memory of the geography with some help from Mapquest.

The star marks the area of the second
shooting. My home was near the northeast
corner of Timberlawn Park.

There are very few homes that actually front Rockville Pike in this area – it is a six-lane divided boulevard, and most houses are on side streets. From what I can recall, on the east side of the Pike is the Strathmore Arts Center, and on the west side is Georgetown Preparatory School. The Arts Center has a big rolling lawn out front, and the Prep School is surrounded by a golf course. Both locations would be far more likely to have a man on a riding mower at 7:30 am than any private home, most of which have relatively modest yards. If it was at the school, this might shed more light on the decision of the local school district to go into lockdown.

Incidentally, the “X” on the map in the Washinton Post is a little bit too far north for this incident, which makes it appear closer to Randolph Road than reality. I haven't checked out the other sites, but I suspect that they might be similarly mis-marked.

The final (hopefully) shooting location, a gas station on the corner of Knowles and Connecticut Avenues, is also familiar. I used to get my car serviced at an auto shop around the corner. This relatively sleepy residential neighborhood has had a rough summer – back in June, an Amtrak train derailed in almost the exact same spot.

I’m inclined to believe, as Glenn Reynolds speculates, that these murders may have been a pre-meditated act of terrorism. The victims appear to have been randomly selected, and the shootings professionally executed. I’m guessing that the driver and the gunmen were not the same person, making a getaway easier. Also, the use of a generic, white van illustrates some forethought.

Aside from that, I have nothing to back up my hunch. I’ll be watching the news to see what develops -- and praying that none of the victims turn out to be former acquaintances.

In the months preceding the Iraq War, there was much hand-wringing and debate over Bush's "pre-emptive war" Doctrine. The following alternate-history exercise, first published on September 19, 2002, was my contribution to the discussion.

An Alternate Past

August 21, 2001

WASHINGTON, DC – President Bush will call an emergency session of Congress this week to address the threat of international terrorism, a senior administration official reports.

While it is not clear what specific information has prompted the President to cut short his vacation and to meet with his National Security Council, sources in the Pentagon report that Bush has requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff present him with a range of military options to “neutralize” suspected terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

“He’s definitely got his sights set on (Usama) Bin Laden,” said a Pentagon official, referring to the Saudi millionaire and front man for the al-Qaeda (“The Base”) terrorist organization suspected of the 1998 truck bomb attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the suicide attack on the destroyer USS Cole last year.

Speculation is also swirling around the arrest last week by the FBI of Zacharias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent who was enrolled as a student at a commercial aviation academy in Minnesota. Moussaoui raised alarm bells when he requested flight training on large passenger jets, but expressed no interest in learning takeoff or landing procedures. Sources within the FBI report the current theory is that Moussaoui was planning to hijack a passenger aircraft and fly it into a government building in the United States, possibly the White House or the Pentagon. Another agent expressed skepticism, suggesting that the FBI was being hyper-vigilant and that his fellow agents dreamed up the scenario after reading “Debt of Honor,” a 1996 Tom Clancy novel that describes a strikingly similar attack on the US Capitol.

Sources close to the congressional leadership report that Bush has contacted the senior leaders of Congress and informed them that he intends to ask for a resolution authorizing the use of military force against the al-Qaeda organization, and possibly the Taliban government in Afghanistan. The President cited “new evidence” linking Bin Laden, and by extension the Taliban, to last year’s attack on the USS Cole as well as the Moussaoui case.

At least one Democratic congressman, speaking on condition of anonimity, expressed skepticism of any link between Moussaoui and Afghanistan. “The Administration does not have one ounce of proof that the Taliban has anything to do with this Moussaoui guy,” the congressman said, “Bush is merely attempting to manufacture an international crisis to bolster his sagging poll numbers.” He also questioned the targeting of Bin Laden. “What’s so special about this guy? Timothy McVeigh killed more Americans than Bin Laden ever did. And why Afghanistan? The Hezbollah organization in Lebanon has killed hundreds of Americans, and is openly sponsored by Syria and Iran. Are we going to invade those countries, too?”

“Where’s the smoking gun,” another congressman asked, “Moussaoui is probably just another innocent victim of ethnic profiling by an out-of-control FBI.” He also cautioned against “military adventurism” in Central Asia. “The Russians and British had their asses handed to them in Afghanistan. We had better be absolutely sure of what we’re doing before we commit our sons and daughters to combat in that God-forsaken country.” He compared the Bush Administration’s furor over the Moussaoui case to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. “Bush is going to get us bogged down in another war started over trumped-up evidence, just like LBJ did in ’64. Several of my friends died in Vietnam and I’m not going to let him put the country through that again.” When asked what Bush’s motivation might be to invade Afghanistan, the congressman served up a one-word reply: “Oil.”

Sources close to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle report that the Senate is unlikely to bring a resolution on Afghanistan to a vote before the end of September. “It’s just not a priority right now,” said the source, “we’ve got to deal with the economy first.”

Today, Afghanistan is seen as "the good war." But what if we had launched it before September 11?

First published on July 2, 2002, this remains one of my favorite "quickie" posts:

SPECTACULAR ERUPTION ON THE SUN

NASA: Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

What did Bush know and when did he know it?

Today, we know better. It's actually Al Gore who's to blame.

To celebrate Independence Day 2002, I imagined what a blogger might have posted had any been around on July 4, 1776...

CONGRESS DECLARES COLONIES INDEPENDENT

Thursday, July 4, 1776

It has finally come down to this – today, in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress approved a Declaration of Independence. In the words of the principle Author, Mr. Thomas Jefferson of Virginia,

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America… do solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved.

The King and Parliament have heaped insult upon injury on our Colonies, starting with the ill-advised and short-lived Stamp Act of 1765, continuing with the now-infamous taxes and duties imposed in the Townshend Acts, and culminating in the Intolerable Acts and subsequent military occupation of the Port of Boston. The only surprising aspect to today's Declaration is that the Congress tarried so long before taking Action.

That being said, we must not overlook the importance of this Occasion. In one unanimous vote, the Delegates of the Continental Congress have sent to the World a clear and unambiguous Message – that we are no longer rebellious British Colonists, but American Revolutionaries. It is not possible to turn back now. Every Man must choose his path – loyalty to the Crown, or to these newly united States. There can be no middle Course. As Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin warned the Delegates, "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

This is not the end of our Struggle; the way ahead will not be easy. Still, it is a necessary and important Milestone on our road to Freedom.

The Declaration itself is much more than a mere list of Grievances, although of Grievances its count is numerous. Mr. Jefferson has fused the "Common Sense" of Thomas Paine with the eloquent idealism of John Locke. In a turn of phrase that is destined to be remembered long after its Author has passed into the Hereafter, Jefferson declares:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness ~ That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

These words represent the most democratic of principles - that governments are not established by "Divine Right," but from the powers granted to them by the People; and that no government may deprive Men of the Rights granted to them by God.

Conspicuously absent from the Declaration was a condemnation of the loathsome practice of slavery, although it was rumored that an earlier draft contained words to that effect. It appears that the Continental Congress has decided to defer the contentious slavery issue to a later date.

The document concludes with this Oath, followed by the signatures of the various Delegates:

For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Our Leaders have spoken, and a new democratic Nation on this day has been born. May Providence grant us the wisdom to keep it free.