FunBobby

I've grown weary of debating our reasons for launching OIF, but I'll still take a moment or two to discuss strategy and tactics. You're kidding, right? Aerial bombing is a very, very effective tactic, but the futility of relying solely on aerial bombardment to achieve strategic objectives has been demonstrated over and over again in past conflicts. With the stated objectives of this campaign, it was clear that a strong, decisive ground campaign was necessary. What was that line? Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Bobby

PS - stay warm! FunBobby

Jennifer - If you can get your cats to stay still, I might suggest you use the "night scene" mode of your camera. You might have to steady the camera on a tripod (the mini tripods you can get at WalMart work really well) because the shutter will open for a full 2 seconds. The camera will also use the largest aperture setting. What's that all mean? No flash, but awesome lighting with no harsh shadows and no red (or in the case of pets, green) eyes. Look at this picture I took of the living room on Christmas Eve ... the room was lit by nothing but the Christmas tree lights and the fire, but the picture looks great. No harsh shadows, and soft lighting. And look at this picture of me and some of my skydiving friends at a very nice (and expen$ive!!) dinner on New Year's Eve. I told everyone to hold really still for the picture. The shutter was open for 2 seconds. Look at how everyone else is blurred. But look at the lighting! No flash, no harsh shadows, no red eyes, and the lighting looks great even in that dimly (and softly) lit room. During the daytime in less than ideally lit rooms, if your subjects (i.e. your cats) hold still, you can use the night mode to get great lighting and colors in your photos without a flash, shadows, and green eyes. Most digital cameras have some sort of "night scene" mode, and using it is usually as simple as flipping the selector switch to "night scene" or selecting it from a menu, pointing, and shooting. Try it. Good luck. FunBobby

Right on about the guerrilla warfare during the Revolutionary war . . . I believe there was a Major named Fox who the British called the “Swamp Fox” because his forces would make quick guerrilla type attacks out of the swamps and retreat back into those swamps before the British could react and counter. The difference from then and now is that there are international, recognized laws that govern warfare. Those laws were written to establish standards of decency and protect dignity and humanity during armed conflict. That’s why you hear about leaders who have committed atrocities in warfare being brought up on war crimes - take Milosevic, for example, who was tried in the Hague on war crimes charges. They stand trial and are judged according to those laws. We as American servicemembers fight by those laws. Yep. War is war. But I don’t think soldiers who lack our technology and capabilities are scum. In some cases, I admire them for their tenacity and willingness to fight even with the odds stacked against them. But when those fighters threaten our forces, we have to take them down. And when those soldiers resort to low down, dirty, cowardly, kick-in-the-crotch tactics, then they’re scum. And I, as an active duty officer in the U.S. military, do very, very firmly believe that I and my comrades are hundreds of times more honorable than many of the enemies we face. We fight according to a code of conduct and standards that dictate how we treat opposing forces. Ask Jeff Zaun (US Navy A-6 BN shot down during the first night of Desert Storm and POW during the entire conflict) how honorable his Iraqi captors were. Better yet, have a look: Clicky American servicemembers aren't allowed to do that kind of crap to others, even our enemies. I don’t think I and my comrades are more honorable because we have better technology, better weapons, better training, and a better life. We are more honorable because we are charged with being persons of honor. I as an officer am held to high standards of integrity and honor. Honor is one of the core values of the force in which I fight. I believe we are more honorable than many of the forces we face, but not because we have equipment – it’s because we have honor. Respectfully, Bobby R. LCDR, USN

A little disclaimer here – I’m not a JAG officer. Those guys could address all of this better than me. But I’ll offer my opinion and thoughts, right or wrong. SpecOps forces in Afghanistan – that’s a good one. Perhaps they were primarily recon units? And I believe the rules are different if forces are conducting in a mission other than open warfare . . . as a matter of fact, I’m sure of it. Those special forces are restricted in what they can do during those covert ops. In any conflicts these days, some of the most important members of admirals’ and generals’ staffs are their JAG officers – their lawyers. Fighting units get lots of training on rules of engagement and the legality of their actions. Actually, it makes it harder to fight sometimes, but like I said before, hopefully, honoring ROE protects civilians. As for resistance fighters: if they are not part of the sovereign state’s regular military, I do not believe they are governed by the laws of armed conflict. Hopefully, though, they would have some sense of decency. Bobby

