The Woman Marine Pilot

The Woman Marine Pilot

The teacher gave her fifth grade class an assignment: Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it. The next day, the kids came back and, one by one, began to tell their stories.

There were all the regular types of stuff: spilled milk and pennies saved. But then the teacher realized, much to her dismay, that only Johnny was left.

“Johnny, do you have a story to share?'

''Yes ma'am. My daddy told me a story about my Mommy. She was a Marine pilot in Desert Storm, and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory, and all she had was a flask of whiskey, a pistol, and a survival knife.

She drank the whiskey on the way down so the bottle wouldn't break, and then her parachute landed her right in the middle of 20 Iraqi troops. She shot 15 of them with the pistol, until she ran out of bullets, killed four more with the knife, till the blade broke, and then she killed the last Iraqi with her bare hands.

''Good Heavens,' said the horrified teacher. 'What did your Daddy tell you was the moral to this horrible story?

"Don't f#ck with Mommy when she's been drinking."

LOL!!!!What a Woman.

All joking aside, this country has had a least two female apache pilots win the silver star since 9/11. Several hold the bronze star. A female double amputee blackhawk pilot left Walter Reed just a few weeks ago. You should be very, very proud of them.

Gotta love little Johnny!

I don't know about these particular ones of whom you speak, but I wouldn't be too impressed. I served in Iraq for a year and some of the people I saw getting awards like Bronze Stars didn't do a DAMN thing to earn them.

I was told it was almost impossible for anyone under the rank of O-5 to earn a bronze star in our command. Frankly, being we were operational support on base, I couldn't see how anyone could, except in the most unusual of circumstances, earn one.

Every O-5 and O-6 in a command position got one. There were also two O-4s who got them. One was a woman (USAF), and the other a black male (USA). Neither did anything any different than anyone else.

I spent 23 years in the military and I was utterly disgusted with the awards system, especially as it's been applied in more recent years. They, like many other things, have been made subserviant to AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. In my years of service, I received six personal awards; four I earned, two I didn't. There were also three I DID earn but did not receive. It was very arbitrary. And as a more senior officer I was privvy to some of the decision-making. Believe me, affirmative action and political correctness plays a HUGE part in promotions and awards. It has been since the 80s, but especially since the Clinton years. Things were turned upside down during the 90s, with some of the worst officers I've ever seen getting promoted. They are now seniors and aren't any better.

This is part of the reason why we've had such a difficult time in Afghanistan and Iraq. Oh, the political leadership can take a lot of the blame too, but don't believe our military hasn't screwed the pooch repeatedly. It has! As a fellow retired commander told me last week in our discussion over the bin Ladin take down, we had a perfect opportunity to take him down in 2005 which was COMPETELY screwed up by a three star whose ego wouldn't allow the planned op to take place. HE wanted the Air Force to get the glory, and by the time he forced a new plan to be drawn up to put the Air Force in charge, we lost the opportunity.

And don't even get me started on what I experienced in Baghdad. I got my warning by a fellow navy commander I knew who was leaving as I was arriving. He said, "Tom, welcome to Iraq. They've done the impossible!" When I asked what that was he said, "They've managed to transplant the Pentagon in Baghdad." And he wasn't kidding!

Again, I saw people getting awards for virtually NOTHING if they were favored, and people who managed to irk someone, even if they were dead spot on in their analysis, was 'punished' in subtle ways.

Quite frankly, I was shocked I got any kind of award at all after the treatment I'd gotten from some egotistical Army colonels who hadn't a clue about what was going on and refused to listen to anybody of lesser rank. It was probably meant as a stick in my eye to receive a mere 'achievement' award, but again, I wasn't expecting anything. That said, turns out just as I was ending my deployment and leaving the country that what I had been saying was the problem in our operations and recommending as solutions were exactly what RAND Corporation concluded in its multi-million dollar study that the Army had contracted for two years earlier. The plan -- which was more than just a surge of troops -- was implemented by General Petraeus, who took command three months after I left, and within six months we experienced a 60 percent reduction in attacks against us, and by the end of the year, they were down 80 percent.

The point is not to brag that I was right all along. The point is, many people get awards for the sake of the military handing out awards on a quota basis. Others, who piss off the wrong people, can have done something incredible or could have had a drastic effect if they had been listened to, but they get nothing because some egotist won't allow for it.

Just my two cents, after having seen it for myself. Again, no reflection on these female apache pilots, because I don't know what they did or didn't do.