Eight Feet Deep

Old Squeaky. You could hear him a mile away.

That was me today. You know how new shoes some­how tend to squeak when you first walk in them? Well mul­ti­ply that sound it makes by a fac­tor of about five and that should let you know how squeaky I really was.

The shoes I wore are one of two new pair of Ambu­la­tor Dia­betic Shoes I was given by the VA in an attempt to lessen the pain from my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy that makes my feet feel as if they were shot, stabbed and set on fire. I have only had worse foot pain once than I am hav­ing nowa­days. That was the Night of the Cruel Shoes.

My friend from col­lege, Clay, had a very nice and large wed­ding when he mar­ried Katie about 12 years ago. Another friend, War­ren, had been Clay’s room­mate in col­lege and War­ren and I were two of the six or seven grooms­men attend­ing the groom. Of course, we were wear­ing the rented tuxes which, unfor­tu­nately, came with rented shoes.

Now as I men­tioned, my friend, Clay the radi­ol­o­gist, had a very nice wed­ding so this is noth­ing to take away from the wed­ding. But the shoes turned out to be liv­ing hell as time went on. War­ren and I went on to call them “Cruel Shoes,” which is the name of the best-selling 1979 book writ­ten by come­dian, actor, etc., Steve Mar­tin as well as the title of one of the book’s very funny essays. Need­less to say, or per­haps not, that the rented shoes were not black and white pumps with two left feet and …

” one had a right angle turn with sepa­rate com­part­ments that pointed the toes in impos­si­ble direc­tions. The other shoe was six inches long and was curved inward like a rock­ing chair with a vise and razor blades to hold the foot in place. ”

Our cruel shoes were black and rented. God only knows how many feet had been tor­tured in those shoes I wore in Dal­las that night. That’s all right though. The bride and groom know how much we care for them and would endure pain to make their wed­ding a most won­der­ful expe­ri­ence. I still hadn’t seen the videos.

My dia­betic shoes aren’t cruel from what I can tell. Just squeaky. At least the pair with the Vel­cro straps are. The other pair has shoe­strings. They don’t look too bad. They are def­i­nitely more expen­sive than I would pay for — here is the shoe on a retailer’s site – all but prob­a­bly hik­ing shoes. Think­ing about hik­ing shoes makes me sad because I don’t know if I am ever going to hike again with this con­stant pain. But if the new shoes aren’t cruel shoes and help get me through the day then I guess I can han­dle the squeak until they get bro­ken in properly.

It’s amaz­ing how a trip back to Beau­mont from Hous­ton, all of 90 miles or so, wears me out. Or maybe it was all the sit­ting around I did at the DeBakey Vet­er­ans Affairs Hos­pi­tal this morn­ing in Hous­ton? Or maybe com­bine all that with the 15 min­utes I spent find­ing a place to park at the VA hospital?

Well, one thing about it, you could never mis­take going to the VA hos­pi­tal with fun.

I would have never known that they added 160 park­ing spaces in Feb­ru­ary at the DeBakey hos­pi­tal. But that’s what their press release says.

“We know park­ing at the DeBakey VA is a seri­ous con­cern for Vet­er­ans seek­ing health care,” said Adam C. Wal­mus, the hospital’s direc­tor. “The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion is unac­cept­able and we are tak­ing imme­di­ate action to alle­vi­ate the problem.”

I tell you what Mr. Direc­tor, I don’t think the 160 extra spaces were a drop in the bucket at least when it came to my dri­ving around try­ing to find a spot this morn­ing and finally park­ing more or less per­pen­dic­u­lar to the VA Regional Office which is a lot closer to Hol­combe Avenue than is the hos­pi­tal. What I am say­ing is it was a good hike. Great for some­one whose major prob­lems include feet pain from walk­ing for extended peri­ods of time. In other words, the sit­u­a­tion is still unacceptable.

Now I am sure the hos­pi­tal folks would say: “But we have free valet park­ing.” True but one would spend as much time wait­ing to pull your car up to the hos­pi­tal entrance, not to men­tion the wait­ing time for your car to be retrieved, as it takes to park your vehi­cle out in that mess that’s known as vis­i­tor parking.

The VA plans to increase park­ing spaces by the sum­mer by 500. But that and the spotty enforce­ment seems like plug­ging up a hole in a boat made of Swiss cheese. One of the main prob­lems cited by the Hous­ton VA is that, since park­ing is free for vis­i­tors, this has led to jack­ing spaces by those who work else­where in the Texas Med­ical Cen­ter. Those employ­ees sim­ply park and hop on a bus or ride a bike over to the other hos­pi­tals. The VA has had its police check­ing to see if some of those cars actu­ally belong there but that just seems fruitless.

My solu­tion is to shoot these scofflaws who steal park­ing spaces from America’s vet­er­ans! I guess that’s a lit­tle harsh but I don’t even know if the total 1,200 spaces they hope to add at DeBakey when they build by 2016 some kind of struc­ture over one of the exist­ing park­ing lots will do much good.

There must be some kind of solu­tion to the prob­lem other than merely reshuf­fle the exist­ing spaces. The task is pro­vid­ing park­ing, not brain surgery. I real­ize that is an over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, espe­cially since the gov­ern­ment is involved. You add the frus­tra­tion that you get try­ing to park with the frus­tra­tion you have sit­ting around for hours on end wait­ing on appoint­ments plus the frus­tra­tion when you have to deal on occa­sion with one of the asses who needs to be work­ing in some­thing other than in con­tact with the pub­lic and you got your­self a real s**t storm. Seri­ously, it is sur­pris­ing you don’t hear about more vio­lent episodes than you do at the nation’s VA hos­pi­tals. It’s not just Houston’s.

It seems like if the Depart­ment of Vet­er­ans Affairs are seri­ous about want­ing to pro­vide the best care pos­si­ble, they could start when you park your car. The approach that is being taken is just too lit­tle too late.

A few quick obser­va­tions before I head for an overnighter in Hous­ton later today.

Geez lady, chill out! Oh, sorry, that’s chill out ma’am.

The U.S. Navy has relieved of com­mand undoubt­edly its worst cap­tain of the year and it is a woman skip­per. Or is that a skip­per woman? Just skip it. Though I won­der if she ever heard of Prozac?

Where there’s smoke: Part 1

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to Colin Cowherd on ESPN Radio all morn­ing while dri­ving out in the woods on busi­ness. The talk today is all Ben Roeth­lis­berger. The two-time Super Bowl-winning Steel­ers quar­ter­back once again finds him­self in scald­ing hot water with Geor­gia police look­ing into alle­ga­tions he sex­u­ally assaulted a 20-year-old col­lege co-ed. This isn’t the R-Man’s first rodeo when it comes to sex­ual mis­con­duct com­plaints. You have to begin won­der­ing, you know … ?

Where there’s smoke: Part 2

Dri­ving down a Texas Farm-to-Market this morn­ing I did a dou­ble take when I saw a sign adver­tis­ing a car­ton of Marlboro’s. Only $49. Forty-nine dol­lars! Is that some kind of a joke? Since I quit smok­ing — 10 years ago this Octo­ber — I haven’t really kept up with cig­a­rette prices. Well, that’s not entirely true. I have to do so as part of my part-time job, but I record the price and go on. After all, I don’t buy cig­a­rettes. Well, I bought some for my ex-girlfriend a cou­ple of years ago. Note: Ex. Any­way, I know that taxes and all have made cigs go through the roof. But $49 a car­ton? You could buy a nice din­ner with that amount. I never bought car­tons. Well, when I was sta­tioned on a ship and we could get cheaper smokes out­side of the U.S.A. waters, to the tune of $2 a car­ton (this was 1977–78) but I hardly bought car­tons dur­ing the rest of the years I smoked because they tended to make me smoke more, or so I ratio­nal­ized. But gosh almighty folks. Holy smokes, or rather, unholy smokes. Quit before you go broke.

Deja vu log truck

I had a flash­back this morn­ing, back to mid-teens when I took dri­vers edu­ca­tion. Actu­ally, the very first day that I drove in dri­vers ed. My instruc­tor and I drove a back­woods dirt road in East Texas to pick up another stu­dent. As I came around a curve, which had a huge cul­vert in that curve, a fully-loaded log truck came around from the other direc­tion. It was my first test under fire, so to speak. I did fine. I just eased off the gas, moved a bit to the right and let the big honker pass. Out of the cor­ner of my eye, how­ever, I saw my instruc­tor almost stomp his instructor’s brake through the floor board. That was fol­lowed by the teacher down­ing what looked to be a whole roll of Rolaids. The same hap­pened this morn­ing on a dirt road in East Texas. Well, my instruc­tor has been dead for a num­ber of years and I’ve been dri­ving legally now almost 40 years and I take Prilosec for acid reflux. But this big honker of a log truck came around the curve and we all man­aged to coex­ist. I did later fear for my safety as some young woman came fly­ing around a curve on that same dirt road going faster than she should have been going.