I completely disagree. Believe it or not, there are actual international laws that govern armed conflict that aim to protect basic human dignity and decency during war. They also aim to protect civilians. Members of a military force who are fighting must be distinguishable from the civilians around them so that civilians will not be targeted by the opposing force. Those bastards used civilian vehicles in part to mask the fact that they were a hostile force, knowing full well that American forces would hesitate to target them for fear of harming innocent civilians. That's not only cowardly, but also unethical and illegal. Once car bombs became a threat, coalition forces upped their defensive posture and were much more aggressive towards any civilians vehicles that approached – rightfully so, I might add – because it was shown that any car could be a threat. But with that heightened defensive posture and tension came the increased chance of getting an innocent civilian harmed or killed. Hmmmm. I am an American flyer who, like my contemporaries, has studied that tactics of my predecessors. American aviators have always been too valuable to waste in intentional, planned suicide type attacks. Our weapons delivery systems and tactics have always been more than adequate enough to keep us from having to resort to such desperate measures. The only suicide attacks I am aware of by American aviators are those few instances where pilots at the controls of doomed, battle-damaged airplanes intentionally crashed their aircraft into the best target they could find in their last moments. None of those, though, went flying with the intention of crashing into an enemy target. And oh, by the way, all of those pilots were flying in regular military aircraft with US insignia, easily identifiable as US military. Very, very different from car bombers. I am an American flyer and I shudder to think that anyone would ever put me, my comrades, or my predecessors in the same category as those bastards making runs at our posts with car bombs. Respectfully Bobby R. LCDR, USN [Edited to correct a typo that wasn't caught by the spell checker]

Very moving tribute. Here's an image from my brothers in arms... Clicky God Bless... FunBobby

Bleaaah . . . . FunBobby

The drop zone where I learned to jump in FL sits about 40 miles south of the base I flew in and out of; it's also about 20 miles north of the bombing range we frequented whilst I was there. During my earlier days, when flying to or from the range, as we neared the airport, I would bank the airplane, excitedly point out the DZ and tell whoever was flying with me "That's where I skydive!!!" I would note our altitude and remark offhandedly, "Yeah, this is about where I jump out . . ." or "This is just about where I open my chute . . ." Of course, the NFO type would get rather edgy if I said, "Hmmmm. I wonder what it would be like to jump right here, right now!" Now, in San Diego, whenever we fly east into the desert (coming home, too!) we fly right over the DZ, and I do just about the same thing. FunBobby

(Edited because I type too fast and am prone to typos - and sometimes too lazy to check! ) Just wanted to compliment you on your new avatar - artistic, enticing, and classy all at the same time. FunBobby

She's beautiful. Say hi to Tracy Wilson for me. FunBobby

You are correct. I wrote that stream of thoughts rather quickly, so I probably didn't state my points as well as I would have liked to. The bit about intelligence is the “something else” you refer to. As I said, I don’t pretend to know everything that the government does. But I believe that based on his past actions and intelligence that we had gathered on his regime, our government viewed SH and his forces as not only a threat to our nation, but a threat great enough that it warranted military action. The Bush administration some time ago very clearly stated that it viewed several states as threats, and even more simply, “evil.” Iraq and North Korea were among those. Sure, there are lots of bad people and evil leaders in the world. But the fact that someone is bad, evil, or hateful of you does not make him a threat. When that evil person who hates you demonstrates his willingness and desire to hurt others, and to hurt you, he becomes a threat. SH is evil. SH has hurt others in the past. The government must have decided, based on the intelligence we had, that SH’s regime and forces, whether they were from his organized military, paramilitary, or loyalists, would have hurt Americans. He became a threat. So we removed him. FunBobby

