Incident Command Quotes

I'm not threatening you. I'm just informing you of police procedure. If you continue to obstruct me, I remove the obstruction, in this case you, and proceed to the next command.

[Artemis] returned to the aft bay for Mulch's version of a briefing. The dwarf had drawn a crude diagram on a backlit wall panel. In fairness, there were more artistic chimpanzees. And less pungent ones. Mulch was using a carrot as a pointer, or more accurately, several carrots. Dwarfs liked carrots. 'This is Koboi Labs,' He mumbled around a mouthful of vegetable. 'That?' exclaimed Root. 'I realize, Julius, that it is not an accurate schematic.' The Commander exploded from his chair. 'An accurate schematic? It's a rectangle for heaven's sake!' Mulch was unperturbed. 'That's not important. This is the important bit.' 'That wobbly line?' 'It's a fissure,' pouted the dwarf. 'Anybody can see that.' 'Anybody in kindergarten maybe. So it's a fissure, so what?' 'This is the clever bit. Y'see that fissure is not usually there.' Root began strangling the air again. Something he was doing more and more lately.

Naphta loathed the bourgeois state and its love of security. He found occasion to express this loathing one autumn afternoon when, as they were walking along the main street, it suddenly began to rain and, as if on command, there was an umbrella over every head. That was a symbol of cowardice and vulgar effeminacy, the end product of civilization. An incident like the sinking of the Titanic was atavistic, true, but its effect was most refreshing, it was the handwriting on the wall. Afterward, of course, came the hue and cry for more security in shipping. How pitiful, but such weak-willed humanitarianism squared very nicely with the wolfish cruelty and villainy of slaughter on the economic battlefield known as the bourgeois state. War, war ! He was all for it – the universal lust for war seemed quite honorable in comparison.

Artemis grabbed her shoulders, for once abandoning his shell of icy composure. "Holly, Holly, speak to me. Your finger is it okay?" Holly wiggled her fingers, then curled them into a fist. "I think so," she said, and whacked Artemis right between the eyes. The surprised boy landed in a snowdrift for the third time that day. Holly winked at an amazed butler. "Now we're even," she said. Commander Root didn't have many treasured memories. But in future days, when things were at their grimmest, he would conjure up this moment and have a quiet chuckle.

Few understand that when their attention is called to some destructive thing, how much and how often they allow the attention to go back to it; or if another has displeased them in some way, how much and how often the attention returns to that incident—when they have the full power to control their attention and make it obey their command.

Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then he said: "It is a remarkable progress. In five or six thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and adequate way to kill people. They all did their best--to kill being the chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its history--but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to school to the Christian--not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those to kill missionaries and converts with.

Forgiveness may be described as a decision to make four promises: "I will not think about this incident." "I will not bring up this incident again or use it against you." "I will not talk to others about this incident." "I will not allow this incident to stand between us or hinder our personal relationship." By making and keeping these promises, you tear down the walls that stand between you and your offender. You promise not to dwell on or brood over the problem, nor to punish by holding the person at a distance. You clear the way for your relationship to develop unhindered by memories of past wrongs. This is exactly what God does for us, and it is what he commands us to do for others.

I have myself known two southern wives who exhorted their husbands to free those slaves towards whom they stood in a "parental relation;" and their request was granted. These husbands blushed before the superior nobleness of their wives' natures. Though they had only counseled them to do that which was their duty to do, it commanded their respect, and rendered their conduct more exemplary. Concealment was at an end, and confidence took the place of distrust.

After Iyman Faris’s foiled plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, however, most of the al-Qaeda central command had either been killed or captured, and there were no more major incidents.85 But just as the situation seemed to be improving, in March 2003, the United States, Britain, and their allies invaded Iraq, despite considerable opposition from the international community and strong protests throughout the Muslim world. The reasons for this invasion were allegations that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had furnished support for al-Qaeda, both of which eventually proved to be groundless.

Fear being the operative word, and not panic, which is why most of us have learned to start each incident log with a command like “Fear not,” or “Dread not,” or “Be thou not dismayed,” or some other variation thereof

A Lion Overpowered Sheikh Abu Masood bin Abi Bakr Harimi (r.a) reports that there was a very great Saint by the name of Sheikh Ahmed Jaam (r.a) He used to travel on a lion wherever he went. In every city that he visited, it was his habit to ask the people of the city to send one cow for his lion’s meal. Once, he went to a certain city and requested from the Saint of that city a cow for his lion. The Saint sent the cow to him and said, “If you ever go to Baghdad, your lion will receive a welcome invitation.” Sheikh Ahmed Jaam (r.a) then journeyed to Baghdad Shareef. On arriving in Baghdad, he sent one of his disciples to al-Ghawth al-A’zam (r.a) and commanded that a cow be sent to him, as a meal for his lion. The great Ghawth was already aware of his coming. He had already arranged for a cow to be kept for the lion. On the command of Sheikh Ahmed Jaam (r.a) Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) sent one of his disciples with a cow to him. As the disciple took the cow with him, a weak and old stray dog which used to sit outside the home of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) followed the disciple. The disciple presented the cow to Sheikh Ahmed Jaam (r.a) who in turn signalled the lion to commence feeding. As the lion ran towards the cow, this stray dog pounced on the lion. It caught the lion by its throat and killed the lion by tearing open its stomach. The dog then dragged the lion and threw it before al-Ghawth al-A’zam (r.a) On seeing this, Sheikh Ahmed Jaam (r.a) was very embarrassed. He humbled himself before the great Ghawth and asked for forgiveness for his arrogant behaviour. This incident shows the strength of a dog that only sat outside the stoop of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Jilani (r.a) This was due to its Nisbat to the blessed stoop of the great Saint. It also proves that even animals recognise and are loyal to the the Awliya Allah. A’la Hazrat, Sheikh Imam Ahmed Raza al-Qaadiri (r.a) portrays the above-mentioned incident in one of his poetic stanzas. He says: “Kya Dab’be Jis Pe Himayat Ka Ho Panja Tera, Sher Ko Khatre me Laata, Nahi Kut’ta Tera

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows. Even the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her children, will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that her mistress hates such and such a one among the slaves. Perhaps the child's own mother is among those hated ones. She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master's footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.

He stated that when he saw Deputy Shaw approach, he made the decision to run. While running, he heard the verbal commands to stop, but continued evading. He said it was a split-second decision and he regretted making it. Deputy Shaw would be the one to photograph my body three months after this incident.

