My family and I got quite a shock last Friday, June 27th. Our neighbor passed away suddenly from a massive heart attack right next door. Besides the sad thought that he died alone, he was only about one month older than me. He wasn't found until the evening when our local sheriff's department had a locksmith open the door to his townhouse. I waited outside while the deputy went in, gun drawn, to check out the place. After a few minutes, he came to let me know he found him, and that he was dead.
For what it's worth, my neighbor was quite a guy and a hell of a neighbor. My family and I will miss him greatly.

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Click here for Bullfighter!

It was written by a consulting firm and is free. It looks cool!

Last week was pretty busy:
- My son, Mark, graduation from high school on Friday, the 13th -- and is now resting (???) with his friends at Senior Week in Ocean City, Maryland.
- My youngest daughter, Michelle, finished middle school and will be a freshman in high school this coming Fall. Wow - she's growing up too fast.
- My oldest daughter, Heather, turned 20 last Thursday.
- Yesterday, we made a fun run to the Ikea store north of Baltimore. We'll be back... Heh-heh!!

It's amazing how popular Hillary Clinton's memoirs are. Are people's lives that boring that they need to read about HER? Whew... Amazing.

It looks more and more like Hillary Clinton is grooming herself to be a Presidential candidate within the next 10 years, or so. Good grief!
As long as Bill is around, I doubt if it will happen. There is NO way I would ever vote for her!

It will be interesting to see what happens over the next several months between Israel's Sharon and the PLO's Abbas. They're finally talking, but it remains to be seen what will come of their talks.
Personally, I'd like to see the Palestinians get their own country. Then the Israelis can charge them to cross their border. Heh-heh...

Some of the Palestinians just don't get it, do they? Their own leadership brings in a decent prime minister (Abbas?) and Arafat immediately works on undermining his authority completely. It's so frustrating. They've had 5 or 6 suicide bombers in the last 3 weeks, and about the same number in 3 months before that. It looks like someone in their midst is trying to oust Abbas, and I'll bet it is Arafat.
Too bad, too, since the US plan would give them an independent state in 2005. They're just too blasted impatient.
Of course, having a society based on a religion that condones hate between religious groups (section 55 of the Koran says Muslims should not be friends to Jews and Christians because they are friends to each other - how stupid!) can never work well at all.
Don't get me wrong, though. We Christians have our own idiot zealots, as well. Because of the extreme poverty and desperation involved in the Muslim fundamentalists (aka: zealots), they seem to be willing to do much more violent acts to further their cause. The world is getting way too violent these days.
When I was in the Navy from '75 to '81, they told us that the US government was not really worried about the Soviets (who were in power then), but they WERE concerned with the other hot-spots in the world. And, yes, they mentioned the Middle East. How true that has become!

Check out this guy's answer to chain emails. I completely agree with him!
Click here: A response to chain emails!

It's great (NOTE: sarcasm here) to hear the Democrats whining about President Bush's speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln last week. Yes, it was a show. Yes, it was meant to cheer on the troops and sailors who participated in the Iraq operations and YES, it was meant to psych the American people! Personally, being a Navy veteran, I loved it! Go for it, Georgie-boy!!!
It is irritating to hear the Dems complain about just about anything President Bush does, but the Republicans pulled the same garbage while Bill Clinton was President. It was stupid then, and it's stupid NOW, people.

The blog for the guy in Baghdad has finally been updated. He's at: Click here
Check it out! Some very interesting remarks from his perspective.

Check this article out from the CBS News website today:
(CBS) Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev said the United States cast aside international law by going to war in Iraq without United Nations approval.
Gorbachev praised resistance to the war in the U.N. Security Council by Russia, France and Germany, telling reporters the three countries "showed great responsibility and were correct."
MY COMMENT: I canNOT believe the Russians are giving US grief about being "imperialistic." Give me a break, people. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Granted, we don't usually engage in pre-emptive wars against our enemies, but times have changed drastically since 9/11.

My nephew flew into Oceana NAS yesterday after a 10-month deployment to the Middle East. Judy (my sister and his mom) called me last night to let me know. Now she can relax a little bit - and so can he. He's been through a lot so I guess I'll let him decompress for a little while before I start asking questions.
Thanks, Andrew, you've performed a great service for our country and for your career in the Navy. Way to go!

