The CPUSA Should Be Proud Of Him
 

Tw is, on the evidence of his own postings, a communist.

If that wasn't bad enough, he's a crazy communist, prone to misreadings and misinterpretations so intense as to be delusionary. These misreadings come of his communist beliefs, but his seeing things that aren't there when he argues with me can't quite be accounted for as coming from the man being a communist. His inanition springs from some other part of his mind.

He wants to present himself as a great sage -- and is singularly ill-equipped to do so, as the abysmal copyediting, pig-ignorant spelling of about anything of foreign origin -- "Mein Komf" and "Poppa Doc," indeed -- his Klansman level of spelling of English words, all uncorrected in his incompetent final product, show to advantage. Not his, mine.

I can't tell from tw's writing if he takes himself seriously, but I'd bet a nickel he does. When I tell him off for being half baked, he screams his resentment at having it pointed out. The reason I entertain a slight doubt about him taking himself seriously is that he's so consistently an embarrassment to any cause he espouses. In considering tw, I imagine a balding virgin, his remaining hair too long for its current condition, the shoulders of a shirt whose collar does not close about his neck well sprinkled with dandruff, living in a squalid basement apartment perhaps rented from his mother. If this man has ever had a lover, this lover was blind to most of his visible personality traits: intellectual dishonesty, towering pettiness, unfairness to all and sundry, an accumulator of resentments, and his likely poverty: a man this short on people skills never rises very high in any organization that contains him, which includes companies. Nobody counts paid sex as involving lovers -- and tw doesn't sound like a man capable of forming well-founded adult relationships with anyone, not even a commie fellow traveler.

Which fairly seamlessly leads me to what drives the man's beliefs, philosophy, and worldview. Whenever he gets into a donnybrook with me, his arguments always toe the Party line, selected from any point in the last fifty years or so. I asked, "Who mourns for Allende?" and the near-rhetorical question got a facile answer, "The people who voted for him." Or do they? By a stroke of good fortune, today I discovered in the March '06 issue of American Spectator some history relating to just this point, in historian James Whelan's eviscerating panning of The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile by a Cambridge professor who seems to have given weight to Communist sources only, and remarkably obscure and minor Communist sources at that.

Salvador Allende Gossens never got a majority of the vote; he came in on a 36.2% plurality, a bit less than 40,000 votes ahead of his nearest rival in the 1970 election. Once in on this less-than-convincing less-than-a-democratic-mandate, he then spent all his time ramming Marxism-Leninism down the throats of the entire country, aided and abetted by a pack of appointees of such radicalism -- the Chilean Socialist Party, for whom Mao and Lenin were too right-leaning -- and some others even farther out, that in the Allende cabinet, the communists were the moderates. The "moderates" did not curb the excesses of the radicals. The combination proved indigestible to any Chilean with common sense, and sentiment for rebellion began to build, not only in the armed forces that eventually toppled Allende by coup, but among civilians. Once the Chilean army and navy moved, the civilians heaved enormous sighs of relief:

". . .the military have saved Chile. . . A civil war was being proposed by the Marxists. And that[,] the world does not know, refuses to know." -- Eduardo Frei Montalva, President of Chile 1964-70. He at the least seems in a position to know. He was also famous for the South American political sport of U.S.-baiting. We Americans still get a sour mouth if and when he's mentioned. Another former president weighed in, ". . .the totalitarian apparatus which had been prepared to destroy us has itself been destroyed. . ." -- Gabriel Gonzalez y Videla.

From the Marxist side, we see this: "A civil war in Chile probably would mean immense loss of life, half a million to one million." -- Communist Voloidia Teitelboim, in remarks dated 1 March 1973, thus right at the beginning of the Allende era, before things really had a chance to deteriorate completely. Chile's population in 1970 was 9.3 million. Blandly contemplating killing one Chilean in nine to cement political power in that country? And no apparent clue that something like this might be not just unpopular, but a wasteful and impoverishing way to do anything? But then, this is the way of Communist thought, and there has never been a Communist regime without horrendous massacre, proved soon or late. I don't have to "invent" massacres -- they are par for the communist course, a routine concomitant of furiously hyped class hatred. Get unpopular with a ruling Communist, and he will kill you unless you kill him first. That is communist policy. The commies never did figure that after the massacres, things don't actually get any better. The dirty little secret, of course, is that things get pretty good for the communist dictator, until somebody shoots him. Communist takeovers are mostly hostile takeovers -- there might have been as many as two friendly ones, but I couldn't cite them confidently -- Khruschev to Brezhnev? Khruschev retired to unperson status, rather than being summarily shot, but what is the life of an unperson?

