WASHINGTON, Jan. 17, 2008 – The Pentagon’s decision to deploy 3,200 Marines to Afghanistan by spring was intended to reinforce the U.S. commitment there and is not intended as a criticism of the efforts of NATO allies in the region, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today.

Several factors kept me from becoming a Marine or any other serviceman. Primarily it was high blood pressure.
A couple of Marines that I remember from the days when it was fashionable to celebrate my birthday with a Marine was SGT. Johnny Kyle from Tazewell and Sgt. Gilbert "Spanky" Feest from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Johnny was a friend of mine from high school who played football on the first Claiborne County football team. He was a smart fellow but as many of us in our younger days, drank too much beer. Johnny served one tour in Vietnam and I received several letters from him while there. One such letter that I saved for years but got misplaced was a letter that had a hand grenade pin enclosed. He told of his exploits in the jungles of Vietnam and relayed to me how that was the pin from the grenade that killed 5 "g__ks". Johnny returned back to Tazewell to tell more tells of his time in Vietnam but never recovered from the pain of the war. I can remember the last night I saw Johnny alive. It was at a Claiborne County football game between the Blue Devils of Claiborne and the Scott County Highlanders. This was one of the teams we had played against years before and won. I can remember that there were politicians there that night also, Lamar Alexander and Sissy Baker. I greeted Ms. Baker at the gate and told her we were related. She could care less. But during the game Lamar Alexander came up behind me and patted me on the back and shook my hand. We exchanged pleasantries and went on. I have followed Senator Alexander through the years and that is the kind of man he is, a decent good person.

Johnny always had a nickname for me that I wouldn't let catch on. It was "porky". Johnny never felt bad that I had not chosen to volunteer for Vietnam. He knew the pain that I suffered from first, flat feet, high-blood presure and the sores that caused me to bleed so much that when I took my shoulder pads off it appeared I had been shot. The three years of pain I suffered during football was enough for me to not want to continue college ball even though I was good enough. I kept telling him not to call me that but that night here he came in front of God and everybody and yelled out "PORKY". Johnny was drinking that night and I warned him he had better stop. We had been through one accident in that old 55 Chevy of mine that an old lady in London, Kentucky had pulled out of a barn and whose son had been killed in Vietnam. She said she just wanted me to have it and practically gave it to me. That wreck didn't put a scratch on either Johnny or myself and we both agreed that was going to be the last time. Johnny wish you hadn't gotten into that car with the guy who did not have angeles around him. Unfortunately Johnny was killed not long after that in a car accident. Johnny is buried just above my parents in the Irish Memorial Gardens.

Now Spanky Feest is another Marine that I hold in deep regard. Spanky was head of the Marine Embassy Guard detachment with my brother in Taiwan and Nairobi, Kenya. Spanky shared a birthday with my mother, Betty Phillips Payne, December 3. Spanky was always at our house during holidays with or without my brother, my parents loved ole Spanky better than me. He was the epitome of a Vietnam era Marine. Spanky had a scrapbook of some of the action he saw in the Nam. Something you don't want to bring out at dinner parties. One thing I remember he told me was that he was the Marine chosen to go out after "desperado’s" during jungle fights. Now many of you know what a "desperado" is in military terms. Some call them deserters. Spanky was with the Marines that evacuated the Cambodian Embassy and from his and my brother's stories was the "last Marine out", but extending his hand down to the Vietnamese till the last minute. Several versions of that story are told but only Spanky knows the true one.

The last time I actually talked to Spanky was the late fall of 1983 when I spent a lot of time with him at the 8th and I, St. Marine Corps Barracks. I was assigned to the Diplomatic Mail and Pouch Center, U.S. Department of State. We traveled to Ft. Belvoir at a tremendous speed in his new Corvette to see Mike & The Mechanics perform before they became so famous with the hit "The Living Years" in 1988. He invited me to the NCO club and introduced me to a friend of his that accompanied Diplomatic Couriers on their trips with classified information. I was anxious to get to know the guy because that was the career path that I was seeking. I found out later that Spanky and this guy had grudges against one another because of a girl and as the night wore on their emotions got the best of them. I slipped off before the action started.

