W Corp Quotes

They walk between raindrops.

Everyday US Marines make possible the impossible and then go about their business like it's just the way things are supposed to be.

only thing worse than not realizing one’s dreams was to realize them:

God, it is said, takes care of fools and drunks,

the true test of another man’s intelligence is how much he agrees with you?

Find capable subordinates, give them a clear mission, and then get out of their way and let them do their jobs.

Everybody, sooner or later, stubs their toe. When that happens, the thing to do is swallow hard and go on

And it also says, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’” McCoy said. “And that ‘he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.

Colonel Shoup, who wore a mask of dust and dirt like every other marine on the island, summed up the situation that afternoon: “Well, I think we’re winning, but the bastards have got a lot of bullets left. I think we’ll clean up tomorrow.”57 He was plainly exhausted, having slept not at all the previous night. He was still bleeding through his bandage. His report to General Julian Smith would enter Marine Corps lore: “Casualties many; percentage of dead not known; combat efficiency: We are winning.

Bill Clinton also benefited from a friendly press corps. With their baby boomer background, more liberal views, and Ivy League lawyer credentials, the Clintons fit the mold of many of the baby boomer reporters. In time, of course, the press would turn on Clinton. In the 1992 campaign, however, it seemed to me that some news outlets allowed their zeal for change to undermine their high standards of journalistic objectivity. (The pattern would later repeat with another exciting candidate promising change, Barack Obama.)

Gentlemen,” he said. “The Marine Corps loves you. Because the Marine Corps loves you, it has gone to considerable effort and expense to provide you with a healthy, nutritious breakfast. The Marine Corps expects you to eat the healthy, nutritious breakfast it has provided for you.

J'écris : j'écris parce que nous avons vécu ensemble, parce que j'ai été un parmi eux, ombre au milieu de leurs ombres, corps près de leur corps ; j'écris parce qu'ils ont laissé en moi leur marque indélébile et que la trace en est l'écriture : leur souvenir est mort à l'écriture ; l'écriture est le souvenir de leur mort et l'affirmation de ma vie.

A generation of reporters saw the Washington Post win a Pulitzer for exposing the scandal, and many dreamed of being the next Woodward or Bernstein. A strong and skeptical press corps is good for democracy. Often the media’s first instinct is to portray every story as a scandal, however, which presents a distorted picture of government and leaves the public cynical.

The behavioral scientists at the University of California, after extensive research, concluded that the best human material to train to be a pilot are classified intellectually as cretins.

mysterious chemistry that sometimes developed between seemingly dissimilar men—each surprisingly recognizing in the other a deep-down, kindred soul, the two of them bobbing along alone and unappreciated in a sea of fools.

Larry smiled a trifle ruefully. "Like Rolla [who is?], I've come too late into a world too old. I should have been born in the Middle Ages when faith was a matter of course; then my way would have been clear to me and I'd have sought to enter the order. I couldn't believe. I wanted to believe, but I couldn't believe in a God who wasn't better than the ordinary decent man. The monks told me that God had created the world for his glorification. That didn't seem to me a very worthy object. Did Beethoven create his symphonies for his glorification? I don't believe it. I believe he created them because the music in his soul demanded expression and then all he tried to do was to make them as perfect as he knew how. I used to listen to the monks repeating the Lord's Prayer; I wondered how they could continue to pray without misgiving to their heavenly father to give them their daily bread. Do children beseech their earthly father to give them sustenance? They expect him to do it, they neither feel gratitude to him for doing so nor need to, and we have only blame for a man who brings children into the world that he can't or won't provide for. It seemed to me that if an omnipotent creator was not prepared to provide his creatures with the necessities, material and spiritual, of existence he'd have done better not to create them." "Dear Larry," I said, "I think it's just as well you weren't born in the Middle ages. You'd undoubtedly have perished at the stake." He smiled. "You've had a great deal of success," he went on. "Do you want to be praised to your face?" "It only embarrasses me." "That's what I should have thought. I couldn't believe that God wanted it either. We didn't think much in the air corps of a fellow who wangled a cushy job out of his C.O. By buttering him up. It was hard for me to believe that God thought much of a man who tried to wangle salvation by fulsome flattery. I should have thought the worship most pleasing to him was to do your best according to your lights.

These reconnoissances were made under the supervision of Captain Robert E. Lee, assisted by Lieutenants P. G. T. Beauregard, Isaac I. Stevens, Z. B. Tower, G. W. Smith, George B. McClellan, and J. G. Foster, of the corps of engineers, all officers who attained rank and fame, on one side or the other, in the great conflict for the preservation of the unity of the nation.

Once the mobilization button was pushed, the whole vast machinery for calling up, equipping, and transporting two million men began turning automatically. Reservists went to their designated depots, were issued uniforms, equipment, and arms, formed into companies and companies into battalions, were joined by cavalry, cyclists, artillery, medical units, cook wagons, blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons, moved according to prepared railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions, divisions into corps, and corps into armies ready to advance and fight. One army corps alone—out of the total of 40 in the German forces—required 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies. From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.

