This sure means something different when I realize that 20 years earlier from the date of this journal entry, I was actually a POW in Libya, or so goes the theory as I don't consciously remember any of that. Why would I have such a detail in my artificial and symbolic memory though?
JOURNAL ARCHIVE: Re: Communist Interrogations
Thu, 2/16/06 11:25 AM
http://www.odci.gov/csi/kent_csi/docs/v02i2a06p_0003.htm
[...]
The stimulants, in general, have the effect of increasing wakefulness and alertness at the expense of creating tremulousness, feelings of anxiety and overactivity. Caffein, benzedrine, and dexedrine fall into this category. There are a number of derivatives of benzedrine which have essentially the same action. "Aktedron," a synthetic benzedrine derivative, has been used in Czechoslovakia and Southeast Europe. Coffee and Benzedrine derivatives are sometimes administered to tired or sleepy prisoners in order to wake them up enough so that the interrogation can be carried on. They have been used in this manner in Eastern Europe, in Russia, and in China. In and of themselves they have no important effect in producing confessions. Used in combination with a system of psychological and physiological pressures they will in many cases accelerate and exacerbate the profound fatigue, confusion, loss of critical judgment, and breakdown of resistance which is a consequence of the full course of control techniques.
[I was suspecting back with I worked at Microsoft that someone was drugging my coffee.]
I was thinking the other day, as whoever listens to me in the bathroom knows, about a situation 20 years ago when I was face-to-face with the Soviet Navy.
Ah, I remember now, it was after Bush was talking about how he thought the oceans would protect us. I thought out loud that he should have been with me in 1985 off the coast of Texas. And then that reminded me of something I read about Bush filling the role of a Soviet bomber during a training exercise with his fighter squadron. Doesn't make sense.
Anyway, I was thinking about how we had our names on our uniforms. We were close enough to them that they could probably read our names with telephoto lenses. I wonder if they would use that information to try to recruit spies, similar to the Walker spy ring that was going on back then. Then I remember something peculiar a year or two later. When I was in school at Dam Neck, someone commented that my security badge had a different color background on my photo. I didn't know what it meant. A different security level? So then I began to wonder the other day if maybe our spies had picked up their spies mentioning our names, taken from that expedition in 1985. I also wondered how often the Soviets had ships off our coast, especially the Gulf Coast. I remember someone saying they could easily launch a cruise missile strike on Dallas from there and I remember thinking of what that would do to those skyscrapers.
These are mean-looking mothers:
http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/row/rus/slava-DNSC9400153.JPG
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/ss-n-12.htm
SS-N-12 Sandbox is a Russian supersonic speed cruise missile with a range of 550 km carrying a payload of 1,000 kg
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040426-6.html
[...]
For years, when we grew up -- at least us baby boomers grew up -- we thought that oceans would protect us from harm's way. And then we learned a solemn lesson on that day. We learned the lesson that there is an enemy which hates us because of what we stand for. Because we love freedom, because we value freedom, because we work for free societies, there's an enemy which is willing to inflict harm. The enemy also is the kind of enemy we've really never faced before because they're willing to kill innocent women and children and men of all religions in order to affect our psychology.
[Just what was it about the ocean that would protect us from Soviet bombers and missiles? And then he's talking about some new enemy that hates us, what did he think we needed defense from the Soviets for?]
http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/gwbbio.html
[...]
served as an F-102 fighter pilot in the Texas Air National Guard.
[I wonder if he knows Ballmer personally?]
President Bush received a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1975.
http://www.e-thepeople.org/article/34514/view?viewtype
[...]
"William Campenni, a retired Guard pilot, served with Mr. Bush in the 111th. He remembers a training flight over the Gulf during which the future president mimicked a Soviet bomber.
