UPDATE: We believe Woodward in relation to Kelly & Mattis. The book as a whole is a hit job, but on these specifics, Woodward rules.
Woodward: Kelly, Mattis denials of his book quotes untrue
I consider Slate completely off the mark.
The Obvious Suspect (Huntsman)
Alert Reader has heard from a good friend who has worked closely with Kelly and believes Kelly — with some complicity from Mattis — is the author of the Op Ed. A complete copy of the source's long memo, with comments from Alert Reader in brackets, is below the line. Although Nick Ayers, Pence's Chief of Staff, has been accused, and Pence is known to have gone behind Trump's back on many matters, the over-all tone of the Op Ed reeks of someone who touches all of the paper, not just one agency or department. The Vice President is more marginalized than most realize — he simply cannot make the claims made in the Op Ed and his Chief of Staff is unlikely to have done something this crazy without direct approval that Pence would not have provided — Pence is waiting for God to strike Trump down.
I have no direct knowledge on the Op Ed but I do have grave doubts as the suitability of Marine generals in the positions of Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense. Kelly is not a holistic thinker and has no clue what true cost economics means. He is also completely out of touch with the soundness of the President's instincts including de-nuclearization, leaving NATO, and closing overseas bases starting in Korea, Germany, and Japan. Mattis is arrogant and does not “do” grand strategy — he is a budget builder, nothing more, and he is flat out pathologically dysfunctional when it comes to Iran. The influence of the Zionists on Generals Kelly and Mattis is sufficient to warrant a special counterintelligence review.
The President would do well to invite several strategic thinkers in for a conversation — Col Lawrence Wilkerson and Col Doug McGregor come to mind — and start thinking about a new Chief of Staff and new Secretary of Defense. My own thoughts on national security strategy are here.
In passing, I just watched Dan Coats make an ass of himself talking to INSA (thank you, C-SPAN). The man is incoherent and completely lacking in vision. We need a transition DNI that can shut down 70% of all secret agencies, terminate their own job, and help the President create a reconstituted Classified Intelligence Agency that integrates the 30% worth saving from each secret agency, creates a new Open Source Agency, and moves the National Intelligence Council to the Executive Office of the President to sit adjacent to the Grand Strategy Advisory Group — the National Security Council, which is how the Deep State controls the White House, should be abolished and arch Zionist John Bolton shown the door.
Below is what I received.
Confront Kelly & Ayers NOW–UNDER OATH with Real Threat of Perjury
Chief Suspects
BOTH are mother hens–chiefs of staff (CoS) who would express such frustrations of working for a POTUS under daily DEEP STATE attacks. “I am not with him!” is their disgusting cry.
Duality–holding 2 contradictory stances must NOT BECOME THE NEW AMERICAN NORM.
INTEGRITY demands each one of us hold only 1 stance on any given issue–not 2–or as many as you want–like lying morality chameleons.
The entire American public knows SecDef Mattis (Bilderberger) and WH CoS Kelly called POTUS Trump an idiot etc..
And…at the same time…
LIED ABOUT IT, DENYING THEY SAID SUCH THINGS PUBLICLY.
Both Mattis and Kelly are 2-faced, liars; “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” James 1:8, King James Bible
You cannot have it both ways and hold HIGH positions of trust & responsibility in the USG following an Oath to uphold the USC while at the same time VIOLATING these things!
BOTH Mattis & Kelly should be fired IMMEDIATELY before the mid-term elections in November before they can do any more damage.
John Kelly, POTUS Trump's CoS
Wolf Blitzer has concluded–like I do–that passive-aggressive Kelly wrote the OP-ED.
He has already been reported as playing the “messiah” in the WH matching the OP-ED's wording. Here is an example of a Kelly speech: businessinsider.com/john-kellys-speech-truck-bomb-2017-4
The speech text is at the bottom–note the similarities–the attention-getting lead “I” statement.
WH Staffers: Kelly Thinks He's Saving U.S. From Disaster, Calls Trump ‘Idiot' | Deadline | MSNBC
youtube.com/watch?v=ioqTnh14Kro
msn.com/en-us/video/t/wolf-blitzer-john-kelly-doesnt-seem-to-have-publicly-denied-writing-nyt-op-ed/vp-BBMYB5f
MOTIVE:
Kelly hates Trump and being there–but has been asked by him to stay on for 2 more years!
youtube.com/watch?v=J0GaDXB_kAU
I say he wants OUT but is too big a pussy to man-up and tell President Trump, “NO”. So out of frustration, Kelly writes the OP-ED in classic passive-aggressive style that somehow the Trump administration will go away–and he can be free. .
