Obama Visits Fort Campbell

In his first Presidential visit to Kentucky, President Obama addressed a cheering crowd at Ft. Campbell today for a short (16 minutes) but rousing speech. Acknowledging that more soldiers have been deployed - and killed - from Ft. Campbell than anyplace else in America in the war in Afghanistan, he praised Kentucky's Special Operations forces who were part on last Sunday's raid in Pakistan. He also awarded the commando units the "Presidential Unit Citation", the highest honor a President can give to a military unit.

The identities of those Ft. Campbell soldiers specifically involved are being kept secret to protect from potential terrorist reprisals, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.


Not everyone is so enthralled with Obama's handling of the situation. Discrepancies abound in the many conflictions versions being told by officials regarding the circumstances of Bin Laden's death. Some are feeling deja vu of Bush's claim that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction" that turned out not to be true, as it sinks in now that Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan because that's where Bin Laden supposedly was - and now we're being told "oops, he was in Pakistan all along, sorry." And adminstration officials have stated that Bin Laden's death will have no impact whatsoever on the timetable for withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan.

The President also made no mention of the top-secret experimental stealth super-copter that crashed during the raid. The official explanation being given is that it got "caught in an air vortex" due to temperatures higher than expected. That doesn't exactly sound like much of a super-copter, if you ask me; but they didn't ask me.


Then too, there's the whole can of worms about all the reports that Osama Bin Laden has actually already been dead for years now. FOX News and the Pakistan Observer reported in 2001 that Bin Laden died from a lung complication. There was even an article about Bin Laden's 2001 funeral in an Egyptian newspaper. And in 2002, the FBI's counter-terrorism chief Dale Watson said he believed Bin Laden was probably dead.

Whatever the real truths are behind world events that have caused President Obama's hair to start greying prematurely, I just hope and pray he knows what he's doing. Even though he's keeping the identities of the soldiers a secret, I'm not sure even admitting that Kentucky was involved in the Bin Laden raid is a good idea. Feel me?

Trimble County Soldier's Monument

Trimble County again: this monument to war heroes stands outside their courthouse.





I've never understood why the Korean War and the Vietnam War sometimes get downgraded to be called a mere "conflict" (and this particular monument avoids putting a label on the Vietnam War altogether). Is it some kind of politically-correct thing?

These were wars; call them such.

Fort Knox is Burning

Over the weekend, a massive fire-fighting effort has been underway to douse the flames that have been sweeping hundreds of acres at Fort Knox. No one's certain how it started, but some are saying that the fires probably started after tracer rounds were fired during military exercises. This is ammo enhanced with pyrotechnic materials that allow the paths of the projectiles to be clearly seen as they sail through the air.

According to the Courier-Journal, at least 87 drops of water have been performed by Blackhawk helicopters. There's conflicting reports online at the moment, some saying that the fires have all been contained, while others indicate that some are still burning. Fire departments that have provided assistance include Bullitt County, Flaherty, Lebanon Junction, Nichols, PRP, Rineyville, and Zoneton.

Another fire, at the Fort Duffield Civil War Park in West Point, KY, is believed to have been also sparked by the Fort Knox conflagration. According to WHAS:

The WHAS11 crew walked up a hill inside the park to get a closer look at the now-controlled flames and saw firsthand the damage the fire caused. The blaze was so hot, it did something no one working the fire said they had ever seen before; melted a portion of one man’s helmet.

The considerable smoke lingering over the southern part of Jefferson County has been very bad to breathe, with air quality ratings in Valley Station reaching undesirable levels.

The Kentucky Forestry Division reports that 42 fires in 31 counties occurred last week. 15 of those were in Rockcastle County, where
Judge-Executive Buzz Carloftis issued a total ban on all open fires, including trash fires, camp bonfires, and controlled burnoffs on public and private land.

In addition to being a major training base for the U.S. Army, Fort Knox also supposedly houses the nation's gold bullion supply. I say "supposedly" because there's been a growing concern in some circles that the gold is actually missing. There have been reports of "gold" ingots discovered to be composed primarily of tungsten, a metal whose weight is close enough to gold for the brick to pass the flotation test.

There have been repeated calls for an independent audit of Fort Knox's gold since the Reagan administration, but the Federal Reserve has stonewalled these efforts each time. And as market analyst Gary North wisely notes, the Fed may have good reason to be in damage-control mode, as a chain reaction of worldwide financial upheaval could ensue:

"If all the gold is not there, there will be enormous pressure from voters on governments around the world to audit the gold reserves of their central banks. If the gold held in trust by the New York Fed is not there, foreign voters will conclude that their governments' gold may not be there either."