Paul was an attorney. And this was what his as yet brief career in the law had done to his brain. He was comforted by minutiae. His mortal fears could be assuaged only by an encyclopedic command of detail. Paul was a professional builder of narratives. He was a teller of concise tales. His work was to take a series of isolated events and, shearing from them their dross, craft from them a progression. The morning’s discrete images—a routine labor, a clumsy error, a grasping arm, a crowded street, a spark of fire, a blood-speckled child, a dripping corpse—could be assembled into a story. There would be a beginning, a middle, and an end. Stories reach conclusions, and then they go away. Such is their desperately needed magic. That day’s story, once told in his mind, could be wrapped up, put aside, and recalled only when necessary. The properly assembled narrative would guard his mind from the terror of raw memory. Even a true story is a fiction, Paul knew. It is the comforting tool we use to organize the chaotic world around us into something comprehensible. It is the cognitive machine that separates the wheat of emotion from the chaff of sensation. The real world is overfull with incidents, brimming over with occurrences. In our stories, we disregard most of them until clear reason and motivation emerge. Every story is an invention, a technological device not unlike the very one that on that morning had seared a man’s skin from his bones. A good story could be put to no less dangerous a purpose. As an attorney, the tales that Paul told were moral ones. There existed, in his narratives, only the injured and their abusers. The slandered and the liars. The swindled and the thieves. Paul constructed these characters painstakingly until the righteousness of his plaintiff—or his defendant—became overwhelming. It was not the job of a litigator to determine facts; it was his job to construct a story from those facts by which a clear moral conclusion would be unavoidable. That was the business of Paul’s stories: to present an undeniable view of the world. And then to vanish, once the world had been so organized and a profit fairly earned.

Rautu sighed and in his exhalation blew on his dear chocolate. The few specs it had incurred were easily blown away and the giant inspected his confection with a contented glint in his eye. All was amended and the chocolate, which had nearly succumbed to ruination, was saved. He took in the aroma of his favourite treat and tasted it. All seemed right in the world and the almost catastrophic incident was averted. “I thought your scripture says that your people are not permitted to eat from the ground because of illness caused by doing so,” the commander said with a suppressed laugh for her mate’s immediate happiness. “It does,” the Den Asaan quietly replied. “However, most of our provisions are not dry in nature and our meals are eaten on the sand.” “And so eating from the stone upon which many feet walk is acceptable?” Rautu glared at his mate. “It is for chocolate,” he growled.

Looking at a situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict, Americans are likely to react with puzzlement when they see ever more violent and provocative acts that target innocent civilians. We are tempted to ask: do the terrorists not realize that they will enrage the Israelis, and drive them to new acts of repression? The answer of course is that they know this very well, and this is exactly what they want. From our normal point of view, this seems incomprehensible. If we are doing something wrong, we do not want to invite the police to come in and try and stop us, especially if repression will result in the deaths or imprisonment of many of our followers. In a terrorist war, however, repression is often valuable because it escalates the growing war, and forces people to choose between the government and the terrorists. The terror/repression cycle makes it virtually impossible for anyone to remain a moderate. By increasing polarization within a society, terrorism makes the continuation of the existing order impossible. Once again, let us take the suicide bombing example. After each new incident, Israeli authorities tightened restrictions on Palestinian communities, arrested new suspects, and undertook retaliatory strikes. As the crisis escalated, they occupied or reoccupied Palestinian cities, destroying Palestinian infrastructure. The result, naturally, was massive Palestinian hostility and anger, which made further attacks more likely in the future. The violence made it more difficult for moderate leaders on both sides to negotiate. In the long term, the continuing confrontation makes it more likely that ever more extreme leaders will be chosen on each side, pledged not to negotiate with the enemy. The process of polarization is all the more probably when terrorists deliberately choose targets that they know will cause outrage and revulsion, such as attacks on cherished national symbols, on civilians, and even children. We can also think of this in individual terms. Imagine an ordinary Palestinian Arab who has little interest in politics and who disapproves of terrorist violence. However, after a suicide bombing, he finds that he is subject to all kinds of official repression, as the police and army hold him for long periods at security checkpoints, search his home for weapons, and perhaps arrest or interrogate him as a possible suspect. That process has the effect of making him see himself in more nationalistic (or Islamic) terms, stirs his hostility to the Israeli regime, and gives him a new sympathy for the militant or terrorist cause. The Israeli response to terrorism is also valuable for the terrorists in global publicity terms, since the international media attack Israel for its repression of civilians. Hamas military commander Salah Sh’hadeh, quoted earlier, was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza in 2002, an act which by any normal standards of warfare would represent a major Israeli victory. In this case though, the killing provoked ferocious criticism of Israel by the U.S. and western Europe, and made Israel’s diplomatic situation much more difficult. In short, a terrorist attack itself may or may not attract widespread publicity, but the official response to it very likely will. In saying this, I am not suggesting that governments should not respond to terrorism, or that retaliation is in any sense morally comparable to the original attacks. Many historical examples show that terrorism can be uprooted and defeated, and military action is often an essential part of the official response. But terrorism operates on a logic quite different from that of most conventional politics and law enforcement, and concepts like defeat and victory must be understood quite differently from in a regular war.

That day, he had been ordered to assume supreme command of the Russian Army in the Far East. This incident had a special sequel fifteen years later, when at a certain point of my father’s flight from Bolshevik-held St. Petersburg to southern Russia he was accosted while crossing a bridge, by an old man who looked like a gray-bearded peasant in his sheepskin coat. He asked my father for a light. The next moment each recognized the other. I hope old Kuropatkin, in his rustic disguise, managed to evade Soviet imprisonment, but that is not the point. What pleases me is the evolution of the match theme: those magic ones he had shown me had been trifled with and mislaid, and his armies had also vanished, and everything had fallen through, like my toy trains that, in the winter of 1904–05, in Wiesbaden, I tried to run over the frozen puddles in the grounds of the Hotel Oranien. The following of such thematic designs through one’s life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography.

FORGET FERES DOCTRINE And the military has immunity! Yes! The feres doctrine! It states “the Government is not liable under the Federal Tort Claims Act for injuries to servicemen where injuries arise out of or are in the course of activity incident to service” (U.S. Supreme Court 1950). Federal law and our Supreme Court shield acts of rape and sexual brutality in the military as proven by its subsequent ruling on a 2001 case that denied a plaintiffs right to file a civil suit against her accusers. Yet when women report the crime, it is handled internally Commanders are given the discretion to resolve complaints. The report may not go beyond his office. Many times he's part of the problem or a sympathizer with the offender. This certainly was my case! Our Supreme Court ruled as recently as 2001 that rape is an injury incident to the course of activity in the service! THE HEINOUS CRIME OF RAPE IS ACCEPTABLE AND CONDONED BY OUR SUPREME COURT! WOMEN ARE FAIR GAME FOR RAPE AND HARRASSMENT, ACCORDING TO OUR SUPREME COURT! CONGRESS IS NO BETTER! NO LAWS ARE PASSED TO PROTECT US IN THE MILITARY AGAINST THE STATUTE OF LIMITATION FOR THE FELONY OF RAPE!