Nick Ayers, VP Pence's CoS
Omarosa Manigault says Nick Ayers is the OP-ED writer because his staff stands to gain the White House if they can remove POTUS Trump.
youtube.com/watch?v=NUF9C99rHCg
LISTEN VERY CAREFULLY around 25 seconds in…
Bio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Ayers
MOTIVE:
VP Pence wants to take-over as POTUS and be a REAL, RIGHT-WING, NEOCON, ROCKEFELLER ILLUMINATI DEEP STATE WAR-MONGER.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings
In 2017, US Vice President Mike Pence called the bombings “the opening salvo in a war that we have waged ever since—the global war on terror“.[16]
****
His CoS Ayers could have wroting the OP-ED.
My Conclusion: Kelly
Same flowery, American melting pot language in both essays. Talk of heroes and ending with them saving us all etc.
A lot of alliteration in the OP-ED as a linguist noted:
youtube.com/watch?v=ejrpGSEGV24
Conflicted, USMC malign ant (full word) narcissist Kelly could neither pass a polygraph test nor survive the public humiliation awaiting him if it becomes public he wrote the OP-ED in frustration as a S.O.S. to get out as WH CoS. He would likely commit suicide.
Therefore, I propose POTUS Trump fire SEVERAL DISLOYAL APPOINTEES to let Kelly go into quiet retirement troubled by his son's death at the hands of the inept foot-slogging, USMC he worships.
Analysis of the OP-ED
My comments in [ ] brackets and red.
Key highlights are boldfaced.
www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html
Opinion
I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration [Are these the author's words? or NYT editor's?]
I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. [Author later on is reluctant to use “I”, proper grammar suggests the paper wrote this]
Sept. 5, 2018
The [CIA] Times is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. [Is this not miss-direction implying the author NEEDS THE JOB FOR ITS SALARY–and away from retired GO Kelly who does not need the money?] We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here. [The CIA Times timed this letter to coincide with Woodward's book as a bona fides to it, all of it is an Anti-American, psyop]
****************************
President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.
It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.
The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.
I would know. I am one of them.
To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous. [Third person as in “it” that can be taken over if Trump is removed, aka VP Pence's staff]
But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic. [Kelly has this pompous outlook of playing god, but upstart Ayers who doesn't know or has done shit could have this 20-somethingesque smug delusional outlook of knowing it all]
That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.
The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making. [Sounds like whiny christian Ayers. Kelly to me would welcome ad hocing everything]
Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. [Writer has either globalist agenda or Adam Smith delusions that uneven trade deals somehow work for the best of America when they only help the elites] At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright. [Kelly is not a free thinker about anything. This sounds like an idealogue.]
In addition to his mass-marketing of the notion that the press is the “enemy of the people,” [If the CIA illegally controls the press for the elites, YES it is the enemy of the people. Is not this OP-ED proof enough?] President Trump’s impulses are generally anti-trade and anti-democratic. [This could be Kelly who buys into America is a pluralistic democracy yadda yadda and as a globalist DEEP STATE traitor has no loyalty to Americans' economic or physical security as evidenced by his passive-aggressive opposition to THE WALL etc.].
Don’t get me wrong. There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more. [Does this not CONTRADICT his previous press-is-good remarks? Robust military? Would Kelly say this?]
But these successes have come despite — not because of — the president’s leadership style, which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective. [This sounds like a VP staff trying to take credit from Trump to add luster to their take-over; but “ineffective” sounds militaryesque from Kelly]
From the White House to executive branch departments and agencies, senior officials will privately admit their daily disbelief at the commander in chief’s comments and actions. Most are working to insulate their operations from his whims. [Sounds like Kelly having to mother hen over all of them but not in a 1st person, “I” so it could be Ayers observing from afar]
Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back. [Certainly sounds like Kelly. How often does Ayers meet with POTUS Trump? However he talks like an OBSERVER not a direct participant–Ayers]
“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier. [Sounds like WH CoS, Kelly who plays arbitrator of who sees or not sees POTUS Trump]
The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful. [Sounds like Kelly whining that the press has attacked him unjustly for being associated with Trump–when he has undermined him to make him more palatable]
It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. [Kelly is around Trump's age–Ayers is in his 30s. Would a smug 30-something proclaim he is the adult and 70ish Trump is the child? Millenials would, certainly] We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t. [Familiarity = Contempt. Since when does a WH insider not RESPECT the POTUS and call him by his name as they are equals? Sounds like Kelly.]
The result is a two-track presidency.
Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations. [Kellyesque cum-by-ya with NATO is typical USMC bureaucratic pass-the-buck so he doesn't have to do anything TANGIBLY]
Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals. [Total CFR, neocon, globalist mantracrap to be expected from Kelly]
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. [“Former” is a TELL–marines always say they are “former” not “ex“–another indicator its Kelly] He complained for weeks about senior staff members [Would Ayers be privvy to Trump complaining?] letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. [TYPO!!! Stupid marine time! It should read, “malignant” behavior. I think youngster Ayers would have completed the word; Kelly as a GO thinks in bullet points] But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable. [The affinity to LTG McMaster here smacks of Kelly, the 3rd grade school master handing out geo-political punishment].
