Hackworth's defunct (with apologies to ee cummings)

Colonel David Hackworth's
defunct
    who used to
    ride the bumpy strut of a Nam
                                                      chopper
and save onetwothreefourfive GIs justlikethat
                                                                  Jesus
he was a honest and brave man,
              and what I want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy now
Mister Death?

---

I found out about Hack's demise
When I clicked open his website...
And went tharn
At the news.

How come I hadn't heard?

How come Big Media
Would rather slap me senseless,
With fluff about runaway brides,
And puff about drunk Alabaman teens
In Aruba,
Rather than share with me,
News of the closing
Of Hackworth's notable life?

How come?

Is it because Hack
Vociferously told the truth,
The whole truth,
And nothing but the painful truth
About Vietnam?
About Iraq?
And they simply couldn't hack it?

In 1971, as the Army's youngest colonel he spoke out on national television saying, "This is a bad war ... it can't be won we need to get out." In that interview, he also said that the North Vietnamese flag would fly over Saigon in four years -- a prediction that turned out to be right on target. He was the only senior officer to sound off about the insanity of the war. Understandably, Nixon and the Army weren't real happy with his shooting off his mouth.

No doubt...
Hack's youthful words about Vietnam
Irked the uniformed dandies,
Deeply entrenched
In the Pentagon's military-industrial complex.

So much so,
That even today
In Death as in Life,
These brass berets continue to deny him his honor:

"He led from the front, at one point getting out on the strut of a helicopter, landing on top of an enemy position and hauling to safety the point elements of a company pinned down and facing certain death. Thirty years later, the grateful enlisted men and young officers of the 4/39, now grown old, are still urging the Pentagon to award him the Medal of Honor for this action. So far, the Army has refused."

Oh well...
And,
Oh hell...
I suppose no really expects
Pentagonal squares
To act like well-rounded men
And do what's right.

Especially since...
Hack's vision,
His ability to find truth
And straight shoot it,
Quite naturally
Led him to
Take aim at Iraq.
And irritate the dandies all over again.

I can't think of a more fitting tribute to him
Then on the very day after
Bush's empty-headed,
Puff and fluff speech
At Fort Bragg,
That did not contain
One item
Anyone could point at
As something to put on
A serious
"To-do" list...

Then to point to
And quote from,
One of Hack's last pieces
That detailed,
And codified,
And presented,
Readers and leaders
With a large bulleted list
Of how to get of Iraq.

Jesus...
he was an honest man
And Jesus...
We already miss him:

"Immediately fire SecDef Donald Rumsfeld, all of his Pentagon senior civilian assistants and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers. "

"Replace Rumsfeld with retired Gen. Anthony Zinni and give this tough, smart, proven leader a free hand to bring in the best people to reshape and streamline our armed forces for the long counterinsurgency fight ahead."

"Fire National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and replace her with retired Gens. Wes Clark or John Sheehan."

"Establish a military objective – an often-neglected Principle of War – that will include: how the U.S. is going to regain the lost initiative (another neglected Principle of War) and how we’re going to take and hold the turf seized by insurgents; how we will then win the Iraqi people to our side in the fight against the insurgents; how the nascent Iraqi defense shield will eventually replace our forces; and a detailed, coherent exit plan."


(Note: signed copies of Hack's book can be obtained here.)

flagburning @ flagburner.org

The House on Wednesday approved a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the power to ban desecration of the American flag ... The proposed one-line amendment to the Constitution reads,

"The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States."

---

Pssst... wanna burn a flag?

Call me an old-fashioned curmudgeon,
But I've got a hot heart
For those who would make it illegal,
For me,
Or you,
To express our opinions
However overheated our opinions may sometimes be.

You say you want to burn the U.N. flag?

Cool.


As for me...
I have a sintering desire
To see the Catholic flag
Go up in glorious curls
Of yellow smoke.

But hey,
That's just me,
I remember too well,
What those nuns did to me,
And my classmates,
So long ago...

But never mind what I remember...
What do you remember?

What angers you to flames?
What memories would you like to singe?
What idea would you like to say to: "Burn baby burn"?

You see,
Like it or not...

I have the right to torch a Koran,
Fry a New Testament,
Or bake the Torah Alaskan-style.

And like it or not:

You have the right to wipe
Your ass with
Darwin's Origin of the Species,
With one hand,
And deny the existence of dinosaurs
Using sign language
With the other...

That's called freedom.
Like it or not.

Here is an idea
I had over ten years ago
When the Internet was but a young ember,
And we were all just innocent arsonists:

Create a web site that allows anyone to burn any flag.
Click a country--up pops it's flag.
Click combust--up in flames it goes.
Click save as an attachment...
And you can email the flaming electronic artifact
To anyone
Anywhere
Anytime.

High tech flagburning at flagburner.org

Come get yours...

All this incineration,
Done non-physically of course.

Desecration?
Who knows?

Physical desecration?
Only Judge Antonin Scalia knows for sure.

But does the thought piss you off?
The thought that,
Anybody could fire up an Iranian flag?
Or a Lichtenstein one?

If so: Good.
Because you need to be pissed off...
And pissed off,
And pissed off,
Until,
You understand that freedom
Is not always a comfortable thing,
For you,
Or me,
Or anyone...

Eat shit and die....

Everytime I read this,
Everytime I bounce it around in my brain,
Everytime I try to go deep or perceptive on it...
My mind returns the same results:

Why you fat, ugly, play-pretend Christian.
Why don't you go eat some shit and die motherfucker?

Sorry folks.

I wish I could find something more artful to say.
Something wise
Wonderful,
And worldy.

But that's all I've got inside
In regards to
Jeb's slick,
Sick,
And sinister actions.

Go eat shit and die Motherfucker.
Go eat some shit and die...

Remembering Condi 1, 2

Put up in a place
Where it is easy to see
The cryptic admonishment
CIC

When you feel
Your justified anger begin to ebb...
It's well to remember,

Condi's Infamous Comments:

RICE: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."


Hair on fire!
Hair on fire Condi!!
Hair fucking on fire Condi!!!

Here and now,
On this blog,
And forever Condi,
We remember your words of infamy,
And your President's lax passivity,
As the biggest, dumbest, and most arrogant moment
Of leadership failure in the entire history of the United States.

The buck might not stop there,
But it sure as hell does stop here.
So let me be clear and cold as ice:

The combined synergy,
Of your two incompetencies
Borders on treason.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

¹ With apologies to Piet Hein and his great grook TTT.

² Blogs are extensions of our minds. In other words, places were we store links to memories that are important to us. That's the gist of this post: I've now put up in a place where it is easy to see...