Bookworm Room

I came of age in the post-Vietnam era.  Let me amend that:  I came of age in San Francisco in the post-Vietnam era.  Although Fleet Week, which started in the City about 20+ years ago has done a lot to turn things around, San Francisco has not been a military friendly city, and most definitely [...]

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America’s First Sergeant put up a post that perfectly addresses my last two attempts to figure out Mike McQueary’s inaction.  The first post I wrote looked at McQueary’s alleged youth, which I contrasted with the even youthier youth of a few Medal of Honor recipients who didn’t hesitate to act.  The second (with lots of [...]

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Dan Abrams, who’s some sort of ABC talking head, has weighed in about Mike McQueary.  Because I’ve already flogged the topic to death in other posts, I won’t explain here why I strongly disagree with his argument that McQueary really didn’t do anything that wrong. What intrigued me in the article was a point I’ve [...]

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Navy One brought my attention to the fact that America’s 1st Sergeant once served with Medal of Honor winner Dakota Meyer.  I quickly headed over to the link, anticipating some reminiscences about Meyer.  Am’s 1st Sgt didn’t include any.  Instead, he repeated Meyer’s own words, spoken after the fact: I didn’t think I was going [...]

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I hate hearing the word “hero” thrown around with the casual abandon we see today:  he’s a sports hero, he’s an “action” (movie) hero, she’s a heroic teacher.  I don’t mean to denigrate people who are brilliant athletes, entertaining movie stars, or dedicated teachers.  It’s just that “hero” is the wrong word, and it cheapens [...]

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I want to send you to two posts at Blackfive, since they go together. The first post has an interview with SSG Sal Giunta, the first living Medal of Honor winner in the post 9/11 era. They are both interesting and moving. When Matt sent the email giving the heads up about the post, I [...]

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As the last part of our Alaska cruise, which started and ended in Seattle, we went to the Museum of Flight.  I wrote about our museum visit here, and mention this earlier post because I wrote that all four of us were riveted by the monitor playing fairly extended interviews with living Medal of Honor [...]

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One of the best things we did on our vacation was something we slotted in during the short time we had between arriving in Seattle at the end of our cruise and boarding our plane for home.  During those few hours, we went to the Museum of Flight, which is every bit as wonderful as [...]

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Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. [...]

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The MSM has been very low key about this one (natch), but we in the blogosphere don’t have to abide by MSM constraints. I therefore wanted to make sure all of you knew the story of Michael Monsoor, the first Naval hero to be awarded a Medal of Honor in the Iraq War. As you [...]

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