But that wasn't the chief thing that bothered me: I couldn't reconcile myself with that preoccupation with sin that, so far as I could tell, was never entirely absent from the monks' thoughts. I'd known a lot of fellows in the air corps. Of course they got drunk when they got a chance, and had a girl whenever they could and used foul language; we had one or two had hats: one fellow was arrested for passing rubber cheques and was sent to prison for six months; it wasn't altogether his fault; he'd never had any money before, and when he got more than he'd ever dreamt of having, it went to his head. I'd known had men in Paris and when I got back to Chicago I knew more, but for the most part their badness was due to heredity, which they couldn't help, or to their environment, which they didn't choose: I'm not sure that society wasn't more responsible for their crimes than they were. If I'd been God I couldn't have brought myself to condemn one of them, not even the worst, to eternal damnation. Father Esheim was broad-minded; he thought that hell was the deprivation of God's presence, but if that is such an intolerable punishment that it can justly be called hell, can one conceive that a good God can inflict it? After all, he created men, if he so created them that ti was possible for them to sin, it was because he willed it. If I trained a dog to fly at the throat of any stranger who came into by back yard, it wouldn't be fair to beat him when he did so. If an all-good and all-powerful God created the world, why did he create evil? The monks said, so that man by conquering the wickedness in him, by resisting temptation, by accepting pain and sorrow and misfortune as the trials sent by God to purify him, might at long last be made worthy to receive his grace. It seem to me like sending a fellow with a message to some place and just to make it harder for him you constructed a maze that he had to get through, then dug a moat that he had to swim and finally built a wall that he had to scale. I wasn't prepared to believe in an all-wise God who hadn't common sense. I didn't see why you shouldn't believe in a God who hadn't created the world, buyt had to make the best of the bad job he'd found, a being enormously better, wiser and greater than man, who strove with the evil he hadn't made and who might be hoped in the end to overcome it. But on the other hand I didn't see why you should.

In a crowded cave, one grenade might do the work of twenty bullets. Sword-wielding officers beheaded dozens of willing victims. There were reports of children forming into a circle and tossing a live hand grenade, one to another, until it exploded and killed them all. In a cave filled with Japanese soldiers and civilians, Yamauchi recalled, a sergeant ordered mothers to keep their infants quiet, and when they were unable to do so, he told them, “Kill them yourself or I’ll order my men to do it.” Several mothers obeyed.94 As the Japanese perimeter receded toward the island’s northern terminus at Marpi Point, civilians who had thus far resisted the suicide order were forced back to the edge of a cliff that dropped several hundred feet onto a rocky shore. In a harrowing finale, many thousands of Japanese men, women, and children took that fateful last step. The self-destructive paroxysm could not be explained by deference to orders, or by obeisance to the death cult of imperial bushido. Suicide, the Japanese of Saipan earnestly believed, was the sole alternative to a fate worse than death. The Americans were not human beings—they were something akin to demons or beasts. They were the “hairy ones,” or the “Anglo-American Demons.” They would rape the women and girls. They would crush captured civilians under the treads of their tanks. The marines were especially dreaded. According to a story circulated widely among the Japanese of Saipan, all Marine Corps recruits were compelled to murder their own parents before being inducted into service. It was said that Japanese soldiers taken prisoner would suffer hideous tortures—their ears, noses, and limbs would be cut off; they would be blinded and castrated; they would be cooked and fed to dogs. Truths and half-truths were shrewdly wedded to the more outrageous and far-fetched claims. Japanese newspapers reproduced photographs of Japanese skulls mounted on American tanks. A cartoon appearing in an American servicemen’s magazine, later reproduced and translated in the Japanese press, had suggested that marine enlistees would receive a “Japanese hunting license,” promising “open season” on the enemy, complete with “free ammunition and equipment—with pay!”95 Other cartoons, also reproduced in Japan, characterized the Japanese as monkeys, rats, cockroaches, or lice. John Dower’s study War Without Mercy explored the means by which both American and Japanese propaganda tended to dehumanize the enemy. Among the Japanese, who could not read or hear any dissenting views, the excesses of American wartime rhetoric and imagery lent credibility to the implication that a quick suicide was the path of least suffering. Saipan was the first Pacific battlefield in which Americans had encountered a large civilian population. No one had known what to expect. Would women and children take up weapons and hurl themselves at the Americans?

I was starting to look different from my Democratic rivals in more ways than the obvious one. During a debate in late July, I was shown images of Fidel Castro, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, and a couple of other despots and asked if I’d be prepared to meet with any of them during my first year in office. Without hesitation, I said yes—I’d meet with any world leader if I thought it could advance U.S. interests. Well, you would have thought I had said the world was flat. When the debate was over, Clinton, Edwards, and a bunch of the other candidates pounced, accusing me of being naïve, insisting that a meeting with the American president was a privilege to be earned. The press corps in large part seemed to agree. Perhaps even a few months earlier I might have gotten wobbly, second-guessing my choice of words and issuing a clarifying statement afterward. But I had my legs beneath me now and was convinced I was right, particularly on the more general principle that America shouldn’t be afraid to engage its adversaries or push for diplomatic solutions to conflict. As far as I was concerned, it was this disregard for diplomacy that had led Hillary and the rest—not to mention the mainstream press—to follow George W. Bush into war.