The Malmédy massacre would have repercussions reaching far wider than one might expect of a single battlefield atrocity in a long and bitter war. This "incident" undoubtedly stiffened the will of the American combatants (although a quantitative assessment of this fact is impossible); it would be featured in the war crimes trials as an outstanding example of Nazi contempt for the accepted rules of war; and it would serve a United States Senator as a stepping-stone toward a meteoric career. But the Malmédy massacre and the other murders of 17 December did not complete the list chargeable to Peiper and the troops of the 1st SS Panzer Division. By 20 December Peiper's command had murdered approximately 350 American prisoners of war and at least 100 unarmed Belgian civilians, this total derived from killings at twelve different locations along Peiper's line of march. PEIPER'S TROOPS ON THE ROAD TO MALMÉDY So far as can be determined the Peiper killings represent the only organized and directed murder of prisoners of war by either side during the Ardennes battle.136 The commander of the Sixth SS Panzer Army took oath in the trials of 1946 that, acting on Hitler's orders, he issued a directive stating that the German troops should be preceded "by a wave of terror and fright and that no

Dostum offered this exoneration as evidence of his loyalty to the Americans. But his conviction that the Americans were by his side during the incident raised another set of difficult questions about whether the Special Forces and CIA personnel witnessed any of the communications between Dostum and his commanders about the murders, and failed to either stop them, or report them after the fact. Nutsch told me he knew of no abuses. “My team has been investigated multiple times over this,” he said. “We did not witness, nor observe, anything.” Just as Dostum considered the American special forces blood brothers, the camaraderie was apparent on Nutsch’s side. “I saw him as a charismatic leader. Led from the front. Took care of his guys,” he added. In a celebratory Hollywood rendition of 595’s collaboration with Dostum called 12 Strong, Nutsch was portrayed, with exaggerated brawn and smolder, by Chris Hemsworth, the actor who played the superhero Thor. Nutsch grew testy when I asked a series of questions about the more complicated realities of the story. “Dostum’s enemies are the ones accusing him of these things,” he said. When I told him Dostum had admitted the killings may have occurred, and suggested two of his commanders may have been involved, Nutsch paused, then replied, “I don’t have a reaction to that.

The Israeli border police guarding the central region near the Jordanian border had been told to take all measures necessary to keep order that evening. The local colonel, Issachar Shadmi, decided that this meant setting a curfew for Palestinian Arab villages, from five p.m. to six a.m. The news of the curfew was broadcast over the radio the same day it went into force. The border police unit commanders in the region were informed of the order by their commanding officer, Major Shmuel Malinki. Malinki implied that, in the event of anyone breaking the curfew, the police could shoot to kill. Several platoons were charged with informing villagers in person. At the village of Kfar Kassem (or Kafr Qasim), close to the border with the Jordanian-controlled West Bank, a platoon arrived to announce the news—but too late in the day. They were told that many of the village’s agricultural workers were already out at work, mostly picking olives. After five p.m., the villagers returned as expected: a mixed crowd of men and women, boys and girls, riding on bicycles, wagons, and trucks. Even though he knew these civilians would not have heard about the curfew through no fault of their own, the unit commander Lieutenant Gabriel Dahan determined that they were in violation of it and therefore should be shot. Out of all the unit commanders given this order, Dahan was the only one to enforce it.16 As each small group of villagers arrived, the border police opened fire. Forty-three civilians were killed and thirteen injured. The dead were mostly children aged between eight and seventeen: twenty-three of them, plus fourteen men and six women. It was said that one nine-year-old girl was shot twenty-eight times. Another little girl watched as her eleven-year-old cousin was shot. He was dragged indoors and died in his grandfather’s arms, blood pouring from the bullet wound in his chest. Laborers were ordered off their trucks in small groups, lined up, and executed. There were clashes between Arabs and border police that evening in which six more Arabs were killed. The order to kill had not come from the top. It was traced back conclusively only as far as Major Malinki. When Ben-Gurion heard about the massacre, he was furious, telling his cabinet that the officers who had shot civilians should be hanged in Kfar Kassem’s town square.17 Yet the Israeli government covered the incident up with a press blackout lasting two months.

When the commander of one of the brigades Gilbert had sent to reinforce McCook approached an imposing-looking officer to ask for instructions as to the posting of his troops—“I have come to your assistance with my brigade!” the Federal shouted above the uproar—the gentleman calmly sitting his horse in the midst of carnage turned out to be Polk, who was wearing a dark-gray uniform. Polk asked the designation of the newly arrived command, and upon being told raised his eyebrows in surprise. For all his churchly faith in miracles, he could scarcely believe his ears. “There must be some mistake about this,” he said. “You are my prisoner.” Fighting without its commander, the brigade gave an excellent account of itself. Joined presently by the other brigade sent over from the center, it did much to stiffen the resistance being offered by the remnants of McCook’s two divisions. Sundown came before the rebels could complete the rout begun four hours ago, and now in the dusk it was Polk’s turn to play a befuddled role in another comic incident of confused identity. He saw in the fading light a body of men whom he took to be Confederates firing obliquely into the flank of one of his engaged brigades. “Dear me,” he said to himself. “This is very sad and must be stopped.” None of his staff being with him at the time, he rode over to attend to the matter in person. When he came up to the erring commander and demanded in angry tones what he meant by shooting his own friends, the colonel replied with surprise: “I don’t think there can be any mistake about it. I am sure they are the enemy.” “Enemy!” Polk exclaimed, taken aback by this apparent insubordination. “Why, I have only just left them myself. Cease firing, sir! What is your name, sir?” “Colonel Shryock, of the 87th Indiana,” the Federal said. “And pray, sir, who are you?” The bishop-general, learning thus for the first time that the man was a Yankee and that he was in rear of a whole regiment of Yankees, determined to brazen out the situation by taking further advantage of the fact that his dark-gray blouse looked blue-black in the twilight. He rode closer and shook his fist in the colonel’s face, shouting angrily: “I’ll soon show you who I am, sir! Cease firing, sir, at once!” Then he turned his horse and, calling in an authoritative manner for the bluecoats to cease firing, slowly rode back toward his own lines. He was afraid to ride fast, he later explained, because haste might give his identity away; yet “at the same time I experienced a disagreeable sensation, like screwing up my back, and calculated how many bullets would be between my shoulders every moment.