Time to skedaddle.

From time-to-time I like to check out our local GI Sur­plus store here in Beau­mont. Granted, the store isn’t of the Col. Bubbie’s mag­ni­tude — which appar­ently sur­vived or came back from the wrath of Hur­ri­cane Ike in 2008 — but few mil­i­tary sur­plus stores I have seen match Bubbie’s level.

I like brows­ing through the var­i­ous mil­i­tary and para­mil­i­tary garb these days. Of course, they have camo cloth­ing out the wazoo at my local GI Sur­plus as well as the pocket-laden BDU-style pants the entire mil­i­tary and many of the country’s police are wear­ing these days. The store I vis­ited had a hot sale going on win­ter cloth­ing such as the big heavy foul weather coats and flight jack­ets. The prices weren’t bad.

But it’s some of the stuff not for sale, items on the hard-to-reach top shelf which really makes my trip worth­while. These items included var­i­ous guns, mil­i­tary garb and dec­o­ra­tions, a sled that was dropped from a plane for sol­diers trapped in the snow, and of course they have the mis­siles and the big gun out­side. One could almost imag­ine load­ing that sucker up and putting a few new pot­holes in the mid­dle of U.S. 90. Talk about may­hem! Of course, I would never do some­thing like that. That’s just fan­tasy all you NSA, FBI and other more local agen­cies out there scour­ing the Inter­net for trou­ble makers.

I sup­pose that vis­it­ing GI Sur­plus helps bring out the lit­tle kid inside us, inside me. I used to love going to these stores when I was a child and I still like going every once in awhile.

Grow­ing up with fam­ily whose lives were heav­ily affected by World War II, it shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing that one of my favorite pas­times as a kid was play­ing soldier.

I would be occa­sion­ally fight­ing the Krauts, espe­cially on the dunes of Alge­ria after watch­ing the “Rat Patrol” on TV.

But most of my war was fought on some name­less island in the South Pacific against the Japan­ese. That’s where a cou­ple of my uncles served dur­ing the war. My father also sailed in the North Pacific, to Rus­sia, and he used to talk of his ship endur­ing Japan­ese fight­ers on the trip to Vladi­vos­tok. I sup­pose some of the younger peo­ple, now par­ents, who grew up with­out any close fam­ily mem­bers who were sent to war might be aghast at such play. But then, what would you want your kids to pre­tend they are when they’re play­ing, stock­bro­kers? Bernie Mad­off perhaps?

You would think with such a back­ground and such a life­long fas­ci­na­tion with things mil­i­tary and war-oriented that I would have been a gung-ho type in the ser­vice. You would think wrong.

I was part of the Viet­nam Era-Post Viet­nam mil­i­tary and I guess, per­haps, I might have been a lit­tle bit of a stereo­type of that time. I would grow my hair, beard, mus­tache or any­thing else I could grow to the limit. I was a bit of a slob. But the thing was, I per­formed my job very well and my supe­ri­ors would let me slide on my appear­ance most of the time. It was all teenage rebel­lion as I joined the Navy in my teens. I was also touched by the anti-war move­ment. Some­times we were treated like s**t by the civil­ians and so I took it out on the estab­lish­ment. I know. It was kind of dumb. But I was lucky that I was so dili­gent in per­form­ing my job. I man­aged to escape Captain’s Mast or per­haps even the brig on sev­eral occasions.

The truth is, the mil­i­tary has been an impor­tant part of my life, espe­cially in the first 25 or so years. I was sur­rounded by World War II vet­er­ans as a kid. Later as a reporter, I inter­viewed many who fought in that war. Also, my Dad was in the Mer­chant Marine dur­ing that war. Two of my older broth­ers served in the Navy before me in the early to mid-1960s, one brother spent a tour in Vietnam.

So I come by my mil­i­tary fas­ci­na­tion  hon­estly. I also like look­ing at and fir­ing big things which go “boom.” I’m 54 years old right now, so I don’t expect to change. At least for that part of said intrigue, I won’t grow up either Mr. Pan.

Is the United States of Amer­ica an empire?

One could have a lot of fun and spend a con­sid­er­able amount of time debat­ing, research­ing, learn­ing or what­ever one might fancy in an effort to deter­mine an answer to that ques­tion. Even then, ulti­mately, an answer could be lacking.