The advance of a political general to corps command was disturbing enough to the old guard without the additional fact that Dan Sickles was, in a word, notorious. In 1859, in broad daylight a block from the White House in Washington, Sickles had shot down and killed his wife’s lover. Worse, the lover was Philip Barton Key, son of the author of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Sickles’s trial was the most sensational of its day. After lurid testimony he was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity, a pioneering defense that one of his attorneys, Edwin M. Stanton, helped construct. Sickles then proceeded to compound his notoriety by taking Mrs. Sickles back to his bed and board. There were those in the officer corps who shuddered at the prospect of Joe Hooker, Dan Butterfield, and Dan Sickles at the same headquarters.

Some twenty-three hundred miles away Major General H.H. “Hap” Arnold, head of the Army Air Corps, had traveled to Hamilton Field near Sacramento to personally see off a flight of thirteen B-l 7s destined for MacArthur in the Philippines by way of Hawaii. The first leg to Hickam Field took fourteen hours, so the big bombers flew with only four-man crews and were unarmed. One of the pilots objected. At least they ought to carry their bomb sights and machine guns. Arnold said they could be put aboard but without ammunition to save weight. So the bombers could home in on its signal, Major General Frederick L. Martin, head of the Hawaiian Air Force, had his staff ask station WGMB in Honolulu to stay on all night. Sure thing, general. Another night of ukuleles and Glenn Miller drifting out across the Pacific courtesy of the U.S. Army Air Corps. When Lieutenant Colonel George W. Bicknell of Army intelligence heard about it, he blew up. Why tip our hands whenever we have planes coming in? Why not keep WGMB on the air every night? One of those who caught the station was Lieutenant Kermit Tyler on his way to work the graveyard shift at the radar coordinating station at Fort Shafter. Must be planes coming in from the States, he told himself.

Meade had personal and professional respect for five of his seven corps commanders—Reynolds, Hancock, Sykes (now heading the Fifth Corps), Sedgwick, and Slocum. After Chancellorsville he had doubts about Otis Howard. About Dan Sickles he had grave doubts.

canciones del interior: Where or When, música de Richard Rodgers y letra de Lorenz Hart, © 1937 Chappel & Co., WB Music Corp. y Williamson Music Co., derechos gestionados por WB Music Corp. o/b/o Estate of Lorenz Hart y Family Trust u/w Richard Rodgers y Family Trust u/w Dorothy F. Rodgers I Didn’t Know What Time It Was, música de Richard Rodgers y letra de Lorenz Hart, © 1939 Chappel & Co., WB Music Corp. y Williamson Music Co., derechos gestionados por WB Music Corp. o/b/o Estate of Lorenz Hart y Family Trust u/w Richard Rodgers y Family Trust u/w Dorothy F. Rodgers My Funny Valentine, música de Richard Rodgers y letra de Lorenz Hart, © 1937 Chappel & Co., Derechos gestionados por WB Music Corp. y Williamson Music Co., derechos gestionados por WB Music Corp. o/b/o Estate of Lorenz Hart y Family Trust u/w Richard Rodgers y Family Trust u/w Dorothy F. Rodgers. Publicado de acuerdo con Alfred Publishing, LLC y Williamson Music

each surprisingly recognizing in the other a deep-down, kindred soul, the two of them bobbing along alone and unappreciated in a sea of fools.

If they had not died on April 15, 1912, almost all the musicians would have had to fight in France and perhaps half of them wouldn’t have returned. When Roger Bricoux didn’t respond to the French call-up in 1914, he was registered as a deserter even though he had been dead for two years. At the age of thirty-six, Frederick Nixon Black of C. W. & F. N. Black found himself in the British army, first with the Royal Defence Corps in Hereford, and then after the war, with the Manchester Regiment handling German prisoners. Theo Brailey, had he lived, would have been called back to the Lancashire Fusiliers.

For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

his cylinder head temperature right at 215° Centigrade. That’s what the book said was the most efficient climbing attitude, and Major Parks flew by the book. As they passed through 12,000 feet, he put the black rubber mask over his face, readjusted his headset to accommodate

Diana Gabaldon’s Series Order

Patricia Cornwell’s Series Order Fern Michael’s   Series Order Robert Ludlum’s Series Order Harlan Coben’s Series Order Terry Pratchett’s Series Order J.A. Jance’s Series Order Tom Clancy’s

