John Weisman is one of a select company of writers to have had books on both the New York Times fiction and nonfiction best-seller lists. His best-sellers include Rogue Warrior (written with Richard Marcinko) and Rogue Warrior's eight fictional sequels. A former journalist, Weisman has worked in more than three dozen countries. His latest work, the Black Ops novel SOAR, is now available through HarperCollins/William Morrow. He is currently completing the second Black Ops novel, Jack in the Box, for release in 2004. He can be emailed at: blackops@johnweisman.com
Special Event: John Weisman will be appearing to sign autographed copies of his latest thriller, Soar, at the following locations:
August 15: Fort Bragg
11:00-11:30 a.m. - Bldg 80-5050 (2nd street and Buckner Rd)
2:00-4:00 p.m. - Bldg 1017 on Canopy Lane
August 19 & 20: TREXPO EAST (Chantilly, VA)
10:00 a.m.-5::00 p.m. - TEAM ONE NETWORK booth, at Dulles Exposition Center, Chantilly, VA. Official ID credentials required.
August 30: Quantico
12:00-2:00 p.m. - Marine Corps Post Exchange
September 6: Horse Shoe Curve Restaurant (Pine Grove, VA),
6:00-9:00 p.m. at Horse Shoe Curve Restaurant
Pine Grove Road
Pine Grove, VA
Pine Grove Road [Rt 679] runs off Rt.7, just west of the Blue Ridge, and 2 mi. east of the Shenandoah River.
Now let me get this straight. A one-time member of a terrorist organization blasts President Bush for the "flamboyant showmanship" of his hoo-ah! tailhook landing and rousing speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln last week. And nobody complains.
Now let me get this straight. A one-time white supremacist who once wrote that he would never fight in a U.S. military "with a Negro by my side" accuses the president of using the military for political gain. And nobody calls him on it.
No, I'm not talking about David Duke. Nor the head of the Aryan Nation. Nor the National Socialists.
Nope. We are talking here about the senior senator from West Virginia, one Robert C. Byrd. You know who. It's the shaky, white-haired guy on CSPAN who looks like a TV version of a televangelist and emotes as if he's trying out for the God role in the remake of "The Ten Commandments."
Byrd, who used to be a bonafide sheet-wearing, cross-burning Kleagle of the anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-American anti-everything KKK stood on the Senate floor to "question the motives of a desk-bound president who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purpose of a speech."
Let's bypass the obvious fact that it's hard to ride the co-pilot's seat of a Navy jet in a business suit. Let's bypass the obvious fact that President Bush is a former military pilot. Let's bypass the fact that Byrd is a doddering relic of a bygone age; a has-been; a fossil; a pismire; a speechifying blowhard known to many on Capitol Hill as the King of Pork. And those are his best qualities.
Wake up, Senator Bob. President George W. Bush assumed the garb of a warrior because he IS a Warrior.
Unlike some other recent commanders in chief, who talked tough but did nothing, Bush talked tough -- and then acted tough. G.W. Bush made the toughest decision a CINC can make: whether he would be spending the lives of those who would pay the ultimate sacrifice wisely, or whether he would be squandering those lives in something meaningless.
The president decided that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were just -- and that the lives that would be lost were worth the final goals. And he never looked back. That is Leadership with a capital L. Indeed, if British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had the guts to make the same sort of tough decisions in 1938 that G.W. Bush made in 2001, we might have been spared many of the horrors of World War II.
Yet, here comes Sen. Byrd, who worked against the resolution advocating force in Iraq, to pillory the president for disrespecting the men and women in uniform by making an appearance on the carrier. I don't know what TV channel Byrd was watching, but the crew of the Abraham Lincoln seemed to be awfully happy that their CINC had so much respect for them that he showed up to deliver a "Bravo Zulu" in person, as opposed to sending an all-hands message to be read on the speaker system.
But then Byrd obviously doesn't know much about respecting the men and women in uniform. Let me quote from the letter he once wrote explaining why he would never serve in the military with a black person. "Rather [than serve with blacks]," Byrd wrote, "I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels…"
There is a wonderful "urban legend" composite photo making the rounds on the net these days. The picture shows a car being launched off the catapult of an aircraft carrier, with a caption that reads something to the effect of, "Today, the U.S. Navy returned four al-Qaeda terrorists to Afghanistan after debriefing…"
Maybe Sen. Byrd deserves a carrier take-off. But only if he wore a business suit. Because for him to wear Warrior garb would be to dishonor it.
