Monday, December 17, 2007

[1807 - John Greenleaf Whittier, poet, born in Haverhill, Massachusetts]

[1903 - First successful powered airplane flight near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina by Orville and Wilbur Wright]

[1903 - Erskine Caldwell, novelist, born in Moreland, Georgia]

[1908 - Willard Libby, Nobel prize-winning scientist, born in Grand Valley, Colorado]

[1941 - Admiral Chester W. Nimitz named Commander in Chief, US Pacific Fleet, to relieve Admiral Husband Kimmel]

[1942 - Paul Butterfield, blues musician, born in Hyde Park, Chicago]

Heroes All

In the Old Navy it only took ten days to figure out that the guy who permitted December 7, 1941, to live in infamy should be canned and replaced by a competent officer. Nowadays we reward the failed leader who permitted September 11, 2001, to live in infamy by giving him an additional four years in office so that he can award medals to his pals. Recall that President Bush awarded the Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian honor this nation can bestow) to three individuals. In one ceremony he made heroes of George Tenent, the former intelligence chief whose junk information about WMD led to the disastrous war in Iraq, Tommy Franks, the former general who was rolled by the pentagon into accepting an inadequate force to secure that country after it was captured, and Paul Bremer, the ambassador who bungled the occupation and allowed it to degenerate into chaos and insurgency.

William's Whimsical Words:

No good deed must go unpunished, and no failure must go unrewarded. It is only a question of time until Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff get their medals for drowning the City of New Orleans

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