Frank Fiorini, better known as Frank Sturgis, had an interesting career that started when he quit high school during his senior year to join the United States Marine Corps as an enlisted man. During World War II he served in the Pacific Theater of Operations with Edson’s Raiders, of the First Marine Raiders Battalion under Colonel “Red Mike.” In 1945 at the end of World War II, he received an honorable discharge and the following year joined the Norfolk, Virginia Police Department. Getting involved in an altercation with his sergeant, he resigned and found employment as the manager of the local Havana-Madrid Tavern, known to have had a clientele consisting primarily of Cuban seamen. In 1947 while still working at the tavern, he joined the U.S. Navy’s Flight Program. A year later, he received an honorable discharge and joined the U.S. Army as an Intelligence Officer. Again, in 1949, he received an honorable discharge, this time from the U.S. Army. Then in 1957, he moved to Miami where he met former Cuban President Carlos Prío, following which he joined a Cuban group opposing the Cuban dictator Batista. After this, Frank Sturgis went to Cuba and set up a training camp in the Sierra Maestra Mountains, teaching guerrilla warfare to Castro’s forces. He was appointed a Captain in Castro’s M 26 7 Brigade, and as such, he made use of some CIA connections that he apparently had cultivated, to supply Castro with weapons and ammunition. After they entered Havana as victors of the revolution, Sturgis was appointed to a high security, intelligence position within the reorganized Cuban air force. Strangely, Frank Sturgis returned to the United States after the Cuban Revolution, and mysteriously turned up as one of the Watergate burglars who were caught installing listening devices in the National Democratic Campaign offices. In 1973 Frank A. Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio R. Martínez, G. Gordon Liddy, Virgilio R. “Villo” González, Bernard L. Barker and James W. McCord, Jr. were convicted of conspiracy. While in prison, Sturgis feared for his life if anything he had done, regarding his associations and contacts, became public knowledge. In 1975, Sturgis admitted to being a spy, stating that he was involved in assassinations and plots to overthrow undisclosed foreign governments. However, at the Rockefeller Commission hearings in 1975, their concluding report stated that he was never a part of the CIA…. Go figure! In 1979, Sturgis surfaced in Angola where he trained and helped the rebels fight the Cuban-supported communists. Following this, he went to Honduras to train the Contras in their fight against the communist-supported Sandinista government. He also met with Yasser Arafat in Tunis, following which he was debriefed by the CIA. Furthermore, it is documented that he met and talked to the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, or Carlos the Jackal, who is now serving a life sentence for murdering two French counter intelligence agents. On December 4, 1993, Sturgis suddenly died of lung cancer at the Veterans Hospital in Miami, Florida. He was buried in an unmarked grave south of Miami…. Or was he? In this murky underworld, anything is possible.

Dee and I have been taking turns ordering the most outrageous drinks we can think of; with the help of our phones and Google of course. “Gimmie two Golden Showers, bartender!” I scream across the bar. When did someone take my last drink? What was that one? A bl*w j*b, I think. Yes, that was it. We spent a good fifteen minutes laughing our asses off after making Greg drink one. He is currently giving us a look of extreme displeasure. He can act as mad as he wants but yelling for Greg to deep throat his bl*w j*b was hilarious. Just ask the customers around us, they certainly laughed loud enough.

Confederates in Jackson’s column reported seeing a Yankee balloon—it was the Eagle—and assumed that if they could see it, it could see them. Yet such were conditions aloft that not a single report reached General Hooker that day from the aeronautical corps that an enemy column was marching to the south and west of Chancellorsville.

[THREE] As the staff car carrying Generals Almond and Howe started down the road beside the runway, McCoy paused long enough to wonder where they were going, then turned and motioned to Jeanette Priestly to get out of the Russian jeep. He had given a lot of thought to Jeanette and to her relationship with Pickering. Pick Pickering—a really legendary swordsman, of whom it was more or less honestly said he had two girls and often more in every port—had taken one look at Jeanette Priestly just over two months before and fallen in love with her.

At 2100 hours the patrol craft was released as escort and the Nautilus got underway to rendezvous with the Argonaut off Makin Atoll.

But in 1947, an American working in Japan turned that thinking on its head. His name was W. Edwards Deming, and he was a statistician who was known for his expertise in quality control. At the request of the U.S. Army, he had traveled to Asia to assist with planning the 1951 Japanese census. Once he arrived, he became deeply involved with the country’s reconstruction effort and ended up teaching hundreds of Japanese engineers, managers, and scholars his theories about improving productivity. Among those who came to hear his ideas was Akio Morita, the co-founder of Sony Corp.—one of many Japanese companies that would apply his ideas and reap their rewards. Around this time, Toyota also instituted radical new ways of thinking about production that jibed with Deming’s philosophies.

But he just knew how to fly. All they had to do was explain to him what the propeller was doing, spinning around like that.

Ad – Add               Ail – Ale               Air – Heir               Are - R               Ate - Eight               Aye - Eye - I                 B                            B – Be - Bee               Base - Bass               Bi – Buy - By – Bye               Bite - Byte               Boar - Bore               Board - Bored                 C               C – Sea - See               Capital – Capitol               Chord – Cord               Coarse - Course               Core - Corps               Creak – Creek               Cue – Q - Queue                 D               Dam - Damn               Dawg – Dog               Days – Daze               Dew – Do – Due               Die – Dye               Dual - Duel                 E               Earn – Urn               Elicit – Illicit               Elude - Illude               Ex – X                 F               Fat – Phat               Faze - Phase               Feat - Feet               Find – Fined               Flea – Flee               Forth - Fourth                 G               Gait – Gate               Genes – Jeans               Gnawed - Nod               Grate – Great                 H               Hair - Hare               Heal - Heel               Hear - Here               Heard - Herd               Hi - High               Higher – Hire               Hoarse - Horse               Hour - Our                 I               Idle - Idol               Ill – Ill               In – Inn               Inc – Ink               IV – Ivy                 J               Juggler - Jugular                 K               Knead - Need               Knew - New               Knight - Night               Knot – Naught - Not               Know - No               Knows - Nose                 L               Lead – Led               Lie - Lie               Light – Lite               Loan - Lone                 M               Mach – Mock               Made - Maid               Mane – Main               Meat - Meet               Might - Mite               Mouse - Mouth                 N               Naval - Navel               None - Nun                 O               Oar - Or – Ore               One - Won                 P               Paced – Paste               Pail – Pale                            Pair - Pear               Peace - Piece               Peak - Peek               Peer - Pier               Pray - Prey                 Q               Quarts - Quartz                 R               Rain - Reign               Rap - Wrap               Read - Red               Real - Reel               Right - Write               Ring - Wring                 S               Scene - Seen               Seas – Sees - Seize               Sole – Soul               Some - Sum               Son - Sun               Steal – Steel               Suite - Sweet                 T               T - Tee               Tail – Tale               Team – Teem               Their – There - They’re               Thyme - Time               To – Too - Two                 U               U - You                 V               Vale - Veil               Vain – Vane - Vein               Vary – Very               Verses - Versus                 W               Waive - Wave               Ware – Wear - Where               Wait - Weight               Waist - Waste               Which - Witch               Why – Y               Wood - Would                 X                 Y               Yoke - Yolk               Yore - Your – You’re                 Z