Author Robert D. Kaplan, national cor­re­spon­dent for the Atlantic Monthly mag­a­zine, raises this ques­tion which keeps pop­ping up from time-to-time in our Amer­i­can dis­course, in his book “Impe­r­ial Grunts.” But prob­a­bly more impor­tant Kaplan writes in his book that today’s irreg­u­lar U.S. mil­i­tary forces — the Marines and spe­cial forces — are an extremely capa­ble and amaz­ing instru­ment of a for­eign pol­icy whether inten­tion­ally or not crowns the Amer­i­can Empire.

Kaplan trav­els to global spots such as Mon­go­lia, the Philip­pines, Colom­bia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq where he looks at how the nation-building that U.S. spe­cial mil­i­tary forces are doing is as cen­tral to empire-building as mil­i­tary might. For those who thought “win­ning the hearts and minds” of a peo­ple ended after U.S. troops tried it in Viet­nam, Kaplan deliv­ers a more mod­ern view of how this is being done as rou­tine mil­i­tary fare.

Empire and nation-building, for­eign pol­icy and the George W. Bush-era ver­sion of mil­i­tary usage, how­ever, are not as impor­tant and as aptly por­trayed in this book than the author’s insight­ful expo­si­tion of the mostly young men who are at the heart of the new Amer­i­can military.

Kaplan draws the dis­tinc­tion between the “Big Army,” in which tons of reg­u­la­tions and lay­ers of bureau­cracy rule their world and the small teams and ease of oper­a­tion which is the hall­mark or the U.S. Army spe­cial oper­a­tions. At the very heart of the lat­ter is a soci­ety of sol­diers rang­ing in rank from major down to senior non-commissioned offi­cers — tra­di­tion­ally from the reli­gious South or U.S. Heart­land — whose most impor­tant attrib­utes are their abil­ity to adapt and adjust than strictly their use of M-4s or explo­sives. The spe­cial oper­a­tors’ pen­e­trat­ing knowl­edge of local peo­ples who they must both teach and some­times fight is also an impor­tant aspect of the Amer­i­can arse­nal. As one spe­cial forces sol­dier in Afghanistan said of the Afghans: “These peo­ple like guns and fight­ing. Give them beer and a mobile home and they’d be just like us.”

Also very dif­fer­ent in books about today’s mil­i­tary, Kaplan presents an almost uncen­sored view not seen in most media of the U.S. national guard troops who also serve as spe­cial oper­a­tors. These citizen-soldiers are more open about their view of the mil­i­tary world because it is not their full-time job. One guards­man, for instance, said his civil­ian job was just a way he could pay for his spe­cial forces habit.

There are a num­ber of Kaplan’s con­clu­sions of which I am either unsure of or with which I dis­agree. But this is one of the best books I have read about today’s sol­diers. I sup­pose my rea­son for say­ing so has to do with my past expe­ri­ence cov­er­ing the Army as a reporter. Kaplan had the lux­ury — not a very apt word if you read about some of his lodg­ing in the book — of access­ing high-ranking SF types who helped him into some oth­er­wise dif­fi­cult places to report on these sol­diers. Once he got to these places he was on his own and had to win the trust of the oper­a­tors. But he also was able to stay with the sol­diers for extended peri­ods and build trust.

Thus, Kaplan had a more hon­est and open view of what was going on. This in sharp con­trast to my hav­ing inter­acted with sol­diers who were usu­ally under the watch­ful eye of some pub­lic infor­ma­tion offi­cer types. I did my best but you can guess what makes much bet­ter reading.

If you are look­ing for their opin­ions of what the sol­diers of the empire-or-not do, this is the book. If you want to know about their feel­ings for things other than work, then you should look elsewhere.

My daddy used to say that if a per­son didn’t vote then that per­son didn’t have a right to com­plain about how things turn out in our gov­ern­ment. Of course, as Pop well knew, I could com­plain regard­less of whether I voted. But I got his drift.

I thought about this while head­ing to vote this morn­ing at Cen­tral Med­ical Mag­net School in Beau­mont. For prob­a­bly the first time I can remem­ber in an elec­tion, I faced a real dilemma although some might call it “choice.” That choice was whether to vote in the Repub­li­can or Demo­c­ra­tic primary.

