Ya know, some of us could have just told them this would happen three and a half years ago. Oh wait, we did.

And flying on PanAm in the early ’60s from the States to Paris, we had elaborate menus and great food, we all received slipper socks with the PanAm logo and my daughters were gifted with PanAm hostess pins. The Air Force also provided a young military escort to help me with my three young daughters. The young man was having girlfriend problems so I lent an ear for quite a few miles. Those were the days….

I only flew PanAm once before its dissolution. I was at Oakland Army Terminal, waiting for transport to Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, for training before going to Vietnam. For some reason, every one was leaving and we weren’t. It was getting pretty close to our due date, so we went to the transport office and asked what was going on. The clerk fished around in the records and said, “We don’t have a flight for you.”

“Uh, why not? There are MATS contract planes leaving for Vietnam from Travis ten times a day, and all of them have to stop in Hawaii for refueling.”

“Well, we, uh, don’t want to open the doors at Hickam to let you out. We’re afraid of what might happen.”

So, we talked them into giving us, after a great long go-round, commercial tickets. On PanAm 1, on the Frisco to Honolulu leg. One Australian couple going home. One Japanese businessman and five of us. Six flight attendants, practically stumbling over each other trying to stay busy with just eight people on board, and because there were so few people on the plane, the drinks were free, and no limit once we were over international waters. Flight attendant said, “I’m sorry, but due to the passenger load, the menu is limited to steak or pheasant under glass.”

So, I had a steak and a few beers, while the guy I was sitting with got completely sloshed. Reached Honolulu, the guy walks out of the air-conditioned plane onto the platform of the roll-up ramp, the heat and humidity hit him and he lurched head first down the ramp. Would have busted his head open if I hadn’t just been able to grab the back of his shirt.

That was a fun ride.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely it’s the second coming
And the wrath has finally taken form
For what is this rough beast
Its hour come at last
Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born

Does anyone but me remember when people used to dress up to take a plane?

Silly thing to do, wasn’t it? :)

Bush abandons a soldier in Iraq.

And Bush wants Kerry to apologize?

I’m still dying to hear the MSM report on the purchased judgeships. I wonder if Roberts and Alito had to pay more than $44,000?

Of course, we’ll never hear the MSM report on problems with electronic voting machines in this election… oh, wait, Olberman and Dobbs are doing stories on it. Well, the broadcast MSM reports won’t say a word. No need to worry the public about the little things, eh?

I so, so, so wish that there was a little place where you could curl up for a nap and someone would come and wake you in time for your flight.

TRex, you have identified a market lack. What shall we call it, the Nap-O-Mat?

http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_10_31_06.htm

I connected both Odom’s and Lind’s pieces of yesterday on my blog, quoting the following from Lind:

An attack on Iran will not be an invasion with ground troops. We don’t have enough of those left to invade Ruritania. It will be a “package” of air and missile strikes, by U.S. forces or Israel. If Israel does it, there is a possibility of nuclear weapons being employed. But Israel would prefer the U.S. to do the dirty work, and what Israel wants, Israel usually gets, at least in Washington.

. . .

Many of the consequences of a war with Iran are easy to imagine. Oil would soar to at least $200 per barrel if we could get it. Gas shortages would bring back the gas lines of 1973 and 1979. Our European alliances would be stretched to the breaking point if not beyond it. Most people outside the Bushbubble can see all this coming.

What I fear no one forsees is a substantial danger that we could lose the army now deployed in Iraq.

. . .

The danger arises because almost all of the vast quantities of supplies American armies need come into Iraq from one direction, up from Kuwait and other Gulf ports in the south. If that supply line is cut, our forces may not have enough stuff, especially fuel, to get out of Iraq. American armies are incredibly fuel-thirsty, and though Iraq has vast oil reserves, it is short of refined oil products. Unlike Guderian’s Panzer army on its way to the Channel coast in 1940, we could not just fuel up at local gas stations.

There are two ways our supply lines from the south could be cut if we attack Iran. The first is by Shiite militias including the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades, possibly supported by a general Shiite uprising and, of course, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (the same guys who trained Hezbollah so well).

The second danger is that regular Iranian Army divisions will roll into Iraq, cut our supply lines and attempt to pocket us in and around Baghdad. Washington relies on American air power to prevent this, but bad weather can shut most of that air power down.

Unfortunately, no one in Washington and few people in the U.S. military will even consider this possibility. Why? Because we have fallen victim to our own propaganda. Over and over the U.S. military tells itself, “We’re the greatest! We’re number one! No one can defeat us. No one can even fight us. We’re the greatest military in all of history!”

It’s bull. The U.S. armed forces are technically well-trained, lavishly resourced Second Generation militaries. They are being fought and defeated by Fourth Generation opponents in both Iraq and Afghanistan. They can also be defeated by Third Generation enemies who can observe, orient, decide and act more quickly than can America’s vast, process-ridden, Powerpoint-enslaved military headquarters. They can be defeated by strategy, by stratagem, by surprise and by preemption. Unbeatable militaries are like unsinkable ships. They are unsinkable until someone or something sinks them.

What is truly terrifying is that I don’t think we can rule out the possibility that Bush-Cheney are planning to Intentionally use the 150K military people in Iraq as bait to suck Iran into a conflict that they can then claim justifies the use of nuclear weapons. First they attack known nuke installations in Iran with conventional ordnance. The mullahs have to respond in order to demonstrate their patriotism, and do so along the lines predicted by Lind. Bush-Cheney then come back with Round 2 which includes nukes.

Sure, this might set back Iran’s nuclear dreams by a few years or even decades. Then again it may not, if you take into consideration that our knowledge of Iran’s nuclear operations might be just as reliable as our comparable knowledge of Iraq’s was in 2003. (/snark) But one thing we can all agree on is that the identification and evaluation of down-side risks has not been a Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld strong point these past six years.

I first heard about this on Countdown last night. KO, as usual, on top of the important stuff. He showed a clip of Rumsfeld being asked about the checkpoints being abandoned. Rumsfeld looked confused and rambled on for a few minutes about wanting to “verify” information before commenting. He either is so above the fray that he doesn’t bother getting briefings about actual war developments anymore, or he was acting and knew all about it and also knew what a ****storm this will be and doesn’t want to get near the story with a six foot pole. Either way shows the lack of any kind of leadership, moral decency, (fill in your own noun) the man has.