Give me an army of three active corps and I will agree to become Governor of Paris; on this condition, formal and explicit, you can count on me for its defense.” Messimy thanked him so effusively, “shaking my hands several times and even kissing me,” that Gallieni felt assured “from the warmth of these demonstrations that the place I was succeeding to was not an enviable one.

He is awaiting both civilian and military prosecution, which will likely see him dishonorably stripped of his commission and discharged from the Marine Corps.

This is the true story of a remarkable American who, during the early New Deal years, was sought by wealthy plotters in the United States to lead a putsch to overthrow the government and establish an American Fascist dictatorship. According to retired Representative John W. McCormack, former Speaker of the House, if the late Major General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps had not been a stubborn devotee of democracy, Americans today could conceivably be living under an American Mussolini, Hitler, or Franco.

It was an organization of freethinkers, in which a spirit of teamwork blended with an ethic of informality and an esprit de corps. It was built around a handful of talented

esprit de corps,

she said. “They’re all worried about Iran.” By the time I took office, the theocratic regime in Iran had presented a challenge to American presidents for more than twenty years. Governed by radical clerics who seized power in the 1979 revolution, Iran was one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror. At the same time, Iran was a relatively modern society with a budding freedom movement. In August 2002, an Iranian opposition group came forward with evidence that the regime was building a covert uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, along with a secret heavy water production plant in Arak—two telltale signs of a nuclear weapons program. The Iranians acknowledged the enrichment but claimed it was for electricity production only. If that was true, why was the regime hiding it? And why did Iran need to enrich uranium when it didn’t have an operable nuclear power plant? All of a sudden, there weren’t so many complaints about including Iran in the axis of evil. In October 2003, seven months after we removed Saddam Hussein from power, Iran pledged to suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing. In return, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France agreed to provide financial and diplomatic benefits, such as technology and trade cooperation. The Europeans had done their part, and we had done ours. The agreement was a positive step toward our ultimate goal of stopping Iranian enrichment and preventing a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. In June 2005, everything changed. Iran held a presidential election. The process was suspicious, to say the least. The Council of Guardians, a handful of senior Islamic clerics, decided who was on the ballot. The clerics used the Basij Corps, a militia-like unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, to manage turnout and influence the vote. Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner. Not surprisingly, he had strong support from the Basij. Ahmadinejad steered Iran in an aggressive new direction. The regime became more repressive at home, more belligerent in Iraq, and more proactive in destabilizing Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, and Afghanistan. Ahmadinejad called Israel “a stinking corpse” that should be “wiped off the map.” He dismissed the Holocaust as a “myth.” He used a United Nations speech to predict that the hidden imam would reappear to save the world. I started to worry we were dealing with more than just a dangerous leader. This guy could be nuts. As one of his first acts, Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would resume uranium conversion. He claimed it was part of Iran’s civilian nuclear power program, but the world recognized the move as a step toward enrichment for a weapon. Vladimir Putin—with my support—offered to provide fuel enriched in Russia for Iran’s civilian reactors, once it built some, so that Iran would not need its own enrichment facilities. Ahmadinejad rejected the proposal. The Europeans also offered

Only one aspect of the Vision resonated sharply throughout his first eight months in office. During the second presidential debate with Al Gore, on October 11, 2000, George W. Bush promised a less interventionist foreign policy than that of the Clinton-Gore administration – one, in keeping with his Responsibility Era, that would encourage self-reliance while curbing its own meddlesome Great Power Impulses. “I am worried,” Bush said then, “about over committing our military around the world. I want to be judicious in its use… I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build nations. Maybe I’m missing something here. I mean, we’re going to have kind of a nation-building corps from America? Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war; that’s what its meant to do. And when it gets overextended, moreal drops… I’m going to be judicious as to how I use the military. It needed to be in our vital interest, the mission needs to be clear, and the exit strategy obvious.