Lieutenant Smith was asked by Mister Zumwald to get him a drink,” Wilkes said. “She responded with physical violence. I counseled her on conduct unbecoming of an officer and, when she reacted with foul language, on disrespect to a superior officer, sir, and I’ll stand by that position. Sir.” “I agree that her actions were unbecoming, Captain,” Steve said, mildly. “She really should have resolved it with less force. Which I told her as well as a strong lecture on respect to a superior officer. On the other hand, Captain, Mister Zumwald physically accosted her, grabbing her arm and, when she protested, called her a bitch. Were you aware of that, Captain?” “She did say something about it, sir,” Wilkes said. “However… ” “I also understand that you spent some time with Mister Zumwald afterwards,” Steve said. “Rather late. Did you at any time express to Mister Zumwald that accosting any woman, much less an officer of… what was it? ‘The United States Naval services’ was unacceptable behavior, Captain?” “Sir,” Wilkes said. “Mister Zumwald is a major Hollywood executive… ” “Was,” Steve said. “Excuse me, sir?” Wilkes said. “Was a major Hollywood executive,” Steve said. “Right now, Ernest Zumwald, Captain, is a fucking refugee off a fucking lifeboat. Period fucking dot. He’s given a few days grace, like most refugees, to get his headspace and timing back, then he can decide if he wants to help out or go in with the sick, lame and lazy. And in this case he’s a fucking refugee who thinks it’s acceptable to accost some unknown chick and tell him to get him a fucking drink. Grab her by the arm and, when she tells him to let go, become verbally abusive. “What makes the situation worse, Captain, is that the person he accosted was not just any passing young hotty but a Marine officer. He did not know that at the time; the Marine officer was dressed much like other women in the compartment. However, he does not have the right to grab any woman in my care by the fucking arm and order them to get him a fucking drink, Captain! Then, to make matters worse, following the incident, Captain, you spent the entire fucking evening getting drunk with a fucktard who had physically and verbally assaulted a female Marine officer! You dumbshit.” “Sir, I… ” Wilkes said, paling. “And not just any Marine officer, oh, no,” Steve said. “Forget that it was the daughter of the Acting LANTFLEET. Forget that it was the daughter of your fucking rating officer, you retard. I’m professional enough to overlook that. I really am. There’s personal and professional, and I do actually know the line. Except that it was, professionally, a disgraceful action on your part, Captain. But not just any Marine officer, Captain. No, this was a Marine officer that, unlike you, is fucking worshipped by your Marines, Captain. This is a Marine officer that the acting Commandant thinks only uses boats so her boots don’t get wet walking from ship to ship. This is a Marine officer who is the only fucking light in the darkness to the entire Squadron, you dumbfuck! “I’d already gotten the scuttlebutt that you were a palace prince pogue who was a cowardly disgrace to the Marine uniform, Captain. I was willing to let that slide because maybe you could run the fucking clearance from the fucking door. But you just pissed off every fucking Marine we’ve got, you idiot. You incredible dumbfuck, moron! “In case you hadn’t noticed, you are getting cold-shouldered by everyone you work with while you were brown-nosing some fucking useless POS who used to ‘be somebody.’ ‘Your’ Marines are spitting on your shadow and that includes your fucking Gunnery Sergeant! Captain, am I getting through to you? Are you even vaguely recognizing how badly you fucked up? Professionally, politically, personally?

9:37, the west wall of the Pentagon was hit by hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757. The crash caused immediate and catastrophic damage. All 64 people aboard the airliner were killed,as were 125 people inside the Pentagon (70 civilians and 55 military service members). One hundred six people were seriously injured and transported to area hospitals.192 While no emergency response is flawless, the response to the 9/11 terror= ist attack on the Pentagon was mainly a success for three reasons:first,the strong professional relationships and trust established among emergency responders; second, the adoption of the Incident Command System; and third, the pursuit of a regional approach to response. Many fire and police agencies that responded had extensive

that where incidents are “so multifaceted that no one agency immediately stands out as the Incident Commander, OEM will assign the role of Incident Commander to an agency as the situation demands.”203 To some degree, the Mayor’s directive for incident command was followed on 9/11.It was clear that the lead response

terminology) that they were the two most senior officers at the twin bases. The reason for the Base Commander

I testified that the incident had traveled up the chain of command to the sergeant and the watch commander. I informed them that even in discussing the incident among ourselves within UD, we remained circumspect. An attorney asked why. The real answer, which I also couldn’t say, was to save ourselves from being dragged through the mud like this. The less you knew, the safer you were. Not to mention, we simply feared the Clintons.

one of the double agents supposedly under British control, arrived in Stephenson’s New York office fresh from talking with his German spy masters about Pearl Harbor six months before the Japanese struck there. Hoover refused to believe his extraordinary story. When Commander Montagu later spoke of the “ghastly period” when the FBI became obstructive, he was still sick with dismay over TRICYCLE’s inability to get through to Hoover the significance of his Pearl Harbor reports. The incident is significant for another reason. It offers an important lesson to those who would revise history long after the event. At any given time, the intelligence signals foreshadowing a move by the enemy are part of the general uproar of information, some true, but much of it possibly false, including deception material deliberately planted by the enemy or (even more effectively) by the enemy’s secret friends. In hindsight, it may seem that the true warnings should have stood out like beacons. A distant observer, looking back, is unaware of all the other distractions, some of them contradictory, that at the time seemed equally important. The lesson applies as much to the varied evaluations of ULTRA as it does to the particular case of Pearl Harbor.

The division was shaken by the shock of battle. Even its commander was thought to be close to cracking up under the strain, and officers seemed unable to control their men. After bitter fighting to take the ruins of Chenogne on 1 January, about sixty German prisoners were shot. ‘There were some unfortunate incidents in the shooting of prisoners,’ Patton wrote in his diary. ‘I hope we can conceal this.’ It would indeed have been embarrassing after all the American fulminations over the Malmédy–Baugnez massacre.

In fact, the Indianapolis had gotten off three distress signals, and they were received but not acted upon for various reasons. One commanding officer was drunk at the time, while another had told his men not to bother him. A third officer decided against responding to the distress signal for fear it was the work of the Japanese, who might be trying to trick responding ships into a trap. The fact that the distress signals was even received remained classified for decades, and until those records were made public, the Navy denied that the Indianapolis had even sent a single one.

Although it is called the English Civil War, there were in fact three civil wars. And it wasn’t just limited to England; Scotland and Ireland got involved as well! One notable incident occurred on the 11th of September 1649, when soldiers of the New Model Army captured the town of Drogheda in Ireland. When they found the Royalist commander, Sir Arthur Aston, they beat him to death with his own wooden leg.

Economically driven incidents of violence have, unfortunately, become extremely common across the south and east of Afghanistan, while even in the relatively quiet north a provincial governor half-jokingly told the German commander in his area, “The Pashtuns in the south shoot at you, and you give them money. Here we support you, and we get nothing. Who do we have to shoot to get some aid around here?”12 This pattern isn’t unique to Afghanistan.

