Cows and Hellfires

[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 18 September 2013]


9/18, 10:27am


Phoebe Bailey (Facebook)


Hi Phoebe,

This is Kerry Burgess, formerly of Ashdown, now in Seattle.

Been a long time since I wrote to you. Must have been 1987 the last time we traded written words.


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 18 September 2013 excerpt ends]










JOURNAL ARCHIVE: From: Kerry Burgess

Sent: Thursday, September 19, 2013 5:56 AM

To: Chad Trammell

Subject: "Listening Post"

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/world/middleeast/through-diplomacy-obama-finds-a-pen-pal-in-iran.html


The New York Times [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]


LISTENING POST

Through Diplomacy, Obama Finds a Pen Pal in Iran

By MARK LANDLER

Published: September 19, 2013

WASHINGTON — Few American presidents have held a deeper belief in the power of the written word than President Obama. And in few ways has that belief been more tested than in his frustrating private correspondence with the leaders of Iran, a country with whom the United States has had no diplomatic ties for 34 years.

This week, Mr. Obama indicated that he might finally have found a pen pal in Tehran.










[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 18 September 2013]


9/18, 10:27am


Phoebe Bailey (Facebook)


[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 18 September 2013 excerpt ends]
[JOURNAL ARCHIVE 19 September 2013 excerpt ends]










http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/1991/October%201991/1091apache.aspx


Air Force Magazine


October 1991

Apache Attack

By Richard Mackenzie

The helicopters would open the war. They had to take out Iraq's early warning net, and they had to get it all.

At ten seconds before 2:38 in a moonless sky over Iraq, eight US AH-64 Apache helicopters zeroed in on their targets. On their forward-looking infrared screens appeared the images of two Iraqi radar sites just north of Saudi Arabia, placed there to detect intruding fighters. They were linked to four Iraqi fighter bases and to the Intelligence Operations Center in Baghdad.

The unseen Apaches hovered low, four miles south of the radars. At the controls of Number 976, 1st Lt. Tom Drew broke radio silence. "Party in ten," he said. On cue, ten seconds later, the helicopters unleashed a salvo of laser-guided Hellfire missiles. "This one's for you, Saddam ," muttered CW03 Dave Jones, the pilot of another Apache.

The shots, fired in the predawn hours of January 17, 1991, marked the start of Operation Desert Storm and were among the most critical of the war, blinding Iraq's early warning net at a key moment. US Central Command relied entirely on the Apaches and USAF special operations helicopters to do the job. "If something had happened and we didn't do 100 percent [destruction]," said one gunner, CW04 Lou Hall, "a lot of people were going to get hurt."

The Apaches did achieve 100 percent destruction, or close to it. Eyewitnesses report that, when the Hellfires hit the targets, the radar bases evaporated in clouds of smoke and flame. In the four and a half minutes it took to complete the task, the Apaches had, in the words of Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, "plucked out the eyes" of Iraq's Soviet-supplied air defenses.

Nearly 100 allied planes, arriving twenty-two minutes after the raid, roared through the gaping hole in Iraq's network and raced north to strike critical, first-night targets. Air Force F-117s, relying on their stealthiness, already had penetrated Iraqi airspace and were nearing Baghdad by the time the Apaches fired, but destruction of the early warning sites greatly eased the task of nonstealthy allied planes sent into action that night.


The Final Go-Ahead


At 1:00 a.m. on January 17 (local time), Colonel Cody's White Team of four Apaches and two Pave Lows, each weighing more than 18,900 pounds, pulled out of Al Jouf into a jet-black sky, all lights off, and headed north. Six minutes later, the Red Team followed.

As the White Team approached the border shortly before 2:00 a.m., Colonel Cody saw a flash below. Evidently hearing the sounds of the helicopters but unable to see them, an Iraqi on the front line had fired off a missile. It missed.

As they pushed north, flying at 120 mph about fifty feet above ground, the pilots created their own "stealthiness" with a combination of high speed, low altitude, total blackout on navigation lights, and total radio silence.

Neither the Pave Lows nor we had ever flown in that area," recalled Colonel Cody. "We were seeing stuff for the first time. Most of our training was done on the east coast of Saudi Arabia where it's very, very flat and you have sand dunes. This was some 700 miles northwest, and it was entirely different. You had mesas and a little bit more terrain, which made it more dangerous.

"The Pave Lows had terrain-following radar, which helped them out quite a bit. We didn't have that, but our FLIR, coupled with our night-vision goggles, was just working great. So you had two different systems backing each other up. We were backing them up, and they were primary. The lead Apache in each one of those teams had a primary mission of navigation. We didn't leave anything to chance."

At the GPS points nine miles south of the radar bases, Pave Lows dropped chemical lights on the desert. As the Apaches used that position to update their navigational and targeting systems, the Pave Lows peeled off and went back to the rendezvous point.

The Apaches then flew for almost five more miles, fixing the targets in their sights.

Looking Skyward

Without doubt, they got the drop on the Iraqis, who were looking skyward for fast movers, not for helicopters. It is believed they noticed something resembling "ground clutter" on their screens about two minutes before they were hit but were still trying to figure it out when the Hellfires arrived.










http://www.divxmoviesenglishsubtitles.com/W/WarGames_(1983)_CD2.html


WarGames


Just unplug the goddamn thing!
- Jesus Christ!|- That won't work, General.
It would interpret a shutdown|as the destruction of NORAD.
The computers in the silos would carry|out their last instructions. They'd launch.
- Can't we disarm the missiles?|- Over a thousand of them?
There's no time. At this rate|it'll hit the launch codes in 5.3 minutes.
Mr McKittrick?|After very careful consideration, sir,
I have come to the conclusion|that your new defence system sucks.
I don't have to take that,|you pig-eyed sack of shit.
I was hoping for something a little better|than that from a man of your education.
General, it's the president.










http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/quotes

IMDb

The Internet Movie Database

Memorable quotes for

Independence Day (1996)


[Dr. Oaken meets President Whitmore]

Dr. Okun: Mr. President! Wow! This is... what a pleasure. As you can imagine, they... they don't let us out much.



http://www.cswap.com/1996/Independence_Day/cap/en/2_Parts/b/00_00

Independence Day


:00:05
Mr President!

:00:07
Wow!

:00:09
This...

:00:10
What a pleasure!

:00:12
As you can imagine, they...

:00:15
They don't let us out much.

:00:18
[ Whitmore: ] I can understand that.



- posted by H.V.O.M - Kerry Wayne Burgess 6:49 PM Pacific Time somewhere near Seattle Washington State USA Monday 21 October 2013