Presumptive nominee John McCain is back to his old ways -- speaking to La Raza and promising comprehensive immigration reform. Can conservatives trust McCain? Should we start a movement to dump him from the ticket? Let us know what you think.

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5/16/2008

Barack Hussein Obama has come unglued because of something President Bush said. In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said... 

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Monday, May 19

Richard Collins - 9:30AM
Founder of the premier Hillary Clinton educational website StopHerNow.com Collins has declared StopHerNow.com’s mission accomplished and how now launched Stop-Him-Now.com to do the same to Sen. Obama.

FIND INFORMATION on how to carry The Lynn Woolley Show in your market.

LOGICAL ITEMS for Logical people. If it is not found here, it's not logical.

The Death of Talk Radio?
A politically-powerful liberal-left movement seeks to silence conservative media personalities. This book analyzes the threat from the perspective of veteran talk show host Lynn Woolley and media analyst and critic Cliff Kincaid.

Clear Moral Objectives
*Special Price*
Finally, here's a book that examines the nation's twelve big challenges in clear, logical terms -- no spin and no parsing of words.

The Last Great Days of Radio
*Special Price*
A mixture of humor, wit, and nostalgia, this memoir follows one radio career from a small station in a small market all the way to the largest radio newsroom in Texas -- and back again.

Wes Riddle's Horse Sense
December 31, 2007

My experience in the Middle East, like much else in life to date hasn’t proven to be exactly a smorgasborg of free choice.  It probably all started Plebe year at West Point and went downhill from there.  When I was a Captain in Advanced Course, the Army forced me to transition from the stuff I loved (Short Range Air Defense or SHORAD) into the high altitude systems (too-much-like-the-Air Force).  I became a Patriot officer.  When I reported to the S-3 shop of my first such unit in Germany, it was 1988.  There I entered a battalion in crisis.  Some staff officer at the Pentagon no doubt had screwed things up royal, by letting half the unit PCS exactly three years after the unit had stood up.  Leaning oh so heavily on my extensive Patriot background (none), with few old timers to consult, I became the S-3 Plans officer updating their General Defense Plan (GDP), then the S-4 and finally Bravo Battery’s Commander.  At last: Commander.  Five months into the stint, however, I was knee-deep in snow during a field exercise when our battalion received notice that we were going to the Gulf.  It was December 1990. 

Everyone was very “hooah” about it, and somewhere between recovery of vehicles and the blur to get ready to deploy, I spun a globe to find out where in the world was Saudi Arabia, and how close was it to Kuwait.  The Gulf War was great, so far as wars go: short and relatively clean.  It was a piece of cake compared to duty in Cold War Germany.  Bravo Battery shot down a SCUD missile in northern Saudi Arabia on 21 February 1991.  (I’d say we shot two of the things down that same week, except brass credited a sister battery with the other one).  Years later I was stationed as a senior Major at Ft. Bliss writing Air Defense weapon system requirements—also contemplating how to arrange my PCS to Ft. Hood where I hoped to eventually retire.  There weren’t too many assignments available there in the Air Defense, so I worked a deal with Branch: they promised to PCS me to Hood, if I would take the unaccompanied short tour to Korea.  About three weeks prior to consummating the deal, however, Branch said they had another great deal for me: we’ll PCS you to Hood only if you take a two-year unaccompanied assignment in…Kuwait.  Hey at least I remembered where it was. 

As fortune would have it, and despite the Army’s best efforts, the assignment actually proved to be one of the best and most enjoyable.  As a recently promoted Lieutenant Colonel, I became the Air Defense Advisor to the whole country.  Not only that, the Office of Military Cooperation-Kuwait (OMC-K) let me double as Air Force Advisor for one year (I’m sure because the Air Force couldn’t find anybody as qualified).  I’ll never forget a friend of mine there too, one of the other Advisors and a career Military Police officer.  We would find ourselves together sometimes at social affairs, either by the Embassy pool or the Chevron Texaco beach to the south by Saudi Arabia.  He would sit back, usually with a big cigar and utter these immortal words: “Life ain’t bad on the edge of the Empire.”  And indeed, I reckoned it wasn’t.  I also really looked forward to bringing my wife over on vacation my second year in country, to meet some of my exotic and quirky friends.  Unfortunately, as they say, timing is everything: her flight bookings were scheduled for October 2001, but 9/11 sort of changed our plans, and much else besides in the region.  It was early evening in Kuwait when the morning news broke from America.  I was teaching U.S. History at Camp Doha for University of Maryland University College (UMUC) when the world changed. 

Flashback: A cadet captain and company commander of my Plebe company, Co. I-3 (the Ice House) had seen me when I must have looked pretty miserable inside of a locker room one day.  He said, “Remember, time stands still for no man.”  The words stuck, but I’m not sure that I ever fully understood them, not until around the time I retired out of Ft. Hood as III Corps Chief of the Air Defense Element or CADE.  Twenty years had passed in the Army.  Less than three weeks before my retirement in 2003, news broadcast of more bombings in Saudi Arabia. 

_____________________
Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors
from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion
press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican
Primary.  Email: wes@wesriddle.com.