Gradual declassification of records has revealed that some of these nuclear incidents carried greater risk than was appreciated at the time. For example, it became clear only in 2002 that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the USS Beale had depth-charged an unidentified submarine that was in fact Soviet and armed with nuclear weapons, and whose commanders argued over whether to retaliate with a nuclear torpedo.

In 1982, the thirty-seven murders that took place inside Ector County gave Odessa the distinction of having the highest murder rate in the country. Most agreed that was a pretty high number, but mention of gun control was as popular as a suggestion to change the Ten Commandments. A year later, Odessa made national news again when someone made the fateful mistake of accusing an escaped convict from Alabama named Leamon Ray Price of cheating in a high-stakes poker game. Price, apparently insulted by such a charge, went to the bathroom and then came out shooting with his thirty-eight. He barricaded himself behind a bookcase while the players he was trying to kill hid under the poker table. By the time Odessa police detective Jerry Smith got there the place looked like something out of the Wild West, an old-fashioned shoot-out at the La Casita apartment complex with poker chips and cards and bullet holes all over the dining room. Two men were dead and two wounded when Price made his escape. His fatal error came when he tried to break into a house across the street. The startled owner, hearing the commotion, did what he thought was only appropriate: he took out his gun and shot Price dead. It was incidents such as these that gave Odessa its legacy.

The Rapid Reflection Force (RRF). Simply put, the RRF is an interdisciplinary group charged with assisting the incident commander “grasp and confront issues raised by unconventional situations.”127 Lagadec describes the RRF as …a spur that will prod crisis leadership to keep moving, keep thinking, never indulging in trench warfare against unconventional disruptions—as such events will instantly overwhelm or turn round all attempts to draw static lines of defense or restore intellectual comfort zones. With this objective in mind, the critical weapon in the RRF’s arsenal turns out to be insightful questions, rather than preformatted answers, which are the building blocks of artificial certainty, the Trojan horses of instant collapse.128

Let me see… What’s your favourite Sherlock Holmes case?” “I love them all!” “Just choose one.” “OK… ‘The Speckled Band’. That was Arthur Conan Doyle’s own favourite, and it’s also his most popular story.” “Oh, that one! It’s the weirdest of all his cases! It’s a story about a snake, right? If you keep a snake in a safe, it will soon die from lack of oxygen. And suppose it does survive in the box: snakes don’t drink milk. Have you ever seen any reptiles breast-feeding their babies? Only mammals do that. And how about a man whistling for a snake? Actually snakes can’t be trained. They don’t have ears, so how can they respond to a man’s commands? It’s a matter of common sense. Was Holmes stupid or what? Since the incidents were so unrealistic, I have to assume the story was made up by Dr Watson.

ON DECEMBER 8, 1941, cinemas and theaters in Japan were made to temporarily suspend their evening performances and broadcast a speech recorded by Prime Minister Tojo Hideki earlier that day. U.S. films—films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which the Japanese relished in easier times—were now officially banned. That night, audiences were confronted with the voice of a leader who hardly resembled Jimmy Stewart. Tojo was a bald and bespectacled man of middle age with no remarkable features other than his mustache. His exaggerated buckteeth existed only in Western caricatures, but he did not look like a senior statesman who had just taken his country to war against a most formidable enemy, and his voice was memorable only for its dullness. He recited the speech, “On Accepting the Great Imperial Command,” with the affected diction of a second-rate stage actor. Our elite Imperial Army and Navy are now fighting a desperate battle. Despite the empire’s every possible effort to salvage it, the peace of the whole of East Asia has collapsed. In the past, the government employed every possible means to normalize U.S.-Japan diplomatic relations. But the United States would not yield an inch on its demands. Quite the opposite. The United States has strengthened its ties with Britain, the Netherlands, and China, demanding unilateral concessions from our Empire, including the complete and unconditional withdrawal of the imperial forces from China, the rejection of the [Japanese puppet] Nanjing government, and the annulment of the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy. Even in the face of such demands, the Empire persistently strove for a peaceful settlement. But the United States to this day refused to reconsider its position. Should the Empire give in to all its demands, not only would Japan lose its prestige and fail to see the China Incident to its completion, but its very existence would be in peril. Tojo, in his selective explanation of the events leading to Pearl Harbor, insisted that the war Japan had just initiated was a “defensive” war. He faithfully echoed Japan’s deep-seated feelings of persecution, wounded national pride, and yearning for greater recognition, which together might be called, for the want of a better phrase, anti-Westernism. It was a sentimental speech, and it was notable for what was left unsaid.

Under authoritarian governments, vital communities will tend to coalesce in political opposition as they bump into regime surveillance and control. The regime still controls the apparatus of repression. It can deny service, physically attack, imprison, or even kill H. informaticus—but it can’t silence his message, because this message is constantly amplified and propagated by the opposition community. Since the opposition commands the means of communication and is embedded in the global information sphere, its voice carries beyond the reach of any national government. This was the situation in Egypt before the uprising of January 25, 2011. This is the situation in China today. The wealth and brute strength of the modern state are counterbalanced by the vast communicative powers of the public. Filters are placed on web access, police agents monitor suspect websites, foreign newscasters are blocked, domestic bloggers are harassed and thrown in jail—but every incident which tears away at the legitimacy of the regime is seized on by a rebellious public, and is then broadcast and magnified until criticism goes viral. The tug of war pits hierarchy against network, power against persuasion, government against the governed: under such conditions of alienation, every inch of political space is contested, and turbulence becomes a permanent feature of political life.

Two vehicles and 238,900 miles: three days there and three days back. Twenty-one hours on the surface of the Moon for two astronauts in the lunar lander, while the service module circled the heavenly body in a parking orbit. Katherine knew better than anyone that if the trajectory of the parked service module was even slightly off, when the astronauts ended their lunar exploration and piloted their space buggy back up from the Moon’s surface, the two vehicles might not meet up. The command service module was the astronauts’ bus—their only bus—back to Earth: the lander would ferry the astronauts to the waiting service module and then be discarded. If the two vehicles’ orbits didn’t coincide, the two in the lander would be stranded forever in the vacuum of space. The leadership of the Space Task Group set a risk standard of “three nines”—0.999, a criterion requiring that every aspect of the program be projected to a 99.9 percent success rate, or one failure for every thousand incidences.

Late that year, one of the soldiers stationed at the prison [Abu Ghraib] reported the abuses to his superiors and said that photos had been taken by the abusers. The commanders in Iraq immediately took action and took steps to launch an investigation. Soon after that the news reached Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told President Bush in early January 2004 that incidents at Abu Ghraib were being looked into. It seems nobody told these senior leaders that these incidents were truly horrendous.

