Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3
Thanks for the email address, national@washpost.com, and thanks for having the balls to ask for the manuscript. You’re now in the best investigative book since Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein wrote one three decades ago. Someone has to do it every so often, I suppose. They had their King Richard, and I have my King George. I bluffed Thom Shanker at the Times into thinking that I’d copied you on the material that scared him July 15. Folks sure were nervous at about the time Dr. Kelly committed suicide, weren’t they?
Anyhow, I haven’t talked to you guys since April 13, when my cell phone receipts show that I talked with your number for 27 minutes. (If you want names, details, etc., ask.) I also faxed you a copy of my op-ed, “3/7 Cavalry, tragedy and travesty,” that took a unique perspective of the Private Jessica/Four One-ton Bomb stories of April 5/6/7. I wrote it from the perspective of a captain who had volunteered for Desert Storm and served on a division staff. My take was that we had experienced a considerable military reverse. I believed it so much that my immediate reaction when the airport got hit was to weep for my comrades.
Well, I’ve been supposing that there’s been a mistake in getting my op-ed to you, so I’ve included it among my book excerpts, which are below. An important point: I am donating all the considerable profits that will come from this book (really a report, as you’ll see) to charity. I cannot profit from my brothers’ and sisters’ blood in the desert. I urge this dignified regard for the dead on all my brothers and sisters in the media. I have identified the people who will take the fall for a general situation, and I did not choose to implicate you among them. I’m just implying that you ought to start checking up on the story. Let’s forget about the botched communication of April 13, and let’s work together. Don’t call me Deep Throat, though, call me Captain May.
Captain May