I have seen Spanky on occasions since then but only at funerals and during times when neither of us feel comfortable enough to have any of the fun we used to. As you all know 1983 was a bad year for the Marine Corps as well as myself. My shock came because of the rudeness that official handled questions at the State Department, Diplomatic Security, regarding reasons my so called "friends back home" enlisted a major SMEAR CAMPAIGN against me to make the State Department think that I could not be trusted with secure information. Something that evidently developed from misguided information from only a couple of people as surmised by the agents. Something that I still hold them in disgust for, but I thank the State Department for at least letting me know.

The Office of Security (SY) recently wrote a new history of that Department and in it I found a lot of useful information regarding just where they were during 1979 thru 1986. It seems that they were understaffed. SY experienced a decline in staff between 1980 and 1982. In order to free resources for the new security demands that it faced, SY, in 1982, "surrendered, with qualms," its long-held task of conducting background investigations of applicants for civil service jobs to the Office of Personnel Management.

The news went down hill from that point on with the bombings in Beiruit in 1983 and then the Lonetree and Bracey affair at the Moscow Embassy. In March 1987 confession, the White House, Department of State, Marine Corps, and other agencies were in a "near crisis" atmosphere, and the Department of State and the Marine Corps quickly made several changes to security at Embassy Moscow. In fact after my brother retried in 1982 he was called back in 1986 where he was in Beijing when my father passed away and again a friend who was working with him in Perth, Australia, Marvin Doig was called to replace the RSO at the Moscow Embassy after the Lonetree and Bracey Affair. His work continued all through the 1990's and almost up till his death in 2000. That is what happens when people become indispensable.

I was sure the Vietnam War had progressed to its most paramount political level when I attended a Rev. Billy Graham Crusade, (see The World is Watching)May 29, 1970 in hopes of listening to Rev. Grahams message at the University of Tennessee, Neyland Stadium but instead President Richard Nixon came flying in by helicopter during the event and more or less ruined it all. I sat with my date dressed in shirt and tie among a throng of protestors, one a good friend of mine from high school and was appalled by his appearance but never spoke of it further and proceeded with many others to the floor of the stadium to

If you know me you may find me at this crusade and the look on my and my dates faces might give you some indication of how surprised we were of the "protests" that were taking place. (more pictures) I am afraid I was still a complete square to what was being done in 1970. I didn't learn about being "cool" until a year or so later. Some much better pictures and the entire story can be found 40 YEAR FLASHBACK - NIXON & GRAHAM at TENNESSEE .

rededicate my life to Jesus. Strangely enough I have a picture of myself and my date on the front page of the Daily Beacon and can see the shock on our face surrounded by the protestors.

I began work for the U.S. State Department on February 14, 1972. I later sat up front, having been given Congressman John J. Duncan's own seat in January 1973 at Richard Nixon's second inaguration. I watched several of the impeachment hearing proceedings held by the Watergate Committee and chaired by Sam Ervin, Howard Baker with Fred Thompson as General Counsel, from the balcony of the U.S. Senate. I attended processions in the Rose Garden for the Shaw of Iran. I listened to television, WRC Channel 4, during the entire years of 1972-1973 of President Richard Nixon's presidency. I saw some of the worst protests of the Vietnam war on the University of Maryland campus in 1972 where a friend of mine from high school had come to teach, living myself in College Park, Maryland and driving in to work every day. I never protested one day, I never held a sign against the administration or the U.S. Military but worked closely with a wounded Vietnam veteran for three years at the U.S. Passport Office (he was 7'4" and people called us Mut and Jeff). But when I met Southern Governor Jimmy Carter during the Southern Governor's Association meeting, an event in Atlanta in 1973 and he spoke to me with respect and concern I knew in my heart that the Vietnam war was wrong and that it had to end soon. This was an event where many of the African American participants in the room walking out in protest of Governor Lester Maddox having walked out of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

That is where this all ended up and I finally realized I was a part of something great. The end of the Vietnam War. The evacuation of the Cambodian Embassy and a sense that I was a part of history. I just couldn't put it all together at the time. And, yes the rest is history, just not how it was supposed to be. And now we're in Iraq and will the story continue? Stay tuned and we'll see.