The rest of your party has no need to be here since they were studying at the time of the incident and nowhere near the forge.” Bethany looked ready to argue, but Jade took her hand. “Yes, sir,” she said obediently. But not without shooting me a look, asking me without words if I was okay. I gave her a reassuring nod, and my dorm mate led our friend out of the med bay. Khryseos and Argyreos stayed right where they were. “The dogs too, I’m afraid,” the Strategos instructed, directing the command to me. “I’m afraid,” I said, taking the same tone as the leader, “that where I go, they go. Especially after an incident like what happened tonight, they won’t be going anywhere without me.

One notable incident occurred on the 11th of September 1649, when soldiers of the New Model Army captured the town of Drogheda in Ireland. When they found the Royalist commander, Sir Arthur Aston, they beat him to death with his own wooden leg.

Captain Joseph Frye One of the nicest parks in present day downtown Tampa, Florida, is the Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park. The 5-acre park, which lies between the Tampa Bay Times Forum (Amalie Arena) and the mouth of the Hillsborough River at the Garrison Channel, is used for many weddings and special events such as the dragon boat races and the duck race. Few people give thought to the historic significance of the location, or to Captain Joseph Frye, considered Tampa’s first native son, who was born there on June 14, 1826. Going to sea was a tradition in the Frye family, starting with his paternal great-grandfather Samuel Frye from East Greenwich, Rhode Island, who was the master of the sloop Humbird. As a young man, Joseph attended the United States Naval Academy and graduated with the second class in 1847. Starting as an Ensign, he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy until the Civil War, at which time he resigned and took a commission as a Lieutenant in the Confederate Navy. The Ten Years’ War, also known as “the Great War,” which started in 1868 became the first of three wars of Cuban Independence. In October 1873, following the defeat of the Confederacy and five years into the Cuban revolution, Frye became Captain of a side-wheeler, the S/S Virginius. His mission was to take guns and ammunition, as well as approximately 300 Cuban rebels to Cuba, with the intent of fighting the Spanish army for Cuban Independence. Unfortunately, the mission failed when the ship was intercepted by the Spanish warship Tornado. Captain Frye and his crew were taken to Santiago de Cuba and given a hasty trial and before a British warship Commander, hearing of the incident, could intervene, they were sentenced to death. After thanking the members of his crew for their service, Captain Frye and fifty-three members of his crew were put to death by firing squad, and were then decapitated and trampled upon by the Spanish soldiers. However, the British Commander Sir Lambton Lorraine of HMS Niobe did manage to save the lives of a few of the remaining crewmembers and rebels.

The one lesson to be learned is the necessity for every officer to cultivate belief in his own judgment, so as not to be afraid of acting correctly when the day of trial comes. This incident has provided the Navy with a lesson of the duty owed by juniors towards senior officers that it is well for officers to ponder over and digest. 105 [underlining

stairwell and started the climb to the seventh floor. He was knackered by the time they got to the third, but his agitation drove him on. Amisha's smooth and regular breathing, as she bounded up behind, stood in stark contrast to H's heavy panting. H reached the seventh. Ignoring the faces surprised to see him turning up at work, he steered a path through the open plan office and burst his way into the incident room, where an update on the Tara case was in progress. ‘Inspector Hawkins, how nice of you to drop in,’ said Hilary. ‘This is not your case - please leave immediately and make your way to my office. When I’m finished here you can update me on your case and explain where the hell you have been these last few days.’ H believed in the chain of command when he felt it was necessary. At this moment he didn’t. He stared hard at the officer in charge of the Tara case and went straight to the crux of the matter. ‘Marchant, you got anything yet?’ Miller-Marchant remained silent. H knew what that meant. Hilary

Did that bastard, Osborn, relive it night after night in his sleep? Raffe knew he did not. Even when Lord Osborn had issued those orders which other men were forced to carry out, he had given less thought to them than a boy snapping the neck of a snared bird. He knew Gerard would have to carry out those commands. Osborn was Gerard's liege lord and Gerard was bound by the oath of fealty to serve him. To refuse to obey his command on the field of battle was unthinkable. Any man who did as much would be branded a coward and a traitor. That night, after it was all over, Raffe had watched Osborn with his younger brother, Hugh, tossing down a flagon of sweet cypress wine, already planning the next day's sport, and it was plain he had already forgotten the whole incident. But then it is easy to forget if you only have to say the words and don't have to look into terrified faces or hear the screams echoing again and again through all the long dark nights.

Article VII. [The governor of this commonwealth for the time being, shall be the commander in chief of the army and navy, and of all the military forces of the state, by sea and land, and shall have full power by himself, or by any commander, or other officer or officers, from time to time, to train, instruct, exercise and govern the militia and navy; and, for the special defence and safety of the commonwealth, to assemble in martial array, and put in warlike posture, the inhabitants thereof, and to lead and conduct them, and with them to encounter, repel, resist, expel and pursue, by force of arms, as well by sea as by land, within or without the limits of this commonwealth, and also to kill, slay and destroy, if necessary, and conquer, by all fitting ways, enterprises, and means whatsoever, all and every such person and persons as shall, at any time hereafter, in a hostile manner, attempt or enterprise the destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance of this commonwealth; and to use and exercise, over the army and navy, and over the militia in actual service, the law martial, in time of war or invasion, and also in time of rebellion, declared by the legislature to exist, as occasion shall necessarily require; and to take and surprise by all ways and means whatsoever, all and every such person or persons, with their ships, arms, ammunition and other goods, as shall, in a hostile manner, invade, or attempt the invading, conquering, or annoying this commonwealth; and that the governor be intrusted with all these and other powers, incident to the offices of captain-general and commander in chief, and admiral, to be exercised agreeably to the rules and regulations of the constitution, and the laws of the land, and not otherwise.

Kayani had closed American ground supply routes through Pakistan to Afghanistan in retaliation for the deaths of Pakistani soldiers in a violent border incident at Salala late in 2011. The closure of Pakistani routes had forced Central Command and General John Allen to import materials from the north of Afghanistan and by air, at an expense to taxpayers of $100 million more per month compared with the Pakistani option. The impasse had become a politicized, highly public matter of honor, with the Pakistanis demanding an American apology and the Obama administration, still seething over the discovery of Osama Bin Laden at Abbottabad, among other offenses, unwilling to bend.

Finally, the brutalism of the Wall was there for all to see. President Kennedy discussed the incident at the cabinet level, as did Ulbricht and Khrushchev. The patrol commander and the two guards who shot and killed Fechter were personally awarded a flag by Ulbricht himself for their action, but this became an act seen around the world as shameful, and one the GDR would never recover from.