Things may be getting even hotter for Fort Knox if the gold-audit proponents get their way, and that's a fire that shows no signs of being put out.

Dead Cat Asked to Join Foreign Legion

From WLKY:

They say it was more than a mistake, it was an insult to veterans. A Central Kentucky family says their deceased cat got a letter inviting him to join the American Legion, even thanking him for his service.

Colleen Harris says her husband, Cecil, loved serving his country, and raising his daughter and step-son. The family lost Cecil last May, and lost their cat Samson a few years before that. Surprisingly, it's Samson's service in combat now being recognized by the American Legion.

"The only war he ever fought was chasing mice," says Harris.

She wants to thank all the veterans she knows, hoping the American Legion will do the same before turning to more cats for more membership dues.

"They need to be maybe a little more particular on how they solicit and not be so worried about everybody sending in their $25."

The Kentucky American Legion says unfortunately, letters are sometimes sent to non-service members. They say national headquarters purchases mailing lists that aren't always accurate, but credentials are later verified through local posts.

Bivouac of the Dead

Located in Zachary Taylor Cemetery, Louisville.

Wave of Military Murder

The national newsmedia has been abuzz about the bizarre incident at Fort Hood, Texas, in which a Muslim psychiatrist went on a shooting spree. Although early reports stated that there were definitely two shooters - possibly three - that datum seems to have vanished and they've now changed their story and are insisting that Nidal Malik Hasan was a lone gunman.

Then, in Oak Grove, KY, a Fort Campbell military husband and wife were found dead in a murder-suicide. Police said the man had apparently shot his wife, then shot himself with a handgun.

The Oak Grove incident isn't an isolated one. We've reported here previously about the ongoing wave of suicide at Fort Campbell, of which this tragedy is just a part. According to news sources, Fort Campbell averaged one confirmed suicide per week last winter. Maybe even more deaths are actually unconfirmed suicides, because there are a considerable number of deaths that are now being reinvestigated.


Earlier this year, Fort Campbell soldier Steven Green was sentenced to serve five consecutive life sentences. Green raped a 14-year-old girl, then killed her and her entire family, then set fire to their house, then tried to blame it on Sunni Islam terrorists. Fortunately, he was far too stupid to be able to properly keep his story straight.

And then there's Billi Jo Smallwood, who has been charged with setting fire to her home on the Fort Campbell post in hopes of killing her husband and making it look like an accident. He survived, but two of their children died in the fire.

And how about Pvt. Nicholas Mikel who opened fire on a group of his fellow soldiers training at Fort Campbell? In April 2006 he was convicted of attempted premeditated murder and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.


Or Hasan Akbar (given name Mark Kools), a 32-year-old Muslim soldier who was stationed at Fort Campbell and was made miserable by a nonstop barrage of anti-Muslim sentiment around the base. By the time he shipped out to Iraq, he had become driven so insane by the verbal abuse that he finally snapped one night while entrusted to guard a Humvee filled with ammo. He stole a carton of hand grenades, activated each of them and lobbed them into the tents where his officers were sleeping. Some who escaped the blasts were fired upon by Akbar with his standard issue AK-47.

Akbar was sent back to Kentucky to be court-martialed, and imprisoned in the brig at Fort Knox. He was subsequently sentenced to death by lethal injection.



And don't forget Fort Campbell's 21-year-old PFC Barry Winchell, who was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat because he admitted to being gay. Pvt. Calvin Glover was convicted by a military court and sentenced to life in prison for beating Winchell to death with a baseball bat last year. Winchell’s roommate, Spc. Justin R. Fisher, was sentenced to 12½ years in prison for his role in the killing.

Michelle Benecke, the co-director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said that Fort Campbell soldiers she spoke to all admitted that "anti-gay harassment and threats are as common as the uniform", but anyone who complains then becomes harassed themselves. Some have hinted that there have been other murders like Winchell's, but that they've been swept under the rug, covered up and made to look like accidents or "friendly fire".


Fort Campbell, home to the Black Helicopters of the 160th Spec-Ops "Night Stalkers", clearly seems to be stressing its inhabitants to the snapping point. But the Fort Hood incident shows that the problem is nationwide. In Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, the whole first third of the film is devoted to how the psychological cruelty and abuse of the drill instructor (R. Lee Ermey) in basic training leads to one of his soldiers finally going berserk and shooting him, then taking his own life. Life imitates art?


Meanwhile, court testimony was recently given regarding an earlier shooting in North Carolina wherein a soldier opened fire on two Special Forces commandos. His defense was that he thought they were "roleplaying".