This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state. [BIG TELL here. Author wants the DEEP STATE TRUTH smashed because HE IS A MEMBER OF IT. Yes, writer is certainly a man.]
Given the instability many witnessed, [False Consensus Effect–the instability “I” witnessed goes here. Notice author never says “I” when if he were a SENIOR ADMIN OFFICIAL he should have at least experienced 1 bad Trump encounter–and said so like, “I have experienced this, too” etc. The fact that the author dodges not adding his own personal “I”–means he is desperately HIDING IT as in HE IS the WH CoS, Kelly] there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. [“Early” indicates Kelly who was DHS from Day 1 before becoming CoS mother hen] But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over. [Another TYPO: it should say “until” its over. Another vote for Kelly as author. While the distant “the” administration indicates its up for VP hijacking, it also shows an ambivalence to it that a retired GO like Kelly would have since the best years of his life were as a marine ooohhrah! oohhrahhh!]
The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency [TYPO: should be — here when making an aside that in this case is a dishonest one talking out both sides of his mouth like a reality-quilt-assembling fake liberal statist = Kelly] but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. [What Kelly has allowed Trump to do to him—which as a god marine general have to converse with civilian feces over trivial matters that he would in uniform never have to face in the dictatorial USMC] We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility. [Kelly can't handle anyone contradicting him. Customs & Courtesies aka kissing his ass with fake fawning reverence is a must.]
Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. [Sounds like Kelly's old drinking buddy] All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, [Spoken like a true USMC hypocrite–the biggest mil-tribalistic snobs on Earth] with the high aim [Not actually every GETTING THERE–just posturing and looking the part = USMC = Kelly] of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation. [“Shared values” means Lowest Common Denominator of pluralism; Kelly-speak not Ayers-speak if the latter is a principled Christian since in a pluralistic mob rule we are always the minority in a secular, hedonist, consumerist, economic free-for-all called America]
We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar [VP Pence has used this horrid word in several speeches–indicator for Ayers or “Red Herring“? to miss-direct away from Kelly?] for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them. [Sounds like Kelly man-worship]
There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.
The writer is a senior official in the Trump administration.
*****
Here Kelly shows his intrinsic, military incompetence at the concept of COMBAT ENGINEERING aka bollards to block truck bombs that he and the moron USMC should have learned in 1983's Beirut bombing which murdered 254 Americans. Notice the talk of “heroes” also in the OP-ED.
Beirut, 1983 USMC Riflemen Failure vs. Bomb Truck
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombings
At around 06:22, a 19-ton yellow Mercedes-Benz stake-bed truck drove to the Beirut International Airport. The 1st Battalion 8th marines (BLT), commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Larry Gerlach, was a subordinate element of the 24th MAU. The truck was not the water truck they had been expecting. Instead, it was a hijacked truck carrying explosives. The driver turned his truck onto an access road leading to the compound. He drove into and circled the parking lot, and then he accelerated to crash through a 5-foot-high barrier of concertina wire separating the parking lot from the building. The wire popped “like somebody walking on twigs.”[38] The truck then passed between two sentry posts and through an open vehicle gate in the perimeter chain-link fence, crashed through a guard shack in front of the building and smashed into the lobby of the building serving as the barracks for the 1st Battalion 8th marines (BLT). The sentries at the gate were operating under rules of engagement which made it very difficult to respond quickly to the truck. On the day of the bombing, the sentries were ordered to keep a loaded magazine inserted in their weapon, bolt closed, weapon on safe and no round in the chamber. Only one sentry, LCpl Eddie DiFranco, was able to chamber a round. However, by that time the truck was already crashing into the building's entryway.[39]
The suicide bomber, an Iranian national named Ismail Ascari,[40][41] detonated his explosives, which were later estimated to be equivalent to approximately 9,525 kilograms (21,000 pounds) of TNT.[12][13] The force of the explosion collapsed the four-story building into rubble, crushing to death 241 American servicemen and 13 civilians. According to Eric Hammel in his history of the U.S. marine landing force,
The force of the explosion initially lifted the entire four-story structure, shearing the bases of the concrete support columns, each measuring fifteen feet in circumference and reinforced by numerous one-and-three-quarter-inch steel rods. The airborne building then fell in upon itself. A massive shock wave and ball of flaming gas was hurled in all directions.[42]
The explosive mechanism was a gas-enhanced device consisting of compressed butane in canisters employed with pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) to create a fuel-air explosive.[12][13] The bomb was carried on a layer of concrete covered with a slab of marble to direct the blast upward.[43] Despite the lack of sophistication and wide availability of its component parts, a gas-enhanced device can be a lethal weapon. These devices were similar to fuel-air or thermobaric weapons, explaining the large blast and damage.[44] An after-action forensic investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) determined that the bomb was so powerful that it probably would have brought down the building even if the sentries had managed to stop the truck between the gate and the building.[45]
Lessons learned
Shortly after the barracks bombing, President Ronald Reagan appointed a military fact-finding committee headed by retired Admiral Robert L. J. Long to investigate the bombing. The commission's report found senior military officials responsible for security lapses and blamed the military chain of command for the disaster. It suggested that there might have been many fewer deaths if the barracks guards had carried loaded weapons and a barrier more substantial than the barbed wire the bomber drove over easily. The commission also noted that the “prevalent view” among U.S. commanders was that there was a direct link between the navy shelling of the Muslims at Suq-al-Garb and the truck bomb attack.[130][131]
Following the bombing and the realization that insurgents could deliver weapons of enormous yield with an ordinary truck or van, the presence of protective barriers (bollards) became common around critical government facilities in the United States and elsewhere, particularly Western civic targets situated overseas.[132] [Bollards will not save you if the bomb truck still gets TOO CLOSE and is not pre-detonated from a safe stand-off by a HE cannon shell from a tracked, armored vehicle aka a tank.]