Two days after the incident, the commander of the task group, Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward, signalled ships with a list of 15 lessons learned.

When we reflect on these incidents in Abu Ghraib prison and beyond, it seems that torture was systematic, not aberrant, and that its widespread proliferation was symptomatic of both command decisions and a crisis in the ranks over a failing pacification effort.

I commenced a deliberate system of time-killing, which united some profit with a cheering up of the heavy hours. As soon as I came on deck, and took my place and regular walk, I began with repeating over to myself a string of matters which I had in my memory, in regular order. First, the multiplication table, and the tables of weights and measures; then the states of the union; with their capitals; the countries of England, with their shire towns; the kings of England in their order; and a large part of the peerage, which I committed from an almanac that we had on board; and then the Kanaka numerals. This carried me through my facts, and, being repeated deliberately, with long intervals, often eked out the two first bells. Then came the ten commandments; the thirty-ninth chapter of Job, and a few passages from Scripture. The next in the order, that I never varied from, came Cowper’s Castaway, which was a great favorite with me; the solemn measure and gloomy character of which, as well as the incident that it was founded upon, made it well suited to a lonely watch at sea. Then his lines to Mary, his address to the jackdaw, and a short extract from Table Talk; (I abounded in Cowper, for I happened to have a volume of his poems in my chest;) “Ille et nefasto” from Horace, and Goethe’s Erl King. After I had got through these, I allowed myself a more general range among everything that I could remember, both in prose and verse.

Listen, little violet,” I say to her. “You are the property of Lord Rian Valvere, who has entrusted me to bring you to him without incident. You will obey my commands on the ride, do you understand?” She looks down at me through her long lashes and says evenly, “Oh, I have plenty of experience with people who expect me to obey.” This pampered princess? She’s known no hardship, of that I feel certain. And yet the little flower might have thorns after all.

A video of the incident shows students freezing or fleeing in terror as black-clad officers burst out of closets and stairwells screaming commands and pointing guns.28 Police dogs were brought in to find the drugs that supposedly necessitated the raid. None were found.

deafening roar had faded before continuing. ‘This is how it’s going to work,’ he said. ‘You’re to be attached to the various armed police units attending the four incidents around the capital. You will be acting under the orders of the local Silver Commander in each case. For those of you not familiar with the way the cops operate, a Silver Commander is in charge on site. Usually an inspector but not always. He in turn reports to a Gold Commander, who in this case is at the special operations room in Lambeth. The Gold Commander decides overall strategy, the Silver Commander makes decisions on the ground. You do what the Silver Commander says. But I also want you using our own comms to stay in touch with Captain Alex Murray. He’s in the SOR so he’ll always have the big picture.’ The men nodded. Most of them were chewing gum, the only sign of the building tension. ‘Under no circumstances are you even to think of firing your weapon without being ordered to do so by the Silver Commander,’ said the major. ‘At the moment the cops are running the show so we have to play by their rules.’ ‘What

The incident occurred on the morning of March 16, 1967. Capt. Salas and his commander, Fred Mywald, were on duty at Oscar Flight, a part of the 490th strategic missile squad. It was still dark, and they were sixty feet underground, at the ICBM launch control facility.

Under the direction of General Westmoreland, significantly himself a graduate of the Harvard Business School in which McNamara had at one time taught, the computers zestfully went to work. Fed on forms that had to be filled in by the troops, they digested data on everything from the amount of rice brought to local markets to the number of incidents that had taken place in a given region in a given period of time. They then spewed forth a mighty stream of tables and graphs which purported to measure “progress” week by week and day by day. So long as the tables looked neat, few people bothered to question the accuracy, let alone the relevance, of the data on which they were based. So long as they looked neat, too, the illusion of having a grip on the war helped prevent people from attempting to gain a real understanding of its nature. This is not to say that the Vietnam War was lost simply because the American defense establishment’s management of the conflict depended heavily on computers. Rather, it proves that there is, in war and presumably in peace as well, no field so esoteric or so intangible as to be completely beyond the reach of technology. The technology in use helps condition tactics, strategy, organization, logistics, intelligence, command, control, and communication. Now, however, we are faced with an additional reality. Not only the conduct of war, but the very framework our brains employ in order to think about it, are partly conditioned by the technical instruments at our disposal.

On November 15th 2014, 3 months before my assault, Deputy Shaw spotted a few young men walking through Stanford campus with beer cans. When apprehended, they ran. One guy was caught and detained, confessed the guy who escaped was Brock. Brock was summoned back. The police noted he returned wearing a bright orange tuxedo and Deputy Shaw smelled the odor of alcohol on him. He had a black backpack on with Coors Light beers inside as well as a beer in his hand. He admitted to hiding the beer and knew he was not supposed to have to have it because he was not 21 years old. He stated that when he saw Deputy Shaw approach, he made the decision to run. While running, he heard the verbal commands to stop, but continued evading. He said it was a split-second decision and he regretted making it. Deputy Shaw would be the one to photograph my body three months after this incident.

One recent example of my fear of ambiguity was the instance with the beaten slave. Completely aware I was bluffing, I insisted that Ken Lar misinterpreted the Bible verse he quoted, but again, I was bluffing. I thought that that Bible verse was ambiguous. It could have actually been used to justify slavery, but I always thought that God was a pacifist, so I tried to comfort myself with the theory that God was forced to accommodate slavery because the world had gone corrupt, but then again, that verse described slaves’ submission as a way that helps them “adorn the doctrine of God our Savior,” so there is still a possibility that God would actually approve slavery. But still, the passage describes slaves to be faithful and to not steal and argue, which have been commands for Paul’s followers, who were not slaves. The passage could have been encouraging slaves to try to follow the path of God the way free people do. Still, if I recall correctly, in Leviticus it mentioned that the Israelites, right after being released from slavery in Egypt, were allowed to buy slaves from nations surrounding them, and it even said that the slaves could be the Israelites’ PROPERTY!!!! But then, I have heard of many African American pastors who use the Bible to support equality. But could it all be a scam? Who knows? That was ambiguity in its biblical form. There was even more ambiguity associated with that incident, because after thinking about that controversial passage, I wondered whether or not I was screwing my chances in Heaven for thinking like that. The Bible says that you shouldn’t lie, and by thinking like that, I was being honest with myself, but people died for blaspheming God, and if thinking those thoughts was considered blaspheming God, then who knows?