In 2004, retired Brigadier General Shimon Naveh of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) offered an extended idea on intuitive decision making to the US Army and US Marine Corps. His approach, which he called systemic operational design, appeared uniquely useful to planning campaigns and major operations.[xix] Based on an understanding of the chaotic nature of war, systemic operational design focuses on discerning the logic that makes a situation a problem. Through discourse a group that has expertise on some aspect of the situation structures or frames the problem, which frequently causes a counter-logic or solution to emerge naturally. In intuitive decision making a person aware of a familiar pattern enables construction of a story that makes sense; in systemic operational design a pattern materializes during discourse and facilitates a sense-making story. Failing to find the logic that makes a situation unacceptable and in need of change means planners are not able to discern a counter-logic, the conceptual element essential to begin planning. Naveh’s explanation of systemic operational design was for many officers difficult to grasp despite the simplicity of his idea. Much of this difficulty was due to language issues and US officers’ poor understanding of the nonlinear nature of war.[xx] Fortunately, researchers learned of an important paper during the Army-Marine Corps experiments evaluating systemic operational design, which US officers found easier to comprehend.[xxi] Close study of the systemic approach to operational design, coupled with a series of carefully constructed and capably executed wargames conducted over five years, validated systemic operational design. The final product, though, was a modified version of Naveh’s original structure and form. The US Army, which led the evaluation, provided the results to service and joint doctrine writers with the expectation they would revise planning manuals and incorporate this new approach to operational design. Universally, this failed to happen. In every case, doctrine writers merely affixed the new approach to the front end of the standard analytical military decision making process, which stresses creating and testing multiple courses of action. To illustrate the illogic of this, recall that systemic operational design is to uncover the logic or “pattern” of the situation and offer a story—the counter-logic—that will resolve the problem. In other words, the planners employ the approach to create a story that makes sense. What the standard analytical process demands is the creation of additional stories in the form of other courses of action. Why would any commander or staff want to waste time developing alternative stories when they have one they believe will work? [xix] After the 2006 Israeli war with Hezbollah, several critics blamed use of systemic design for the failings the IDF experienced. I have reviewed these reports and found that the critics misconstrued systemic operational design and effects based operations, seeing them as the same thing. They are polar-opposite ways of making decisions. [xx] The term nonlinear here does not refer to the geometric connotation inherent in the “nonlinear battlefield,” but to the disproportion between cause and effect often found in open systems. [xxi] Horst W. J. Rittel, and Melvin M. Webber, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Science, 1973, 155-169. (Excerpt from article “From Grand Strategy to Operational Design: Getting it Right”)

One grossly overweight young Sergeant I’d put on the PT and Personal Appearance platoon had written a letter complaining to his parents.  They wrote their congressman about how horrible I was treating their son, and we received a “CONGRINT” which stood for Congressional Interest inquiry.  This was a big deal; it got the attention of everyone from headquarters in Washington all the way down to the squadron.       When I showed it to Major Psaros he didn’t even blink.  He said, “Where is this guy?”      “Sir he’s a Sergeant down in radio repair and one hell of a technician.  He’s just a big chunky Italian looking kid and I think he came into the Marine Corps looking like a tub and they slimmed him down in boot camp.  But now he’s just reverted to his natural shape.  I bet his whole family looks just like this.  He’s not going to qualify for reenlistment because of his personal appearance and weight.  He’s one of the most productive technicians, but if he had to saddle up and go into combat I think he’d be a liability.”      “Get his ass up here and let me see what he looks like.”      I brought the Sergeant up to the CO’s office.  The Major took one look at him and said, “Marine, you look like a Technicolor Sea Bag in your uniform.  You’re fat and out of shape.  I’ll give you a month to start showing some major improvements or your career as a Marine will be coming to an end.”      After the Sergeant left Major Psaros told me to take a picture of him in his skivvies, front and side and bring him copies of all the appropriate Marine Corps orders on personal appearance and weight control.      The CO answered the CONGRINT with the pictures of the Sergeant in his skivvies and the copies of the orders.  He didn’t include anything else.  We never heard another word.

the President asked the Admiral if he could smoke out here.  This was normally never done.  No one would even think to smoke on the flight deck.  Today, the rules were different.  The Admiral said, “Well sir, that’s not normally done, but we aren’t fueling any aircraft and nothing’s going to take place out here while you are on deck.  So yes, I guess you can smoke out here.”      With that answer, the President reached into his jacket pocket and produced a metal tin that held very short little cigars called “Between the Acts”.  He started fumbling through his pockets, obviously looking for a light.  The Admiral began checking his pockets and then gave me a panicked look.  I reached into my pocket and handed the Admiral my prized Zippo lighter, the one with the Marine Corps emblem.  The Admiral immediately gave it to the President, who flicked it open and lighted his little cigar.  When he finished the lighting process he snapped the lid shut, rolled the lighter around in his right hand, paused for a second to notice the emblem, and promptly put the lighter into his right coat pocket.  The Admiral looked at me as if to say, “We will work it out later

One corps had run out of wire altogether and was relying on mounted orderlies. The VIth Corps did not possess the key to the cipher used by the XIIIth. Consequently, Samsonov’s orders were issued by wireless in clear.