(Get unpopular with a democrat, and he might diss you in his memoirs.)

And that is the kind of thing tw perennially champions -- only a convinced communist would do that, rationalize that, gloss that over, in the way he does.

The death count laid at the feet of the Pinochet regime for all its seventeen years' span was 2,279. Contrast that with a million deaths to push Marxism-Leninism. No wonder somebody was alert enough to start a revolution, or counterrevolution if you simply must.

Besides the oppression of Marxism-Leninism, we saw a great deal of activity in Chile of Eastern Bloc operatives from 1973 on: the Soviets immediately offered Allende $300 million worth of military credits, the Cuban embassy's staff ballooned to two hundred people, one of whom was Cuba's number-two man in the Cuban intelligence service, who found himself a bride -- in Allende's daughter. Cozy commies. Then there were the 633 Cubans zipping in and out of Chile with no formalities like customs and immigration documentation and the luggage proven to comprise crates of small arms -- 472 assorted guns and 40,000 cartridges to go with. And this was just a fraction of other goodies arriving through Cuban diplomats, like heavy machine guns, antitank weapons of varied vintage, and munitions cited as being 106mm -- sounds like recoilless rifles, such being available in the early seventies in some profligacy. Might this come under the heading of diplomatic-pouch porn?

About twenty thousand Iron Curtain personnel, Soviets, East Germans, Czechs, and Cubans too, scored some good duty coming to Chile and running terrorist training camps. Soviet monetary contributions to the Allende regime in its first year were five times what the United States had credited to Chile in the entire span 1953 to 1970. Wonder what the Sovs might have been hoping for, to throw such money at this matter?

After a span of three years, Allende was brought down by Chileans, as is heavily documented. Nixon told the CIA station "hands off," and they obeyed. The Chileans (no foreigners were among the coup's forces) who threw down Allende maintained good OPSEC: the Cuban, Soviet, East German, and American governments did not learn of the coup until it was accomplished, and Allende had blown the top of his own head off with an AK. There were Cubans shooting at the coup forces from the Cuban Embassy -- no delicacy about interfering in internal affairs there!

So, where am I going with this? Simple: again I ask, and sardonically: who mourns Allende? Thirty-six months in, they couldn't stand the guy in his own country -- yet tw asks us to believe somebody there is sorry he's gone, tells me I'm inventing massacres or something, and so on, so communistically-ratty on. Tw won't come out and say he's a communist, but then his posts make that declaration unnecessary.

That is absurd. the anti-tw stuff that is. His politics run toward the social democrat nonsense they push in Europe. He is no commie. You however need to consider where you really are on the spectrum of totalitarians.

Griff, that tells me you don't know communists -- nor are you very good on totalitarians, if you honestly (I don't think it's honest) believe that about me. (Libertarians are supposed to be about the freedom to have differences of opinion, and I take an internationalist, not an isolationist, view of libertarianism, small L or big L.) What gave me the first clue about tw was what he said about Vietnam -- it was pure-quill Red. Read his postings elsewhere: they follow Communist themes diligently. Look who he invokes for boogeymen, look at his attitudes about US resistance to Communist machinations anywhere and everywhere this was done. Not knowing his parentage, I couldn't say for sure if I should call tw a red-diaper baby, but he sure is dyed in the wool. My argument stands, on the evidence; yours falls for the same reason. Go ye and look. Why is tw so regular-issue communistically snotty about Augusto Pinochet? For the sin, in communist eyes, of having supplanted their boy Allende. Unforgiveable, no? The commies shrieked to the skies about it for seventeen years, about weekly, in about every language at their command -- bored hell out of the rest of the planet, too, but Marxist speechifying has a way of glazing eyes over anyway. It's like listening to the preaching of a bad religion, which it should be, as that's what Communism is.

You have spent little time on threads other than those dealing with W. We have no idea if you have a libertarian streak. All we see is your soft spot for the power of the state to do good through violence. tw has a long record here. He is known as a solid engineer with a soft spot for the power of the state to be used for the common good. As far as knowns go, I don't see any libertarian thought coming from either of you. You can easily prove me wrong by writing more and in depth on different subjects.

UG's libertarianism: "Give them liberty or give them death."

HM, off the gold as usual, with me anyway: "Give the people liberty; give death to the tyrants as part of it." One of the points of liberty is to no longer suffer oppression. Somebody here would rather yell at me than lift a finger to make liberty!