Okay. Whenever folks discuss and debate foreign policy and military strategy, I usually don’t comment, but I feel unusually strongly compelled to say something here. Maybe not, but you need a damn good one before you send someone else's beautiful children out to fight your war for you. Wendy W. I agree completely. There are a lot of bad men out there. Many of them also don't like the US. What makes SH "worthy" of our soldiers' lives, when the others aren't? Wendy W. During his time in power, SH always maintained as powerful a military force as he could, and he continually showed his eagerness to develop and produce WMDs; worse yet, he actually used them. His most loyal followers have shown their willingness to resort to unconventional forms of warfare, including terrorist type tactics. It’s no secret that SH hates America. So SH was a clear, credible threat to the US, its citizens, its allies, and its interests. SH was enough of a threat that we needed to remove him and take down his regime before something terrible happened. Some might say “Well, come on, he hadn’t attacked America… when did he actually hurt us? Why couldn’t we just keep a watch on him? Why did we have to send the military in?” Hmmmm. Let’s go back to 1996 when 19 Americans lost their lives in a terrorist attack on the Khobar towers in Saudi Arabia; then remember in 1998 when the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed; 2 years later, in October of 2000, USS Cole was bombed at anchorage while deployed to the Arabian Gulf. Military and political analysts allege that one man was behind all of those incidents, in which many Americans were killed. That man, of course was Osama bin Laden. We had our chances to get Osama, but we didn’t. And then something terrible happened on Sept 11 2001. Yeah, I know we still haven’t gotten him but at least we’ve done a great deal to take down his organization; we have done a lot more than we did under the last administration. Ohbytheway, do you remember those speeches after the attacks on the Khobar towers, the US Embassies, and USS Cole, when (then) President Clinton vowed on TV “We will find those responsible, we will hunt them down, and we will bring them to justice”? Did we? No. I don’t pretend to know as much the folks in Washington in super tight vaults, super secret rooms, behind closed doors and heavily armed guards. My security clearance is pretty high, but not that high. I have to trust our government, our elected government, to make their decisions based on educated, calculated analyses of the risks and benefits of our actions - or inaction. They base some of those decisions on the very best intelligence that they have. Like I said, I don’t know (and frankly, I’m not sure I want to know) everything they know . . . some of that stuff is actually very scary. Yeah, some of that intelligence may be suspect or even wrong, but in this case, I really think we had to go do what we did. SH had become too big of a menace for us to not do anything, and all of our initiatives to pacify him and lessen that threat - inspections, diplomacy, sanctions - had failed. Military action should always be the last resort, and we had reached the end of the rope with SH. Like Osama, SH had shown himself to be a credible threat, and a danger to the American people. This time, our president decided to act and remove him before he had the chance to do something terrible. War is a terrible thing. Getting sent off to fight in a conflict and not coming home - also terrible. This business is very personal for me. I have some of my closest and dearest friends in the military with me, many of whom I’ve known for decades. These are guys whose weddings I stood up in and whose children call me “Uncle Bobby.” Some of those are not here with us anymore. I lost a good friend, someone I had flown with for years and whose family I had grown very close to, in a very tragic aircraft mishap. I grieved alongside his family and held his widow and his children in my arms as they cried. Another good friend of mine, and one of my best friends from school and in the service, was the Operations Officer on USS Cole and the Officer of the Deck when the ship was bombed. So like I said, this whole business is very personal to me, and even more so to countless others, and yes, I know that our soldiers’ lives are precious. So too are the lives of the Americans here in the U.S. whose lives, safety, well being, and way of life they fight for. I’ll tell you something. I flew in an Air Wing off of one of the carriers during the whole shooting match, and I had lots of ties to folks on the ground all over the region. Everyone over there strongly believed in what we were doing. And one of the things that helped all of us was the thought that we had the support of folks back home. Keep that in mind. Yes, war is terrible. I think it’s tragic whenever lives are lost, and doubly terrible that we’re still losing American soldiers in Iraq. I think of our service members still over there and pray for their safety and quick return. I really do. But it is my contention that our presence there, no matter how evil, is necessary to overcome a greater evil and to take down a threat to our nation. God Bless - FunBobby

Hooker - tailhooker. FunBobby

Very nice FunBobby

not if a "moment" is defined as 0.00000000001 or smaller O Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. At (10/9) m, they will have travelled and equal distances. FunBobby

Okay, so I finally remembered all that stuff from way back when. Is this calculus or algebra? Seems like algebra to me..... (See attached) FunBobby

There was a time I could solve this with a pencil and paper using algebraic formulas and such. Microsoft Excel works well, too... see attached. As someone earlier said, Achilles and his opponent, the tortoise, will be neck and neck at 11.1111111111 meters. One moment after that, Achilles will be ahead. FunBobby

Very nice. FunBobby

Okay, not a stupid tandem student story, but a great one nonetheless. Thanx! FunBobby

Okay, maybe he's jealous. No offense, but is he the only one at work who's "sick of [you] talking about [your] jumps all week after a good weekend"? Your words, by the way. I love skydiving every bit as much as the next jumper, and sure, I love talking about it. But hearing someone talk about one thing over and over, no matter how exciting that thing may be, may get old real quick. It's great to show enthusiasm for our sport, but too much of anything can become tiresome. FunBobby

You? Nah, people don't think that way about you. They might think you're Godawful. Just kidding there, Art. You can say all you want becuase you have thousands and thousands of jumps in all sorts of disciplines, fly your canopy like a pro, do everything in this sport well, and have absolutely no attitude about it. More jumpers could learn a thing or two from you and your friends. Kinda makes me ill. FunBobby

Skydive Palatka (Palatka, FL) Skydive Deland (DeLand, FL) Emerald Coast Skydiving Center (Elberta, AL) Quantum Leap Skydivng Center (Sullivan, MO) WFFC (Quncy, IL 2000) NIP 095070 Jacksonville Beach, FL Skydive Monterrey Bay (Monterrey, CA) Lake Elsinore (Elsinore, CA) Skydive San Diego (San Diego, CA) Skydive Express (York, Australia) Pacific Skydiving Center (North Shore, Oahu, HI) FunBobby

Punching the clown Pettin' the porker Slappin' the Salami Hitting the ceiling Rubbing one out Roughing up the suspect Taking yourself out for a date FunBobby

More beer!!!! Congrats to you. FunBobby