The deci­sion of in which pri­mary to vote was as sim­ple as a kindly vot­ing clerk lady say­ing “Demo­c­rat or Repub­li­can” when I walked into the boys’ gym­na­sium where vot­ing was held. It’s funny, that smell of sweat from ado­les­cent boys seems to never fade.

My dilemma stemmed from one race, which was the Repub­li­can pri­mary for Texas gov­er­nor that pits estab­lished U.S. Sen. Kay Bai­ley Hutchi­son and Tea Partier Debra Med­ina against incum­bent Gov. Rick “And His Hair Was Per­fect” Perry.

Now as reg­u­lar read­ers know, I have no desire to see any of those three — or any three that I can think of — Repub­li­cans elected Texas gov­er­nor. But like other Democ­rats in the state who really DON’T want Rick “Secede from the Union” Perry reelected, I con­sid­ered briefly vot­ing for Hutchi­son who is run­ning uncom­fort­ably behind Perry. A Demo­c­ra­tic vote for Hutchi­son, accord­ing to pun­dits like Texas Monthly’s Paul Burka, might — might — force Perry into a runoff. There the gov­er­nor could be embar­rassed and his cam­paign weak­ened. It cer­tainly would mean spend­ing more money, what with another elec­tion. All of this could con­ceiv­ably help the Demo­c­ra­tic can­di­date, likely for­mer Hous­ton mayor Bill White, beat Perry in November.

In the end though, I could not do as one of my favorite blog­gers, Eileen Smith of In the Pink: Texas Monthly, said she ulti­mately did which is vote on the Repub­li­can ballot.

When the nice lady said: “Demo­c­rat or Repub­li­can” this morn­ing I headed straight for the Democ­rats. Old habits are dif­fi­cult to quit, like smok­ing and watch­ing porn. I have always voted the Demo­c­ra­tic bal­lot. The first time was to vote for Jimmy Carter and, yes I am proud to say I did vote for him. No one said our pres­i­dents can’t have their faults. (See George W. Bush)

Four more years of Rick Perry is not a prospect I care to think of on a nice pre-spring day on which I heard about three or four great songs in a row on the radio. But I have pretty much been a Demo­c­rat all my life and there are just some things I won’t do, like wear a Snug­gie, sing “Feel­ings” in a karaoke bar and vote in a Repub­li­can pri­mary. It was a dif­fi­cult choice to make but it was pretty sim­ple there in the end.

The term “social media” has become a big buzz word or buzz phrase — if there is such a thing — among cer­tain cir­cles these days such as, sur­prise, media types.

We’re talk­ing about media such as Face­book or My Space or Twit­ter that have these cer­tain types of folks abuzz like a methed-out bum­ble­bee. I’ve never seen a methed-out bum­ble­bee or any insect for that mat­ter. But when you have to say some­thing, you say some­thing. “Something.”

I’ve tried all three.

Twit­ter is com­mu­ni­ca­tion in 140 char­ac­ters or less. It’s kind of like a mini-newswire for every­one and their pet anteater. It’s imme­di­ate. Politi­cians such as Repub­li­can Sen­ate mem­bers seem to like it, which is kind of odd because they like to talk so much and not say any­thing. With Twit­ter you get to talk up to 140 char­ac­ters and, if you are a politi­cian, not say anything.

My Space is kind of like dark­ness. It seems to be the pre­ferred social media for nut jobs and killers. Not every­one is crazy who uses My Space. I have an account but don’t use it. Does that make me a nut job? I don’t know, My Space doesn’t really feel like my space.

Face­book, I like. Prob­a­bly like all three, it can be put to good use depend­ing on how good you use it. Does that make sense? For instance, I posted last night about the week I had in which I sprained my ankle and wrenched my back in a fall, then as I was get­ting healed I got food poi­son­ing. Pro­jec­tile vom­it­ing and the whole shootin’ match, although I didn’t go into detail as I have a very eclec­tic group of Face­book friends.

I have mostly received mes­sages say­ing they hope I feel bet­ter. My friend Bruce, reminded me of my last severe case of food poi­son­ing when I ate a canned ham from a parental Care pack­age while on my Navy ship off New Zealand. I’ll say the feed pizen­ing wasn’t that bad this most recent round.

Weird or even bad events or occur­rences get my Face­book friends and other Face­book fam­ily mem­bers respond­ing. You can see a slice of everyone’s life who you, prac­ti­cally, know or have known in one incar­na­tion or the other at some time or the other.