Little did the soldiers of the Second Corps know at that time that General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the formidable Confederate army ahead of them, had been wounded and disabled in the day’s action. Temporarily, Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith had assumed command, but within days a new commander would take over the reins of the butternut and gray legions—none other than Gen. Robert E. Lee.53

Protected by plate armor and the pride of chivalry, the noble felt himself invulnerable and invincible and became increasingly contemptuous of the foot soldier. He believed that commoners, being excluded from chivalry, could never be relied upon in war. As grooms, baggage attendants, foragers, and road-builders—the equivalent of engineer corps—they were necessary, but as soldiers in leather jerkins armed with pikes and billhooks, they were considered an encumbrance who in a sharp fight would “melt away like snow in sunshine.” This was not simple snobbism but a reflection of experience in the absence of training. The Middle Ages had no equivalent of the Roman legion. Towns maintained trained bands of municipal police, but they tended to fill up their contingents for national defense with riff-raff good for nothing else. Abbeys had better use for their peasants than to employ their time in military drill. In any epoch the difference between a rabble and an army is training, which was not bestowed on foot soldiers called up by the arrière-ban. Despised as ineffective, they were ineffective because they were despised.

Today such news would galvanize the Medical Corps, but in 1918 it attracted only a modicum of attention.

Entertainment, purpose of: The purpose of parties at a diplomat's residence is not to amuse colleagues in the diplomatic corps. Still less it is to show off to them the breadth of the host's local contacts. The purpose of diplomatic entertainment is to cultivate relationships with influential members of the elite in the host country. If a party at a diplomatic residence does not succeed in this, however delightful it may have been for its participants, it should be reckoned a failure. Espionage, scruples about: Accurate insight into an adversary's plans is vital both to avoid war and to assure its efficient conduct by the nation if it cannot be avoided; to fail to give adequate attention to the collection of intelligence is to gamble both with the destiny of the nation and with the lives of its youth. Scruples about intelligence collection, though motivated by a humane concern about the propriety of the means by which information is obtained, may therefore, ultimately, produce suffering both for one's own people and for those of one's adversaries on a scale that is shockingly inhumane.

Corps, diplomatic: The community of foreign diplomats assembled in the capital of a state. The corps is headed by a Dean, who is usually the ambassador with the longest period of service as such in that capital. Corps, diplomatic: "The diplomatic corps in each capital, that is the diplomatic missions taken together, acts as a multilateral network of diplomatic brokerage ... Ambassadors accredited to a capital often need to coordinate their actions and their reports with colleagues. These exchanges extend to most other diplomats in the capital, at various levels of seniority. There is a constant dialogue, and much mutual adjustment of the various embassies' assessments of the host government's policies and intentions. There can be no resident diplomat in an embassy abroad who has not had the experience of having his understanding of some aspect of the host government's policy corrected and amplified by a member of another embassy which happened to be better informed on that issue." — Adam Watson, 1983

Appointees, political: The purpose of appointing an ambassador or special envoy is often no more than to give someone who enjoys travel and craves prestige a chance to travel abroad at government expense and to write a book about the experience. Appointees, political: "The word 'ambassador' would normally have a professional connotation but for the American tradition of political appointees. The bizarre notion that any citizen, especially if he is rich, is fit for the representation of his country abroad has taken some hard blows through empirical evidence. [...] When the strongest nation in the world appoints a tycoon or wealthy hostess to head an embassy, the discredit and frustration spread throughout the entire diplomatic corps in the country concerned." — Abba Eban, 1983 Appointments, political: "Every time I make an appointment, I make five enemies and one ingrate." — attributed to Talleyrand

Colleagues:"Of all the peculiarities of diplomatic life, what most strikes the general public is the amicable and often cordial relations which exist between the diplomatists of the different countries and which produce between them, if policy and patriotism do not oppose it, a sort of corporate spirit and sometimes comradeship. Those who are surprised at this do not know what it is to remain for long years abroad, isolated and far from home. The young men who enter into the profession could not live the whole of their life leaving each other and finding each other again in various capitals of the world, experiencing sometimes the same adventures, and gaining, by the same steps, the grades of their career, without feeling pleasure at meeting each other again." — Jules Cambon Colleagues, utility of: In every diplomatic corps there are envoys who are fat with information and there are those who, starved for intelligence because they are unable to obtain their own insights into the dynamics of decision making in the host country, prey on those better informed than themselves. A diplomat with his own ample resources of information is well advised to keep his distance from those of his colleagues who seek a parasitical relationship with him; these colleagues will, after all, be available to him whenever he need them. Instead, he should cultivate those as well or better informed than him and share as much information as he is able to share with them. By establishing a reputation for being worth consulting among those of his colleagues who are themselves well informed about local events, a diplomat can ensure that they rely on him to check information of which they are unsure. In that way, he will gain access to much of what they know shortly after they learn it and will be able to give his own government the benefit of this knwoledge in a timely way. Colleagues, utility of: "An Ambassador may very probably find that his colleagues of the diplomatic corps in the capital where he resides may be of value to him. Since the whole diplomatic body labors to the same end, namely to discover what is happening, there arises a certain freemasonry of diplomacy, by which one colleague informs another of coming events which a lucky chance has enabled him to discern." — François de Callières, 1716 Command presence: A talent for command is essential to ambassadors and heads of delegations, both of whom must bend a heterogeneous group to a common purpose and make its members function as a team.

