Bookworm Room

Tweet Long-time readers know that Fleet Week is a BIG DEAL in the Bookworm household.  Thanks to our membership in the Navy League, we’ve seen the Blue Angels from the deck of the USS Carl Vinson, as well as from the middle of the Bay on a Coast Guard cutter.  We even had the pleasure [...]

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Tweet Leon Panetta has given the go-ahead to a plan to allow women into combat situations: Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s official ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to them, senior defense officials said Wednesday. [snip] The decision clearly fits into [...]

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Tweet The rule of war used to be that you hated your enemy. That made it easy to fight your enemy. Then, starting with the first Gulf War, the new rule was that you felt sorry for your enemy. By the Iraq War, the rule had become, you’ve got to like and respect your enemy. [...]

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Tweet I have some very exciting news: I have found my long-lost identical twin. It’s amazing, really. Like me, my twin grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 60s and 70s. Like me, my twin went to UC Berkeley and found Leftist antics revolting. Like me, my twin now does conservative commentary, [...]

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Tweet My childhood spanned the late 1960s and early 1970s.  In San Francisco, a few things were clear:  policemen were pigs; troops were baby killers; and veterans were crazy drug addicts.  Those older than I — say in their late teens through late 30s — were openly hostile to the military.  There was no back [...]

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Tweet Last year, when I was casting about for a holiday season charity, a friend recommended the Semper Fi Fund, which helps out wounded service people and their families.  I was planning on making a donation again this year, sometime around December something or other, but I’m not going to wait that long.  I’m going [...]

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Tweet On Monday, November 5, an ad will run in the Washington Times with the names of almost 500 retired military officers from all of the different forces who support Mitt Romney.  I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of the ad.  The same email forwarding the ad asked that it be shared [...]

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Tweet I cannot vouch for the facts in this email I received, so please take that into consideration as you read it: From my personal experience at Bagram last year, when the “Commander-in-Thief” came over, the troops were handpicked, screened, and disarmed, including the Marines. All base roads, sidewalks, and access to flight lines, mess [...]

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Tweet I’m guessing that a majority of Americans (a slim majority, but still a majority) know that America entered WWII because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  What few stop to consider is why we ended up fighting, not only the Japanese who had just bombed us, but the Germans as well, since they, after all, [...]

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Tweet A military friend pointed me to Fallen Not Forgotten, a veteran-created and owned apparel business that donates a portion of its proceeds to military charities.  The guys at FNF have now set up a page that seeks straight out donations that they will put towards a scholarship fund for the sons and daughters of [...]

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Tweet What one can say with certainty about the last presidential debate is that it is not a game-changer — which is good for Romney, because the game is currently scoring in his favor.  In that way, it was a nothing of a debate.  Nevertheless, there were aspects of the debate that were fascinating. Fascinating [...]

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Tweet In my previous post, I huffed and puffed about the fact that the top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan ruminated that, quite possibly, it was the NATO troops’ own fault that Afghan forces shot them, because NATO forces had been insensitive to the stress of Ramazan (the Afghan version of Ramadan).  My hope is that [...]

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Tweet Despite being associated with water, the Marines have often been on the cutting edge of aviation, especially in battle conditions.  Enjoy this video celebrating those accomplishments:

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Tweet When my friends make mistakes, I’m usually amused and rather pleased, not because I revel in their suffering, but because it shows our shared humanity.  When bad things happen to my friends, I feel genuine distress and wish devoutly for their situation to improve. The opposite is true, of course, when people or institutions [...]

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Tweet I wish I could be in Cleveland right now.  I have to admit that it’s not the City of Cleveland itself that calls to me, although I’m sure it’s a very nice place.  Instead, it’s the fact that the City is playing host to the 4th annual Marine Week.  Previous years’ events were held [...]

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Tweet The nature of most modern flash mobs is that they’re anything but spontaneous, meaning that the word “flash” is a misnomer.  Sometimes, though, real flash mobs do happen, with large groups of people coming together spontaneously for a single purpose.  When they’re ugly, they’re the L.A. Riots.  And when they’re beautiful, they’re this: To [...]

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Tweet Chris Hayes got himself a great spanking because of his inability to acknowledge military heroism: CHRIS HAYES: Thinking today and observing Memorial Day, that’ll be happening tomorrow.  Just talked with Lt. Col. Steve Burke [sic, actually Beck], who was a casualty officer with the Marines and had to tell people [inaudible].  Um, I, I, [...]

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Tweet I promise that this post will be a review of Marcus Luttrell’s Service: A Navy SEAL at War.  First, though, I have to start with the ridiculous, before I can give proper context, not to the sublime (because war isn’t sublime), but to the important and meaningful. The ridiculous is, of course, MSNBC’s own [...]

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Tweet Sgt. Gary Stein was discharged from the Marines because he created a web page critical of President Obama.  Despite the fact that I agree with Sgt. Stein’s political views, I think the Marines did the right thing. One of the things that makes our military great is the fact that it is a non-partisan [...]

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Tweet I got an email from Andrea Shea King (the Radio Patriot) that had in it a picture of Keanu Reeves and a headline about a post with one former Navy SEAL’s challenge to Barack Obama because of the latter’s narcissistic reliance on the SEALS as his own personal campaign tool.  That seemed like a [...]

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Tweet A few days ago, the New York Times ran an article assuring everyone that Barack Obama isn’t a wuss, he’s a warrior.  I have only a couple of points. First, considering that Obama has been and is such an aggressive President, one who has seen more troops die on his watch in Afghanistan than [...]

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Tweet The Left periodically floats the idea of reinstating the draft.  They dress it up in an “everyone should share the burden” argument, but it’s pretty clear that the goal is to create a Vietnam War dynamic, in which young people take to the streets to protest a war, not because they know anything about [...]

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Tweet If you ever quizzed me on military ranks, I would fail, not just miserably, but whatever is more abject and humiliating than “miserably.”  As of today, though, I know what a Sergeant Major in the Marines is, and now you can too: In the United States Marine Corps, sergeant major is the ninth and [...]

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Tweet On a regular basis, the New York Times launches an attack against the military.  Or more accurately, against the men and women (especially the men) who serve in the military.  We get stories about their high drug abuse rates, high crime rates, high insanity rates, and high suicide rates.  Usually, when you start digging, [...]

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Tweet Growing up, I never could understand why Vietnam Vets were all insane, while the vets of my father’s generation — WWII and the Korean War — were not.  My parents, good people who subscribed to Time, Newsweek, and the San Francisco Chronicle — explained to me that it was undoubtedly because all the Vietnam [...]

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