But somehow, no comment so far on tw's communist beliefs?

There's nothing to comment on. It's just dumb.

You forgot to add "...and all the people who just get in the way."

If you would just read before you type you would see that Griff already addressed that in his post. TW is not a Marxist. You are not a Libertarian. Elvis is still dead. Life goes on.

Will someone please call in The Threadkiller?:worried:

:lurker:

I am a convinced and vigorous libertarian rather than a passivist, tw is a convinced Marxist as his own words tell you, and you are a saltwater bird with a hooked beak and blue, webbed feet, Rich. And Elvis's work, and his banana and peanut butter w/bacon sandwiches, are all done.

The ones who truly "get in the way" get there because they are committed slavemongers, bad for both thee and me -- among others who on this Earth do dwell. Your caricature of my position is as preposterous as it is baseless. You cannot prevail -- not because it's you, but because you're off base. Back off.

Funny how some idjits want to make a thread about tw a thread about me. Ha ha hee ho hoo...

It's not a thread about tw. That screed says nothing about him, and a lot about you.

In the 2 years or so I've been around this board, I have never once seen tw post anything that even remotely approaches communist thought. He can be pendantic at times, but he has a remarkable sense of humor that he slyly inserts here and there on the board. He is obviously quite intelligent and uses facts and logic to back his arguments up, unlike some who post here. He does have a pet peeve against MBA's, but we all have our little quirks, and in many instances, I feel he is correct in his observations even there, as well.

I could post some derogatory thing about what I imagine YOU to be like in real life, UG, but I'm not going to sink to your level. I will say that I think you're just jealous because tw is the Dweller that the most people here voted they'd like to meet. I notice that YOU didn't get a single mention.

If you wish to start a discussion on Allende and Chile, I'd be most happy to give my opinions. I studied Latin American history in college and have quite a few thoughts on the subject. However, I won't dignify this thread with any further reply than what I've already given :eyebrow:

I'm sure UG will be glad to post some quotes, in context, from TW that prove his point. Right, UG?

You starry-eyed dreamer, you! There are better odds that Jr. will apologize to the American people, as well as the rest of the people of the world, step down from office, and give all his shares in Halliburten to the poor! :lol:

lolololololol! I got to crazy communist before the rofl bit. How far did the rest of you get?

UG's first post made me smile in a grinning sort of way! Hilarious!

Oh, everyone jokes now, but you wait! The evidence is about to come pouring in any minute, now, proving once and for all that tw is as red as a Moscow merlot.

Any minute, now...

You just wait.



....really soon, you'll see.

Uh huh. I see you're no student of Communism. I lived when this stuff was going on, guy, and manned the walls against some of it. I think I know something about it, thank you. I am never knowingly going to steer you wrong.

I like Kitsune's "Moscow Merlot" image.

Now how the hell any of you missed tw's Communist Party line reading of world history quite puzzles me, but if you must have links, I'll provide them.

Waiting on the edge of my chair...:rolleyes:

Well, fall from the chair and bruise your butt, Mari. This strikes me as sufficient proof that tw only believes Communist sources when it comes to history: third page of "A Laundry List of Democratic Screwups." It would be sufficient even if I liked the man. This is not a man who would keep a Republic.

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=9974&page=3

And ask yourself why a man would only believe communist sources -- is he a communist, or merely remarkably naive? Are not his errors always to the benefit of the socialist totalitarian Left? And is that itself not the way of the pravda-brained communist?

I do not expect you to answer any of these questions honestly, Mari, for your ego is more important to you than truth; I've taken your measure, and am aware of the dishonesty I am to expect from you -- for instance, earlier in this thread, even with the gauzy guise of "Posted by Urbane Godzilla." Not something I'd stoop to, you may be sure.

Cited as the source: The Pentagon Papers. A communist manifesto? Damn. History gets rewritten too quickly these days.

Let's see if I understand the implications here: you're advising me to seek popularity among people whose opinion I have never been given cause to respect, who oppose the neocon view because at bottom they'd rather leave the evil and corruption of totalitarian governance to thrive unmolested when democracy is visibly so much better, so much wealthier, and so much more humane than totalitarianism? These are the kind of people I don't want for friends. That's your idea of a telling argument?? My oh my, does that redefine fatuity. Not much cause for jealousy here. Really, Mari, in the couple of years I've been here, I've seen you have ONE good idea among a slew of bad ones: supporting the soldiers' charity.

Since you've made further replies, you may wish to retract or redact this sentence.