Born 4 April 1889 Ernsdorf, German Empire Died 1 September 1962 (aged 73) Bad Wildungen, West Germany Allegiance German Empire Weimar Republic Nazi Germany Service / branch Imperial German Army Reichswehr German Army Years of service 1907–1943 Rank Generaloberst Commands 52nd Infantry Division 17th Panzer Division XXXIX Panzer Corps 5th Panzer Army Army Group Afrika Battles / wars World War I World War II Awards Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross

Morale, in diplomatic missions: A good ambassador molds the spirit of his subordinates not only through example but also through a shrewd understanding of the psychology of morale. He must seek to give those who work for him confidence in their cause and in their ability to make it prevail. He must keep them active in promoting the interests of their nation. The worst enemy of morale at an embassy is lack of well-directed activity. Morality: "A diplomatic corps is certainly far from being a school of virtue!" — Gyula Szilassy, 1928

Nonintervention: "Nonintervention is a metaphysical and political term meaning almost the same thing as intervention." — Talleyrand, 1832 Non-paper: A very informal means of conveying written information, especially the summary of points that have been made (or will be made) in oral representation by a diplomat to officials of the host government, intended to aid the memory but not for quotation or attribution as an authoritative statement of the position of the diplomat's government. Note, circular: A diplomatic communication from an ambassador to his colleagues, the ambassadors and chiefs of mission of the diplomatic corps, collectively. Note, collective: A diplomatic communication from two or more ambassadors to one or more addressees, containing identical texts. Note, diplomatic: A formal communication between an ambassador and a minister (usually the foreign minister) of his host government or another ambassador. Note, identic: A coordinated diplomatic communication from two or more ambassadors to one or more addressees, conveying similar but not identical message texts. Note, verbale: Unsigned, but initialed, diplomatic communication, written in the third person, between an ambassador and a minister (usually the foreign minister) of his host government. Notes: "Diplomats write Notes, because they wouldn't have the nerve to tell the same thing to each other's face." — Will Rogers, 1949 Notes, exchange of: An agreement recorded in the form of an offer reciprocated by an acceptance of this offer. Nuance: "Truth and wisdom lies in nuances." — Ernest Renan

action. Captain Galloway was again reminded that a lot of really stupid people were running around with a lot of rank on their collar points.

Protocol: An agreement or an amendment to a preexisting agreement. Protocol: Many rules of protocol, like the "order of precedence" for the diplomatic corps, represent the stilling of ancient preoccupations and the settlement of quarrels best left unrenewed. Protocol: "There must be rules of procedure and a technical language in any Service, business undertaking, academic institution, trade union — or indeed family. An internationally accepted code to which all subscribe is immensely helpful to members of the group and to others prepared to submit to it while they are living in that environment. ... Protocol does more to glue people together than it does to gum up the works." — Douglas Busk, 1967 Protocol, blunders of: "It is not always easy to avoid making kistakes in precedence and protocol generally in a foreign country. A diplomat who considers himself the victim of such one and attempts to make a scene renders himself, more often than not, ridiculous. ... Such mistakes are seldom made of malice aforethought." — Ernest Satow Protocol, insistence upon: A rigid insistence on protocol by an ambassador is a sure sign that he has little, if anything, of importance to accomplish.

Press: "In his dealings with the press, the diplomat cannot, if he is a responsible operative, retreat from its members, nor ignore their key role in a free society. Nor can he forget the conflict of interest which prevails. He must learn to be frank, helpful, and accurate — but never careless and never indiscreet. In his dealings with both the press and other diplomats, he must also remember always that indiscretions come about in part, as well as in whole — that a fragmentary indiscretion can be as damaging as whole in the hands of an adroit recipient whose business it is to collect and piece together many parts from many sources, thus coming to understand the whole." — William Macomber, 1975 Press, responsibilities of the: "The Press engages in Diplomacy; and Diplomacy exerts influence through the Press. The people, exposed to this double impact, is unconsciously guided in various directions; or else, if it tries to think for itself, falls into error. The responsibility of the Press is so great that wars, insofar as they are not made by Governments, are made by the Press." — R. B. Mowat, 1936 [cf. following excerpt from interview "Col. Larry Wilkerson & Chas Freeman: WW3 IMMINENT? Shocking Signs We're on the Brink of Global War!" Col. Wilkerson: [O]ne of the stunning things to me, and it shouldn't be because I had to suffer through it when I was in government, but it's orders of magnitude worse now, is irresponsibility the mainstream media in America. Amb. Freeman: I first experienced this in the Gulf War when I was in Riyahd. There were 1,600 foreign journalists there to cover the the war. Two of them spoke Arabic. I was told not to brief any of them, but I did brief 120 of them. And each briefing opened with a statement: "If I ever see my name in print, or you refer to me in any way, you'll never see me again. There's nothing you can do for me except get me in trouble." But I have to say the reporting was appallingly bad. CENTCOM General Schwarzoff and company had briefings which were extremely informative, but the military illiteracy of the press corps meant that they didn't pick up anything was being said. It was really shocking. This was the generation that skipped Vietnam, you know, so they didn't understand what was being said.]

Mead had not been invited to the surrender at the McLean house, but he determined to meet his opposite number before the armies parted. On April 10 he rode through the now-peaceful lines to meet his engineer corps comrade from the old army. "What are you doing with all that gray in your bead!" Lee exclaimed. "That you have a great deal to do with!" Meade replied.