Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3
Hey, the
piece on Capt.Yee was right on the mark. Someone
somewhere should publish that as an op-ed.
Have you sent it out as an op-ed?
Take out the personal stuff re you and the chaplain. Your skills in military info are a tool you
can use. Remember your military training
you talk about? Not to let your personal
anger influence your skills? Anger
clouds the issue and puts up a barrier between your insightful military intelligence
and gatekeepers of the media. Get cool, lighten up and beat them at their own
game. Hang in there. You are needed.
I send
you light.
Kay
Bless you for your light, Sergeant Kay. I remember how you and Sara couldn’t stop laughing from hysteria after you’d read the (then small) manuscript and realized that the reason Doc and I weren’t answering the phone might be that we were dead.
Yeah, y’all giggled while you told me to get the fuck out of Dodge ‘cause I was bringing my anti-war to the Peace House. Y’all were right, of course, and I never could stand up to a strong woman anyhow, so I snarled and growled and flexed…, and did what you told me.
We hooted in the car after we’d gone by the Waco Tribune Herald to make John Young shit his drawers with my allegations. Remember? Hell, I was wearing my dress blues with full medals (over my heart, remember?) and he must have thought he was in the sequel to Apocalypse Now. Come to think of it, I guess he is. I guess I’m something between the captain and the colonel, floating on my own river. I want you to join my tribe all the time, but like most my allies, you set your own pace, and travel your own way. You say we’re free spirits; I say we’re a loose formation, and I lead. [Editor’s emphasis, in all cases] Call it what you will, but you read me like your daily paper – and you should. Thom Shanker at the New York Times complained on the phone today that I was writing too much volume. He’s probably right, except for the enormity of my self-appointed task of recording history, hidden behind the mask of media.
I’ll make my boast, and let my deed stand for itself: I defy any other man or woman to consistently write as I have, as much as I have, and as sensibly as I have for most of the last six months. I have done it when I believed – and they all believed – that the wrong move could cost you your life. I guess the part that saddens me the most is that war – and Infowar is war – brings out everything ugly and feral in human character.
At 1600 (Texas Time) I watched the Wolf barking on CNN. Damned if the sight didn’t make me sick: For five minutes they were hyping stories about treasonable Captain Yee, some Airman of Espionage and a just-released bit of info from Israeli folks that they had foiled some Asian Al Jazeera guy who must have been planning to kamikaze bomb the hell out of someone because he was taking photos of the ticket counter! No shit, Kay, they laid it on thick to spook the public against Moslems. Next they implied that there might be a Moslem conspiracy in the Army! “Goddamn it!” I’m thinking, “now we’re going to have a fucking military purge!”
Anyhow, I called old Thom Shanker on the phone and proposed a parley about it. He told me the Times was following it, and knew more about the particulars than I did. He was up on his UCMJ, which I only really got to know when Major Daniels and I took on the General Staff of the 75th Division and almost got court-martialed for it. Anyhow, he’d done his work. Seems like a decent enough person, but hell, so did Himmler. You just can’t tell any more, can you?
We’ll have to see whether the witch hunt is on now,
won’t we? Bush didn’t back down a bit at
the UN today, the Army is sinking deeper into quicksand, and is waiting like
Travis at the Alamo – in vain – for reinforcements. I would think that the Iraqis are inexorably
gathering force and, more important, organization. We’re headed for a Tet
soon, maybe a
Enough of that talk, though. You and Doc have both contacted me in the last couple of days, and both of you reminded me of light, so I’ll follow the flow and perform a light deed.
Mr. Shanker did me the kindness to address me by my title, regard me with respect, entertain my concerns of a witch hunt and promise to attend to these dire issues. He did all this under mere flag of truce while standing on the gallows of my Black List. The gesture was gallant, and Ghost Troop and I return it with like gallantry: He may leave the Black List, Sergeant Kay; and because of his single act of humanity, we dissolve it altogether.
It was just a bit of McCarthyistic stagecraft anyhow, but I needed it to get my PSYOPS going right. Another of my little April fools jokes, eh? This book is full of ‘em, and the best are still to come…
Captain May
Forever rescinded by order of Captain Eric H. May, Cdr, Ghost Troop, 3/7 Cavalry at the stroke of midnight, September 23, 2003.
Ghost Troop Home Page April Fools Part 3