Meanwhile, I suppose I might as well bone up a little on South American history. It's a subject rather neglected in American high schools, along with international relations generally. "History & Moral Philosophy," anyone?

One single publication cited that doesn't toe the Communist Party line, and the dozen or so other things you remarked on all do, tw? Hey, I can see where the weight of the evidence falls, sonny boy. Plus you alleging, falsely, that I invented massacres in Cuba and elsewhere? Not that you've intellectual honesty enough to take correction. One cannot expect intellectual honesty from a communist; honesty was excised from the beginning. Marx at his most honest was a crank and never able to escape his European classist paradigm; his followers lied and murdered their way to the top, wasting lives by the hundred million. No; being honest is an impediment to a successful career in Marxism-Leninism. A Marx would never have emerged in America, unless you want to stretch a point until it rips out and cite the toy manufacturer of that name.

I just can't be as stupid as you'd like me to be, just to go along with you.

Nobody wants UG to be stupid. But if smart, UG would have replied to Kitsune: Lurkers are reminded that Rush Limbaugh also uses these propaganda techniques. Provide no supporting facts. It works when a listeners has an extremist agenda. Propagandists hope the reader has microscopic memory and is easily swayed by emotional tirades. UG hopes you will forget what Kitsume requested.

Meanwhile a previous discussion (cited by UG) repeatedly referenced the Pentagon Papers. UG fears such propaganda that does not agree with his rewritten history. Still waiting for a citation of those massacres by Ho Chi Minh.

What a thoughtful suggestion, UG! As a matter of fact I do retract that one sentence.

I was in the midst of a truly brilliant, scathing response to you earlier, when my puppy, Belle Starr, chewed thru my monitor cord (I thought she was happily chewing on a pig's ear I had just given her). My monitor went blank and I had heard Starr's yelp from the shock (surprised she didn't end up one dead pup), and my devastating words vanished all at the same time.

Now that I have gone down and bought a new cord, I will reconstruct my earlier post as best I can and get back to you shortly (You don't need to wait on the edge of your chair, that's OK). :p

That's IT? I haven't fallen out of my chair and I'm STILL waiting for your proof. *taps her pretty little foot impatiently and pouts*

Did you mean THIS post?

Accusing you of endorsing Castro's Cuba is COMMUNIST? :lol2: Being against the military junta in Argentina is COMMUNIST? Get REAL!

You seem to define "Communist" as anyone who does not agree with YOU, UG! By your definition, anyone to the left of a neocon is a commie.

Let's take a little look at Allende and what the US did in Chile, which up until the CIA backed coup which installed Pinochet and his death squads, had been the oldest continuous democracy in Latin America.

In 1818, combined Argentinian and Chilean forces under Jose de San Martin and Bernardo O'Higgins, who crossed the Andes from Argentina, managed to defeat and drive out the Spanish army and restore Chile's independence from Spain. O'Higgins became Chile's first president.

* IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH TO UG - THE CHILEAN PEOPLE DID THIS WITHOUT US INTERVENTION!

With the centralistic constitution of 1833, fashioned largely by Diego Portales on Chile's particular needs, a foundation was laid for the gradual emergence of parliamentary government and a long period of stability.

Until the US came along.

Salvadore Allende was elected by a vote of the Chilean people in a FREE election. It doesn't matter if he was elected by a plurality. If the Chilean people didn't like the fact that their president could be elected by a plurality, it was up to THEM to reform the rules of their constitution - NOT a foreign nation!

Since you are such a rabid fan of democracy, I am sure you are familiar with the writings of Thomas Paine. From The Rights of Man:

To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought
to be, we must trace it to its origin. In doing this we shall easily
discover that governments must have arisen either out of the people
or over the people.

In Chile, a government which had arisen out of the people was replaced with one OVER the people - thank you very much, The United States of America.

Again, from The Rights of Man (emphasis my own):

It is evident, that the greatest forces that can
be brought into the field of revolutions, are reason and common
interest. Where these can have the opportunity of acting, opposition
dies with fear, or crumbles away by conviction. It is a great
standing which they have now universally obtained; and we may
hereafter hope to see revolutions, or changes in governments,
produced with the same quiet operation by which any measure,
determinable by reason and discussion, is accomplished.

When a nation changes its opinion and habits of thinking, it is no
longer to be governed as before; but it would not only be wrong, but
bad policy, to attempt by force what ought to be accomplished by
reason. Rebellion consists in forcibly opposing the general will of a
nation, whether by a party or by a government.