It all seems pretty good, right now at least, for me. This is a time in my life I need Face­book. I need my Face. Maybe that will be the “it” phrase like “I Want My MTV” was in the 80s. Was it the 80s.

We will see how Face­book pro­gresses, or not. We?  Why do I write that? We, I mean, all of us.

Greet­ings and cal­i­bra­tions on what is a thunder-filled, rainy, Fri­day after­noon in South­east Texas. It’s been a stress­ful week so I thought I’d just throw a few odds and ends out there and see if they stick to anything.

We’re so glad that’s cleared up

After all these years we finally learn who Carly Simon meant when she sung “You’re So Vain.” It turns out it wasn’t War­ren Beatty, Mick Jag­ger, James Tay­lor, Paul Simon, Simon and Gar­funkel, Simon and Schus­ter, Sim­ple Simon or any of the other peo­ple in the enter­tain­ment world named Simon. Instead, it was record mogul David Gef­fen. I sup­pose that back in the early 1970s it would have been nearly impos­si­ble to sell a hit record titled: “You’re So Gay.”

Stick that up your Appalachian Trail

Jenny San­ford was granted a divorce from her hus­band, South Car­olina Gov. Mark San­ford, whose cheatin’ heart told on him when he lied about hik­ing on the Appalachian Trail. He instead had gone to Argentina to visit a long­time lover. The then-rising Repub­li­can star said, in first explain­ing the mis­cue, that he knew it was one of those “A” places he had planned to visit.

Swiss line up for knives in pend­ing con­flict with Libya

The Swiss Army is hand­ing out the famed Swiss Army Knives to its pop­u­lace after Libyan strong man and res­i­dent nut job Moam­mar Gad­hafi threat­ened the long-neutral Euro­pean state with a “holy war” over a 2008  arrest and brief detain­ment of Gadhafi’s son and wife. Experts have said Switzer­land should not worry about an actual war with Libya given the past out­landish actions of Ghad­hafi. How­ever, Swiss offi­cials coun­tered that no one had actu­ally believed the United King­dom and Argentina would have fought a war over the Falk­lands. Or was that Appalachia that fought the UK, asked Gov. Mark San­ford of South Carolina?

Cana­di­ans apol­o­gize for women’s hockey team cel­e­bra­tion and intend to apol­o­gize even more

The Cana­dian gov­ern­ment says it will hold a national day of apol­ogy on Sat­ur­day after some of its women’s olympic hockey team cel­e­brated with alco­holic bev­er­ages and cig­ars fol­low­ing their gold-medal win over the U.S. team. Gov­ern­ment offi­cials in Canada said that it was not suf­fi­cient in the country’s cul­ture of polite­ness to only offer a mea­ger apol­ogy by the hockey team’s gov­ern­ing body. “All Cana­di­ans should feel sin­cerely ashamed and only after a national day of remorse will it suf­fice that we show how much we wish to express our regret,” Cana­dian Prime Min­is­ter Stephen Harper said in an address to the nation, adding: “eh?”

Had I known hard times have hit our mil­i­tary lead­ers so much …

This is a mes­sage I received which says it is from Ray­mond Odierno “A MILITARY OFFICER HERE IN IRAQ.”

Actu­ally, Ray Odierno, is in charge of U.S. forces in Iraq. He’s bet­ter known as Gen. Ray­mond Odierno, as in four-star gen­eral Ray Odierno. He was first known to the greater pub­lic when he com­manded the 4th Infantry Divi­sion which joined the begin­ning of the ground war in Iraq although it was some­what delayed because Turkey didn’t want us to land there to invade Iraq.

So, any­ways, I get this mes­sage from Ray Odierno except his email address as sent to me is .es (Spain), the e-mail address in the mes­sage says e-mail him in .sn(Senegal) and not .mil(military):

MY NAME IS COMMANDER RAYMOND ODIERNO, A U.S MILITARY OFFICER HERE IN IRAQ.
I SEEK YOU ASSISTANCE TO MOVE OUT OF THIS COUNTRY,THE SUM OF EIGHTEEN
MILLION FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS WE DISCOVERED IN A BUNKER
NEAR SADDAM'S OLD PALACE PRIOR TO THE
DEMISE/COLLAPSE OF HIS REGIME.
PLEASE CONTACT ME ON raymond.odierno@sunumail.sn FOR MORE DETAILS.
I AM WAITING FOR YOUR REPLY.
Have a nice day
COMMANDER.RAYMOND ODIERNO