Now that the war in Iraq has wound down and my nephew is on his way home, my entries here will wind down, as well, I guess. It's nice that the worst of the fighting is over. Americans can be very proud that we didn't lose as many people as many naysayers had predicted - thank goodness.
Someday the Iraqi's will realize the vast majority of American's have honorable intentions, just as their people do.

It's frustrating to read about the Iraqi's complaining about the US so much already. Too many of their people are cynical about our motives. Overall, the vast majority of Americans just wanted to see a serious threat to our security (Saddam Hussein, in case you've forgotten already) out of power. It was not intended to be an anti-Muslim offensive at all.
Freedom of speech for their people is a great thing, but allowing the fanatics to get themselves so worked up could wind up being too dangerous for the troops who are still over there.
SOMEONE needs to convince their people that we do NOT intend to be there any longer than we need to. We'll just make the country secure and move out.

It's interesting -- and hilarious -- to read and hear of the many world leaders "demanding" that the US let the UN take care of all post-war Iraq issues. You guys really ARE kidding, right? As far as humanitarian areas, yes, that sounds practical, but nothing else. The UN has proven itself incapable of making truly beneficent decisions on world matters. Give us a BREAK, people.

Things have really wound down in Iraq. Now we just have to deal with ticked-off Saddam loyalists and looters. I guess our leaders were caught off-guard by the amount of looting going on. Yes, the soldiers need to protect themselves from snipers, etc, but we should have planned for policing strategies, too. As always, hind-sight is 20-20, isn't it?
Michelle turns 14 today and Mark leaves for his band trip to the Bahama's, too.
We're diving into training at Arbitron so we can handle the rewrite of the majority of our software from 20+ languages to just a few - .NET and Java.

While Dot and I were watching Michelle play in her lacrosse game today, I called sister Judy to get details on what will be going on next weekend for Easter. It looks like we'll be driving down to Virginia Beach Saturday afternoon and coming back Sunday. Terry's driving down, too, but maybe not until Sunday. This will be fun.
My nephew, Andrew, was afraid for his friend, Nathan White (no relation), an F-18 pilot who was a sword bearer at his wedding to Leigh. Nate had been shot down in Iraq back on April 2nd. We got word today that Nate had, in fact, been killed in that presumed friendly-fire incident. These types of accidents are hard to take and now Andy knows one of his best buddies is dead because of one. Even though I didn't know Nate, it really depressed me to hear about it. Maybe because I know Andy will be so down about it. Our sincerest condolences to Nate's family. I believe he had a wife and 3 children.

Check out this very interesting article if you want to understand why Iraqis are doing certain things to celebrate Saddam's fall from power.

When I was in the Navy, we learned the best way to get along with people from countries other than our own was to learn some of their customs. Yes, their government was sadistic and cruel, but the people seem quite interesting to me.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_2936000/2936505.stm

I've been checking out several of the Arab news sites. To say their perspective of this war is different from ours is a blasted understatement.
While I'm not totally convinced the Iraqis needed something as drastic sounding as "liberation", I hope their next leader is nowhere near as sick as Saddam and his sons were. The Arabs seem to not mind dictators like Saddam. We would have left him alone if he hadn't gotten "too big for his britches" and decided to develop weapons that would be usable beyond Iraq's borders. Sept. 11th made the USA believe in pre-emptive strikes. I don't like us being this way, but we HAVE to protect ourselves.
What is it with the Arabs? They don't believe that we just want to get rid of Saddam (and his psycho sons) and get the heck out of there. If I see signs of our gov't sticking around, I WILL let my own government know of my displeasure. Count on it.

It looks like Baghdad has fallen, but there are still pockets of resistance around Iraq. Now the mopping up starts. I hope we don't lose many people during this phase.
Now we'll see if doing this for the Iraqi people was worth it.
My nephew's ship (USS Abraham Lincoln CVN-72) is heading home. He should be home within a month. Now my sister can relax a little. The worrying has been rough on her, I'm sure.