I would now like to draw you attention to two most interesting documents from the United States National Archives.

The first deals with the CIA's involvement in Allende's over throw and the second is about US embarassment over human rights abuses and the reign of terror under Pinochet.

Ahem.

Please see above sources. The history of Chile which can be found in any Latin Americans studies or numerous sources on the Internet? Thomas Paine? The United States National Archives? Just what the hell isn't a communist source, except for the workings of Urbane Guerilla's fevered brain?

No fucking comment, Urbane Godzilla!

Sending you love from Moscow (Idaho),
Mari

Surely someone who majored in South American history can acknowledge that the replacement of the wacked-out Allende regime was an all-Chilean affair. It's well documented in history. There was no US involvement, as anyone who isn't a devout blame-America-first communist can tell you, and no doubt should.

How they fucked it up after that wasn't an American affair either, but the result of generals not having very much experience of democratic give and take and trying to run a country like an army -- then trying even harder when they found it wasn't working. The kindest thing you can say about that is that it's unfortunate, however understandable.

And you have the cart before the horse: communism is not defined as "disagrees with Urbane Guerrilla." It's simply that communists do disagree with the libertarian ideals I espouse. You're spinning, girl, and it's as obvious as Olga Korbut out on the ice.

tw may be far-left and somewhat blind at times, but he is not a communist. Mari is right: By your definition, anyone to the left of a neocon is a commie.

Talk about spin, I think you need to look up 'libertarian' in the dictionary. Libertarians do not espouse invading other countries. Libertarians are concerned with protecting their own rights, not trying to forcibly convert others.

It is not possible to call yourself a libertarian and promote an activist foreign policy, the two concepts do not mix.

Rich, Rich, you have too narrow a view for you to ever really get what libertarianism really should be: the invasion effort is to keep the totalitarians neutralized so they can't interfere with the libertarianization of the polities in the target countries. That's all it can do anyway. It's just inherently right to cast down antilibertarian regimes.

Libertarians, you see, espouse human liberty. There are real libertarians and there are parlor libertarians. Real libertarians are the ones willing to make that liberty happen, in despite of anything any slavemaker might have to say or do about it. By that measure, George Bush is among the real libertarians. No wonder I like him. Parlor libertarians stay in their parlors, meditating upon the beauties they see cloudily upon the distant horizon, far off in the land of If-Only.

Nuts to that. Libertarianism should not be construed as an excuse to do nothing, because it's all just so hard. The only people actually making it hard are the assholes who want totalitarianism. When these are dead, they don't want anything any more, and their interference with liberty is removed.

Ibram, same for you as for Mari: you've got the cart before the horse. I don't call people who disagree with me communists; it's simply that communists disagree with me a lot -- I don't have to call them anything. I'd add, from this former Cold Warrior's perspective, which gives me ten years' experience with Communist opinion, that it's tw's communism that blinds him. It certainly makes him suck at history.

Oh, I didn't know you worked for the State Department, brown eyes. :rolleyes:

You still don't. Those ten years were US Navy -- NAVSECGRU -- and the NSA, which is Department of Defense, not State. Time was, I made my living speaking, reading, and writing Russian. I've still got some Soviet-era publications stashed in storage boxes. Lots of people said it was windy and tendentious and lying propaganda, and hey, what I read was windy, tendentious, et cetera... imagine living your whole life where the textbooks and reference material are all in bureaucratese, and heavily leaning to the passive voice.

One of the worst things about collectivist totalitarianism is that at bottom, it's fucking boring. And by all accounts, the Russians are not great lays either. Funny, you'd think those long cold nights would give them the opportunity -- but they'd have to lay off the drink. That might be it.

Oh, I see. You're calling TW a commie because he bores you. :rolleyes:

You like to hear me tell you "no," a lot, don't you? Wouldn't scale modelmaking be a more rewarding hobby?

I'm calling tw a commie because of his stated views, as I said in the opening post. Note, if you will, that he made no significant or persuasive denial of being of the communist persuasion, either, just a feeble mention of the Pentagon Papers. We could call this his last few frayed shreds of personal integrity -- his responses, such as they are, demonstrate that he knows I've got his number.

Breaking Communism, now... that does not bore me.

UG was caught and exposed outrightly lying to the Cellar - rewriting history to promote self serving politics. Let's face it UG. You are an expert on Vietnam War history - and yet did not even read the Pentagon Papers. Honesty is a complication that UG avoids. An old Sen McCarthy technique: when caught lying, then accuse others of communism. Could UG at least be original? Because another extremist used such accusations, then accusations should work for UG?