A 2009 article in [CFR, globalist] Foreign Policy titled “Lesson Unlearned” argues that the U.S. military intervention in the Lebanese Civil War has been downplayed or ignored in popular history – thus unlearned – and that lessons from Lebanon are “unlearned” as the U.S. militarily intervenes elsewhere in the world.[133]
2010: USMC Still Has Not Learned to Defeat Truck Bombs!
businessinsider.com/john-kellys-speech-truck-bomb-2017-4
Nine years ago, two U.S. marines from very different walks of life met for the first time when they were put on guard duty at 7:30 in the morning.
Just minutes later, the pair of marines guarding a gate in Ramadi, Iraq, were staring down a large blue truck packed with 2,000 pounds of explosives. They could have sought cover, like an Iraqi policeman on the scene who ran away and lived.
Instead, Lance Cpl. Jordan Haerter and Cpl. Jonathan Yale stood their ground. Their split-second choice saved the lives of 50 people.
In 2010, then-Lt. Gen. John Kelly — who now serves as Secretary of Homeland Security — told their story to a packed house just four days after he had lost his own son, Robert, to combat in Afghanistan.
He spoke of the 9/11 attacks, the enemy that America was fighting, and praised the brave men and women who had volunteered to go overseas since then. Then he moved to the remarkable story of these two marines, which he told the crowd, showed the “quality of steel in their backs.”
Here's what he said:
Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. [I, I, I, I] One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.
Two marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 marines.
The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island.
They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America's exist simultaneously depending on one's race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. [Looks EXACTLY like the lament at OP-ED's end that America is socio-economically divided!] But they were marines, combat marines, forged in the same crucible of marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman. [What a pile of utter BS]
The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we're doing.” [NO, you fucking DO NOT MORON MARINES IGNORANT OF WHAT HIGH EXPLOSIVES CAN DO WITHOUT VEHICLE BARRIERS!] They then relieved two other marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.
A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70 yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck's engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped. [WHAT KIND OF INEPT BARRICADES EVEN LETS A BOMB TRUCK GET THAT FUCKING CLOSE?]
Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn't have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.
When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different.
The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event—just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two marines to acknowledge their bravery, I'd have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.
I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion. [Rifle fire to detonate a bomb truck is THE WRONG ANSWER. Guards should have been in a TRACKED, armored vehicle with an automatic cannon to pre-detonate any bomb trucks, SAFELY. Their sports athleticism and crucible REALITY TV games did not get the job done properly or save them to fight another day.]
All survived. Many were injured … some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They'd run like any normal man would to save his life.”
What he didn't know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.” [NO, they are fucking abnormally STUPID and inept to not have bollards arranged so any bomb truck detonates, THEY LIVE to fight another day.]
“No sane man.” [Glorifying stupidity is no virtue in ANY walk of life]
“They saved us all.” [NO, the poorly placed bollards saved them all.]
What we didn't know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.
You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “ … let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.”
The two marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the marines. They had three seconds left to live. [SAME BS as in Bierut!]
For about two seconds more, the recording shows the marines' weapons firing non-stop…the truck's windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have known they were safe … because two marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber. [Puny 5.56mm rifle fire is not the 1-shot explosion of a bomb truck at a SAFE STAND-OFF]
The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.
The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.
Six seconds.
Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty … into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you. [SAME KIND OF HYPERBOLIC ENDING AS IN THE OP-ED!]