Of those involved in the months-long Oso Disaster Search, I often think of the many that we did not see. We didn’t see the civilian volunteers who built the urgently needed bypass road on the south side of the slide. We didn’t see the FEMA staff who set up tents and provided incident command logistics. We didn’t see the community members who cooked and emptied their shelves to deliver shovels, gloves, and flashlights to the Darrington and Oso fire stations. We didn’t see the medical examiner’s staff who worked so hard to identify victims. We didn’t see the helicopter support crews who provided gas, service, and maintenance to keep them flying. We didn’t see the girl scout troop who prepared and delivered baskets of treats and toys for the dogs.

The commanding officer at Camp Upton in New York, General F. Franklin Bell, took it upon himself to quell an escalating dispute between a group of black soldiers and a regiment of white Southern servicemen who had attempted to remove the black soldiers from a recreational facility. General Bell dismissed all the soldiers except the Southern white officers. “Now, gentlemen,” he said to them, “I am not what you would call ‘a Negro lover.’ I have seen service in Texas and elsewhere in the South.” The fact was, however, that the Southern whites had “started this trouble. I don’t want any explanation. These colored men did not start it. It doesn’t matter how your men feel about these colored men. They are United States soldiers. They must and shall be treated as such. If you can’t take care of your men, I can take care of you.” If the Southerners instigated another racial incident, Bell assured them, “you will be tried, not by a Texas jury but by General Bell, and not one of you will leave this camp for overseas.”16 After Bell delivered this message to the white officers on his base, Camp Upton quickly developed what one contemporary historian called “the finest atmosphere surrounding Negro soldiers in America,” which was due primarily to “the high stand and impartial attitude taken by the late Gen. Franklin Bell, commander.

At the core of the new command was Delta (full name: 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta), which the Army had formed under Beckwith’s leadership in 1977 in response to the rising number of international terrorist incidents. Unlike Israel, West Germany, and the United Kingdom, the United States had no specialized force to handle such episodes until Delta’s creation.

SEPTEMBER 11 Fueling Relief When we finally got the clearance to drive through the checkpoints, two weeks after the World Trade Center attacks, the street was lined with New Yorkers—New Yorkers!—waving banners with simple messages. “We love you. You’re our heroes. God bless you. Thank you.” The workers were running on that support as their vehicles ran on fuel. They had so little good news in a day. They faced a mountainously depressing task of removing tons and tons of twisted steel, compacted dirt, smashed equipment, broken glass. But every time they drove past the barricades, they faced a line of fans cheering them on, like the tunnel of cheerleaders that football players run through, reminding them that an entire nation appreciated their service. In a Salvation Army van with lights flashing, we attracted some of the loudest cheers of all. Moises Serrano, the Salvation Army officer leading us, was Incident Director for the city. He had been on the job barely a month when the planes hit. He worked thirty-six straight hours and slept four, forty hours and slept six, forty more hours and slept six. Then he took a day off. His assistant had an emotional breakdown early on, in the same van I was riding in, and may never recover. Many of the Salvationists I met hailed from Florida, the hurricane crews who keep fully stocked canteens and trucks full of basic supplies. When the Manhattan buildings fell, they mobilized all those trucks and drove them to New York. The crew director told me, “To tell you the truth, I came up here expecting to deal with Yankees, if you know what I mean. Instead, it’s all smiles and thank yous.” I came to appreciate the cheerful toughness of the Salvation Army. These soldiers worked in the morgue and served on the front lines. Over the years, though, they had developed an inner strength based on discipline, on community, and above all on a clear vision of whom they were serving. The Salvation Army may have a hierarchy of command, but every soldier knows he or she is performing for an audience of One. As one told me, Salvationists serve in order to earn the ultimate accolade from God himself: “Well done, thy good and faithful servant.” Finding God in Unexpected Places

One of the first incident commanders the Forest Service brought in was a man named George Custer, who administered the Nacogdoches camp. Understandably, many of the Native Americans wanted to have their picture taken with him.

The incident took place at Gerar, just as was the case with Abraham in Genesis 20:1-18, during a famine, just as was the case in Genesis 12:10 with Abraham, however, Isaac was prevented from going down to Egypt by God himself, and was summoned to dwell as a ‘sojourner’ (resident alien) in the earth of Gerar (26:2-3,6)… Isaac learned the lesson and thus lived within the realm of the Law and its commandments and statutes governing the earth, and this is what will be conveyed to Israel: ‘And he (God) humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did you fathers know; that he might make you know that any human being does not live by bread alone, but any human being lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.’ (Deut 8:3) Better, then, to dwell as a sojourner (that is, without possessing the land) in the location assigned by God’s word (of command) and share it with the presumed enemy, rather than end up dying in slavery in a seemingly ‘friendly’ land of plenty.

The Ten Years’ War, also known as “the Great War,” which started in 1868 became the first of three wars of Cuban Independence. In October 1873, following the defeat of the Confederacy and five years into the Cuban revolution, Fry became Captain of a side-wheeler, the S/S Virginius. His mission was to take guns and ammunition, as well as approximately 300 Cuban rebels to Cuba, with the intent of fighting the Spanish army for Cuban Independence. Unfortunately, the mission failed when the ship was intercepted by the Spanish warship Tornado. Captain Fry and his crew were taken to Santiago de Cuba and given a hasty trial and before a British warship Commander, hearing of the incident, could intervene, they were sentenced to death. After thanking the members of his crew for their service, Captain Fry and fifty-three members of his crew were put to death by firing squad, and were then decapitated and trampled upon by the Spanish soldiers. However, the British Commander Sir Lambton Lorraine of HMS Niobe did manage to save the lives of a few of the remaining crewmembers and rebels.

While some commanders took full responsibility for blue-on-blue, others blamed their subordinates for simulated fratricide incidents in training. These weaker commanders would get a solid explanation about the burden of command and the deep meaning of responsibility: the leader is truly and ultimately responsible for everything.

If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.

12.14 This day shall be to you one of remembrance: The Torah affirms the central importance of remembering. It may be credited with the invention of collective memory. There are six commandments of remembrance in the Torah: 1. The Sabbath “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” (Exodus 20: 8). 2. The Exodus “You shall not eat anything leavened with it . . . so that you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt as long as you live” (Deuteronomy 16: 3). 3. Receiving the Law at Sinai “So that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes . . . and make them known to your children and your children’s children, the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb. . . .” (Deuteronomy 4: 9-10) 4. Amalek “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey after you left Egypt, how, undeterred by fear of God he . . . cut down all the stragglers in your rear” (Deuteronomy 25: 17-19). 5. The Golden Calf and other incidents in which the Israelites angered God “Remember, never forget, how you provoked the Lord your God to anger in the wilderness” (Deuteronomy 9: 7). 6. God’s punishment of Miriam for speaking ill of Moses “Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the journey after you left Egypt” (Deuteronomy 24: 9—the verse alludes to Miriam and Aaron’s negative comments against Moses in Numbers 12: 1-9).