I forgot. UG also believes the history he rewrites. Sen McCarthy successfully drove all communists from the US government and US Army. Communist accusations must work.

UG proclaims he fought the cold war. He sat at a desk translating Russian text. That's a warrior - or an old joke about a purple heart for a paper cut? But being a true warrior, UG posts: How many corpuscles died at his desk in defense of liberty?

Urbane Guerrilla was caught rewriting history for personal convenience. His modus operandi is to accuse and insult due to what transpired previously:
UG Rewrites more History and
Can UG Prove He is not Lying Again?

I've got the Navy Expeditionary Medals to prove you wrong once again, tw. Read Blind Man's Bluff for a history of the kind of thing I was involved in -- though it covers a period well before the time I was doing classified stuff in that vein. I recommend the book, though.

I've done a good deal more for my civilization than you ever will.

Tw, you just ain't got the stuff to gainsay me. Believe what you like, since you're so wedded to untruth. That commitment to falsity and the Communist take on world history is what makes you and keeps you such a bad human being. I'll just keep exposing you until the end of your miserable, neurotic life.

Criteria

The Navy Expeditionary Medal is awarded to Navy personnel who have landed on foreign territory and engaged in operations against armed opposition or who have operated under circumstances deemed to merit special recognition and for which no campaign medal has been awarded.

This medal is only awarded to personnel attached to one of the ships or units listed in the notice or instruction at some time during the respective periods shown, and who actually participated in the operation. This includes personnel attached to a squadron or unit embarked in a ship during the eligible period for that ship. Members of rear echelons, transients, observers, and personnel assigned for short periods of Temporary Additional Duty (TAD) or Training Duty (TD) are not normally eligible. However, consideration will be given in those instances when the local commander certifies a particular and significant contribution by an individual.

Navy Expeditionary Medals awarded after Wake Island 1941;
Thailand: May 16 - August 10, 1962

Cuba: January 3, 1961 - October 23, 1962

Iran, Yemen, & Indian Ocean: December 8, 1978 - June 6, 1979

Iran, Yemen, & Indian Ocean: November 21, 1979 - October 1, 1981

Lebanon: August 20, 1982 - May 31, 1983

Lebanon: June 1, 1983 to March 4, 1984*

Libya: January 20 - June 27, 1986

Persian Gulf: February 1 - July 23, 1987

Monrovia, Liberia (Sharp Edge): August 5, 1990 - February 21, 1991

Rwanda (Distant Runner): April 7-18, 1994

USS Cole Operations (Determined Response): October 12 2000 to December 15, 2002

* For service in Lebanon between June 1, 1983 and March 4, 1984, the service member may choose either the Navy Expeditionary Medal (or Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal, depending on Service component) or the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal.

In which of the above operations have the Navy personnel, not Marines, "landed on foreign territory and engaged in operations against armed opposition"? :confused:

Blind Man's Bluff goes through apx 1987.

Blind Man's Buff is a heck of a book. It describes events as recent as 1992, but focuses much more on earlier events.

It also points out the existence of "black" decorations, awarded off the open record for operations that are still classified. There were a couple of DFCs given to SR-71 crew on that basis too, but that's a different book.

If I was looking for Naval personnel who had been "in foriegn territory facing armed opposition or who have operated under circumstances deemed to merit special recognition and for which no campaign medal has been awarded", I'd be thinking about either Naval Special Warfare or very black SIGINT operations.

Or perhaps both.

SIGINT, and that's all I'm a-sayin'.

My two awards were for serving in the task force that was backing our play when the Iranian hostage rescue mission went flop at Desert One, and the other for service off the littoral of a then-quite-hostile nation.

Bruce most helpfully listed this one; it's my first award:

Pencil pushing? Or more likely keyboard pounding?:confused:

Hey, intel types generally are in the rear with the gear. Fact of life. Though we did get out towards the sharp end from time to time. You're fairly near the sharp end when you're personally sketching a caricature of Khoumeini on the housing of a cluster bomb slung from an A-6. I drew a pretty recognizable Khoumeini -- looked a lot like Bill Mauldin's.

For some kinds of SIGINT, you have to be very close to the SIG.

One reason Iran was strategic in Cold War days. And Govenor's Island...

I'm sure it was worth a medal. :rolleyes:

If he had drawn a turtle or pirate, he might have gotten a scholarship to art school.:D

:p Ain't you boys trying a little too hard?