I can't help but relate to the song "The Living Years" when I read of former Secretary of the Navy, James Webb, under President Ronald Reagan when he speaks the following: Heroes of the Vietnam Generation

Although it would be unlikely that anyone would ever stand up and say that they were wrong about allowing the Marines in Beirut without proper orders to defend themselves against the type of terrorism that was beginning to become prevalent, in my opinion President Ronald Regan and his political appointees should take much of the blame for having their heads up their rear ends with such things as Operation Cyclone (aka, Charlie Wilson's War) that many consider responsible for setting in motion the events that led to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 and the ill-fated Iran Gun Deal known later as the Iran-Contra Affair. More recently Senator John Edwards chides his Democratic opponent in the 2008 primary Election, Senator Barack Obama when he lauds President Reagan for being "transformational":

Bringing up Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail is decidedly in vogue for this year’s Republican presidential candidates – but when Democrat Barack Obama did it, rival John Edwards couldn’t resist shaking his head.

Edwards on Thursday chided Obama for his recent remarks underscoring Reagan’s ability to bring change.“Senator Obama … used Ronald Reagan — President Ronald Reagan — as an example of change. My view is I will never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change,” Edwards said in Henderson, Nev. “When you think about what Ronald Reagan did to the American people … to the middle class … He was openly — openly intolerant of unions and the right to organize … I can guarantee … this President (points to himself) will never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change. ”

Although not directly told I know that the Mossad has been known to filter in unreliable information within the area of the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. That is one reason that the Iraqi-American concern would be so important to us as an Intelligence region and why it would be worth the risk that American Diplomats will give to man the huge US Embassy there. Little David is not always truthful. Even the US Embassy in TelAviv has been compromised by Israeli intelligence. Another reason for Israeli's to dislike American's would be the spy case of JONATHAN JAY POLLARD, incarcerated in the Federal Correctional Center, Butner, North Carolina. Pollard is a convicted Israeli spy and a former United States Naval civilian intelligence analyst. Some think that the conviction of Pollard in a round about way led to the FBI arrests of Aldrich Ames, arrested in February 1994, and FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen. Their activities were exposed only after Pollard's conviction and from some source the CIA damage assessment for the Pollard case was done by none other than Aldrich Ames. Other than this particularly public case, we see only spanks on the hand up till now. President Bush in his recent visit to Isreal, refused to speak on the Pollard case. In my opinion, scapegoat might be the best word for Jonathan Pollard. After Iran-Contra it seems everyone, including Secretary of Defense Casper Weinburger was scrambling to keep their hand's clean.

Another fact that has always caused me to suspition the Israeli/American alliance was the following:
February 2, 1983 a unit of three Israeli tanks, led by Israeli Lt. Col. Rafi Landsberg, tried to pass through Marine/Lebanese Army lines at Rayan University Library in south Lebanon. (Landsberg was no stranger to the Marines. Since the beginning of January he had been leading small Israeli units in probes against the Marine lines, though such units would normally have a commander no higher than a sergeant or lieutenant. The suspicion grew that Ariel Sharon’s troops were deliberately provoking the Marines and Landsberg was there to oversee the effort, and that these Israeli tactics were aimed at forcing a joint U.S.-Israeli strategy.) Taken from “Israel Charged with Systematic Harassment of U.S. Marines”- March 1995.

In the February 2 incident, the commander of the U.S. checkpoint, Marine Capt. Charles Johnson, refused permission for Landsberg to advance. When two of the Israeli tanks ignored his warning to halt, Johnson leaped on Landsberg’s tank with pistol drawn and demanded Landsberg and his tanks withdraw. They did. Since the US has legitimate concerns about their efforts to secure democracy in the area it stands to reason that there would be a highly sophisticated network of pro-American intelligence at the US Embassy in Baghdad. Unlike Iran in 1979 there would be no reason to hide our intent and protection of it's personnel should be of top concern.

Many can see that support for Israel is on the wane with the present administration (2008). This could be very dangerous to the small country that we helped establish but if it were ever found that they were in fact causing much of the hostilities that are resulting in tention in that part of the world what would the average American who has been finding it so hard to make ends meet think of that? Jerusalem Bomb Attack – Who is Responsible?