Greetings: I hope all the progressive statists in our Department of State Department can handle the shock of these events. If only some of them had read Samuel P. Huntington's "The Clash of Civilizations...", published back in 1996 and available from Amazon, they might have realized that Ukraine was what the author saw as a "divided" country subject to devolution either from within or without and prepared something along the lines of a contingency plan or, at least, a "Danger, Will Robinson" sign. And, lest you all forget, I have some real problems with the vaunted European Union's behavior in moving Ukrainian history along the road to crisis. From the beginning of my awareness of the situation, it seemed to me that the EU was heavily into "tax-farming" mode trying, in spite of its own serious economic and political problems, to lure the Ukrainian Ukrainians and their near bankrupt corruptocratic country into its own cabal. And believe you me those EU apparatchiks could give Putin's puppets a run for their dachas. The EU's concept of democracy, one might say, is subject to fits and starts in an on again off again kind of way and while political and economic shenanigan's have been sufficient up 'til now (N.B. the EU's recently knotted panties over the Swiss referendum to control immigration into their own country) we will shortly see if they'll let the gal they brought to the dance go home with another guy. Meanwhile, I can't help but wonder what our UN Ambassadoress Samatha Powers is thinking about the "responsibility to protect" that she worked so hard to sell to the rest of the world. I think Mr. Putin is finding it quite useful. As much as we all dislike Mr. Putin and his ways and means, what was fomented and allowed to proceed in Kiev was very much a coup and however much we may like its direction and proponents, it was hardly an exercise in democracy. For some almost nonsensical reason, the EU decided to help foment the overthrow of a somewhat democratically elected government via large scale street disorders, a kind of OCCUPY Wall Street on streroids, and now, finding itself and its new potential subjects in a hole of its own digging, continues its excavation. We are in the best of all possible hands in the best of all possible worlds.

Greetings: I live in the San Francisco Bay area and since the analog to digital TV signal conversion, I've been watching a fair amount of Asian TV programming, mostly South Korean but also some Chicom and some Nipponese. One of the things that I noticed is how accepting the South Koreans, even their celebrities, are of their military draft. They also seem to have a great fondness for their own Marines.

Greetings: The best rendition I ever saw and heard was at opening day at Yankee Stadium back in the '60s. They had an opera singer by the name of Robert Merrill do the honor and my guess is that someone actually gave him the sheet music. Currently, though, I'm a bit more annoyed by those new-fangled, close-fitting skullcaps the NFL players have affected and apparently cannot or care not to remove during the playing of our National anthem. And the insult to this injury is that the NFL, which swathes its stadia in red, white, and blue, bunting and puts those cute little American flag stickers on every player's helmet, has any number of rules, punishable by fines no less, about what players can wear on their head where and how. Sic transit gloria

Greetings: I guess that it would have been too much trouble to identify the Marines.

Greetings: Me, I just hope that President Obama doesn't hurt his throwing arm as baseball season will soon be upon us.

Greetings: I recently re-read Mark Bowden's "Black Hawk Down" about the battle in Mogadishu, Somalia in the beginning of former President Clinton's first term. Mr. Bowden reported that immediately after the battle (and all those casualties) President Clinton flew off to the West Coast to give a couple of "political speeches". The more things change...

Greetings: Pink Floyd used to sing a song about a British lad whose dad was killed in World War II and whose mother received a condolence letter from the King who had signed it with his own rubber stamp.

Greetings: I thought that was part of President Obama's muslim outreach program, "Meals on Paws".

Greetings: Is this supposed to be the Ghost of the USS Norton Sound ????

Greetings: As to those 24 notes, one of the things that gets what's left of my goat is when the media, in covering a military funeral, clips off "Taps" after a handful of notes, as if the full 24 would be just too much of a burden on their viewers. A similar annoyance occurs when the folks over at the "PBS Newshour" program insist on showing pictures of those who have recently died in our military service in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in total silence when "Taps" being played would be just so much more appropriate.

Greetings: Your article brings a couple of things to my only marginally warped mind. 1) Back in my "In Love in Brooklyn" days, I had a sweetheart whose Italian grandma used the euphemism "Keep-a you pocketbook a-closed" to warn her against both financial and sexual promiscuity. 2) From the limited number of images of Ms. Fluke that I have seen, I'm not at all sure that the type of sex she has requires contraception, not that there's anything wrong with that, if you know what I mean. 3) Those Arab head-diapers are so much more than a fashion or political statement. I would love to read how her acute legally trained mind finds that culture to be something to support and emulate.

Greetings: As quickly as the media and our current administration lost interest in Ivory Coast after the muslims killed 800, or so, Christians in the election aftermath, you knew there would be more of this coming. Muslim governments killing muslims, bad; muslim governments killing Christians, never mind. Expect more and more.

Greetings: I live in the San Francisco Bay area, a couple of soviets south of "The City" as some of the locals perceive it. Several months ago, one of the local Progressive (neé Public) Broadcasting System stations aired a program about the restoration of the architectural remnants of Il Duce Mussolini's occupation of Eritrea. The program was replete with the now ubiquitous assertions about how the Muslims and Christian were all moderates and got along famously. Oh well, I guess it was nice while it lasted.

Greetings: My name is 11B40 and I'm a bayonet-ophobic. My combat mindset during bayonet training, when our Drill Sergeants would call out "What's the purpose of the bayonet?" expecting the proverbial "To kill" response, ran more along the lines of "To bring plenty of ammo" end of the spectrum. (Parenthetically, while our company's basic load was 22 magazines, I humped 29.) My psycho-philosophical self-analysis revealed a wide-ranging etiology. There was my fear of intimacy and the great loss of the romance of the lusty curves of the M-14. There was just a kind of blowup doll feel to the M-16 and I'm afraid that, if I ever did get a hold of an M-4, it would be like a midget blowup doll. Bottom line, I just don't need anyone at all that close to me, ever. When my father was teaching me how to defend myself and mine, he stressed his concept of "the critical distance" inside of which my personal reaction time would not allow the preclusion of my absorbing any pain. Somehow, probably because this was going on in the land of my birth, The Bronx, I concluded that a city block was a pretty functional "critical distance", a conclusion that I still maintain. And, on the other hand, there's my kitchen-phobia, but I promised my analyst that I would think about my mother much anymore.

Greetings: Does anyone have an address to send LTC Flynn a roadmap to Wanat?

Greetings: Back in the last '68, I spent part of my military service in a funeral detail in Texas. I still irks me when our media types cut off the playing of Taps after the first handful of notes.

Greetings: You know, it just occurred to me that maybe the good old USofA should start trotting out the widows and surviving children of those killed in the Pearl Harbor attacks, kind of like what the Japanese do on the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Greetings: Is there a "Keep your powder dry and your hatchet as clean as a whistle." version ???

Greetings: Comedy, the good Doctor Freud said, is anger covered by a smile. I don't think that Ms. Griffin is or ever will be a happy person.

Greetings: At the risk of appearing trite, the relationship between the two Koreas reminds me of when your best buddy is in love with an evil woman. There will be pain. After the tepid responses to the sinking of the Cheonan, this comes as no real surprise. Kim the Second was involved in the North’s terrorist activities prior to his ascendency. Same-same for Kim the third. Bones will be made. As long as compassionate-humanitarianism continues, the North won’t take us or the South very seriously. Time to share the pain.

Greetings: The Rolling Stones: "Salt of the Earth" "Say a prayer for the common foot soldier Spare a thought for his back breaking work Say a prayer for his wife and his children Who burn the fires and who still till the earth." From their "Beggar's Banquet" album, circa 1968

Greetings: Back in the summer of last '68, I was doing my military service down in Texas, which, after the Bronx, is the place I'd most like to be from. For several months, I was assigned to the base's funeral detail. We would provide pallbearers and a rifle squad for those requesting military funerals in the local area. Military-wise, it wasn't bad duty. On the days when we weren't scheduled for a funeral, we would spend several hours practicing our "drill & ceremonies" and a couple more squaring away our uniforms and equipment. On funeral days, we would head out as early as necessary on a 44-passenger bus, often in civilian clothes or else fatigues with our first-class uniforms and equipment in tow. Often we would change into our duty uniforms at the funeral home, once in the casket display room, or on the bus itself. It being Texas and the Viet Nam war being in full swing, we often had several funerals a week to perform. There was a certain spectrum from the World War graduates through the Viet Nam casualties. The former might involve a local veterans' group and an afterward BBQ or such. The latter were somewhat more emotionally raw as most of us were facing our own deployments in the near future. Two funerals of the latter sort have stayed with me through the years. The first was of a young Private First Class who had been MIA for several months before his remains were recovered. I was on the pallbearer squad that day and when we went to lift the casket, it almost flew up in the air. There was so little of the young soldier left that we totally overestimated the weight we were lifting and almost looked decidedly unprofessional. The other was that of a Negro Specialist 4th Class. I was in the rifle squad that day. In the rendering of military honors, there is a momentary pause between the end of the (21-gun) rifle salute and the beginning of the playing of "Taps". It is a moment of profound silence in most cases. During that moment, the young soldier's mother gave out a yowl from the depths of her grief that so startled me that I almost dropped the rifle out of my hands. That yowl echoes within me still. I'll readily admit that, as a result of my experiences, I became much imbued with a sense of duty and respect to and for our fallen. Hopefully, today, when our media do their reporting they will show some of the same and let "Taps" be played out in its entirety. It would be nice for a change.

Greetings: In the spirit of "Serenity Now!", here's a little tale I'd like to relate. While many have heard accounts of the (type of) manflesh that has fled to Oh, Canada, there was a kind of reverse flow that is not often recognized. Back during my all-expense-paid tour of sunny Southeast Asia, I had a Canadian citizen in my infantry squad. He was a strac troop and never let me down on the hunt or in a fight. He was one, I later found out, of many who came south from the True North. Whenever I hear tell about the dirtbags who fled north, I kind of smile to myself and think, "Well, I sure got the better of that deal."

Greetings: While I was at helicopter flight school at Fort Wolters, Texas back in the last '68, one of the school's TH-55s went missing. The adult supervision decided that it must be in the local lake. We spent too much of our "free" time dragging the lake until the tweety bird was hooked, lined and un-sinkered. The bird was obviously WIA. No student or instructor was MIA. As far as I know, no one was ever charged with anything. Coming from the Bronx, it always tickled me that no one ever installed ignition keys on those things.

Greetings: As a printer by trade, I'm very much a "visual" person. Several times, during our President's speech last evening, I thought I saw the same look I used to have on my face during my periodic trips to the principal's office at St. Margaret Mary's Elementary School back in the Bronx. As much as lying can delay an outcome, it tends to get exponentially more difficult with the passage of time.