The lost is found

Couple, photo reunited.

Last week I wrote of the tornado devastation in Moore, Oklahoma. No I haven't heard whether our old house (Grannie Annie made it a home!) was destroyed. I didn't want to bother anyone near or far to check on it as they have more important things to do at the moment.

Then we received the following post from our grandson Wiley Dustin who lives in Tulsa with his sister Kelsie and parents Wiley and Moira our eldest daughter. In the words of home schooled 9th grader Wiley D:

"We found this picture the day after the Moore tornado hit. We were out walking (like we always do) and found it in the street. Actually, Kelsie is the one who spotted it first. Dad's friend posted it on Facebook and look what happened. We found the original owners! They lost their home, but they and their kids are fine. They would like to have the photo back some day, but for now, we're hanging on to it for them until they get settled. Sometimes a photo speaks a thousand words, but has to travel a hundred miles in a tornado storm to do it!"

Then a couple days later, Wiley D's dad writes:

"I wanted to give you an update on the photograph we found a couple evenings ago while walking through our neighborhood. In the attached image is the couple 22 years ago and a recent photograph on FB (Facebook). My friend Jeremy posted the photograph on FB for us. It sounds like the couple is okay, but they did apparently lose their home in Moore. You can read the posts on FB in the attached image. When things settle down in Moore, it sounds like they would like the photograph back. Since the couple is still alive and together really makes this a cool story."

I've been watching the so-called Obama administration scandals with interest. In particular the killing of our ambassador and three other Americans in Benghazi reminds me of another time another place.

During the war in Vietnam I spent considerable time flying above the "neutral" country of Laos. Officially we, the United States, had no armed military personnel, "boots on the ground," in Laos. Well for one thing we had no reporters on the ground in Laos but there were Americans aplenty prosecuting the war there. No they weren't technically military personnel but I knew several contemporaries that took a strange leave of absence from their military duties and became temporary "contractors" working for the CIA as employees in a dummy corporation known as Air America.

Sure those contractors did good work with at least one former squadron mate getting killed in the process. Why the cloak of secrecy? Our enemy knew what was happening; the Laotian government knew what was going on. The only people not having knowledge of that shadow war were the American citizens, "We the People". Obviously President Johnson and Sec. Def. McNamara did not want the American to know the messy details of their shadow war in Laos. Why? My question then and now was why our government can't be honest with the American people".

In Benghazi our Ambassador Chris Stevens and his assistant Foreign Service Information Officer Sean Smith were killed by armed Libyans. Evidently Stevens and Smith had a five man team of hired Libyans that were to serve as body guards. Somehow those hired protectors beat feet and disappeared during the attack on the ambassador.

We also know that two more Americans identified as "Former Navy SEALs" Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods also suffered fatal wounds from mortar fire a few hours later in the continuing battle that killed Ambassador Stevens. Woods and Doherty were only identified as contract employees but never for whom they were working. They weren't alone but their fellow employees, maybe 20 some, never engaged in the fight to protect Ambassador Stevens. There has been no official explanation of what another team of Americans was doing on the scene, or why no more than two went to help protect Stevens and Smith. Evidently the former SEALS companions didn't get the memo that we Americans "Leave no one behind" in a combat action. Now nobody knows anything! Gee it sounds like the CIA operation in Laos so many years before.

Recently a reporter on Fox News speculated that the team of which Doherty and Woods had been a part was in Libya to round up a large number of man portable anti-aircraft rockets that had been earlier furnished to anti-Qaddafi forces. Those rockets were to be turned over to the Turkish government to be in turn furnished to anti-regime forces fighting in Syria. That made sense as that was the reason that Ambassador Stevens had been in Benghazi to meet with a representative from the Turkish government.

Now all that mess in Libya had to be covered up and the details left murky so that President Obama could be assured of reelection. After all the Commander in Chief had assured the American public that there would be no American military "boots on the ground" during the Libyan civil war. He didn't mention that we'd stay completely out of the war with his private CIA warriors tweaking the fight here and there. Then when our warriors get killed in action and exposed to the world it takes great effort to get all the messy details covered up. The cover-up continues because former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, that paragon of virtue and propriety, wants to be our next president. Move on nothing to see here.

I hate being lied to.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail