Blogs of War

A very scary episode in Israel:

An IDF soldier was killed Tuesday in the middle of a farewell ceremony held in honor of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, in attendance of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and other state dignitaries.

The soldier fell from a vantage point he was occupying on a high building and a bullet misfired from his gun.

According to Israel Radio, the incident happened no more than 200 meters from where Olmert was standing.

Separately, two female soldiers fainted.

Initially, the prime minister’s security personnel withdrew their handguns and rushed Olmert and Sarkozy to the French president’s plane, fearing a terror attack.

Zaka is calling it a suicide:

Israel Radio said the soldier who was shot was stationed 100 metres to 200 metres (yards) away from the plane. Two women soldiers who witnessed the shooting fainted and were treated by medics.

Israel’s volunteer medical service Zaka said the soldier apparently committed suicide.

It’s tragic either way but if it is a suicide at least he had enough sense not to try and take anyone else with him.

Update:
The Daily Mail has photos and TimesOnline has video.

George passed away from heart failure Sunday evening. He was best known for a brilliant breakdown of seven words:

When Carlin uttered all seven at a show in Milwaukee in 1972, he was arrested for disturbing the peace, the AP reported. The comedy sketch prompted a landmark indecency case after WBAI-FM radio aired it in 1973.

The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices ruled on a 5-to-4 vote that the sketch was “indecent but not obscene,” giving the FCC broad leeway to determine what constituted indecency on the airwaves.

“So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I’m perversely kind of proud of,” Carlin said. “In the context of that era, it was daring.”

“It just sounds like a very self-serving kind of word. I don’t want to go around describing myself as a ‘groundbreaker’ or a ‘difference-maker’ because I’m not and I wasn’t,” he said. “But I contributed to people who were saying things that weren’t supposed to be said.”

They’re still the seven words that are not safe for work so use caution when playing the video.

The Democrats are staging a faux-meltdown over this totally lighthearted video. The reactions, rounded up by Burnt Orange Report, are hilarious examples of election season drama:

If you don’t want to spend the rest of your evening envisioning John Cornyn in his own personal “Brokeback Mountain,” you may want to skip this video, shown at the state Republican convention. I semi-watched it while covering my eyes and shrieking in horror…

…Imagine John Lithgow as the cowboy character from the Village People, and you’ll have some idea of what Senator Box Turtle looks like here.

Now I believe Cornyn was referencing a period of Texas history where chaps were worn out of necessity and cowpokes weren’t pokin’, well nevermind. Most reasonable people get that, but leave it to the Democrats to bring all of their predictable racial, faith, gender, and sexual-preference based slurs and innuendo to bear over a harmless video. It’s all good as long as they’re bashing Republicans right?

Shocking and sad news from NBC:

The New York Times is reporting that NBC Senior Vice President and Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert has died from an apparent heart attack. They are citing family reports. He was 58-years-old.

Russert collapsed at work:

Tim Russert, NBC’s Washington bureau chief and host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” has died after collapsing at NBC’s Washington news bureau.

Russert had just returned from a family vacation:

The network said Russert suffered a heart attack while at work and could not be revived. He had just returned from a family vacation in Italy to celebrate the graduation of his son, Luke, from Boston College.

His final story was posted on MSNBC shortly before his death:

It’s amazing how much the Internet has changed our lives. People get emails that make accusations without foundation and they are circulated around the country within seconds and suddenly become topics of conversations around water coolers or in lunchrooms.

The MSNBC story:

He was “one of the premier political journalists and analysts of his time,” Tom Brokaw, the former longtime anchor of “NBC Nightly News,” said in announcing Russert’s death. “This news division will not be the same without his strong, clear voice.”

Thoughts from the Mars Phoenix team via Twitter.

Condolences to his colleagues, friends, and family. I’ll update as additional details emerge.

Video:
Tom Brokaw’s announcement

More on Russert:
Wikipedia Bio
NBC Bio

Southwest Texas LIVE! has an awesome piece on the history of the U-2:

“Just as I got over Jose Marti Airfield at 72,000 feet, which is also known as Havana International, I looked down through the drift sight and I saw two MiGs taking off. I called GCI [Ground Control Intercept] and reported the two MiGs. They said, ‘no problem. We’ve got you covered,’” Kern says.

Then his autopilot unintentionally disengaged and his yoke stowed. The surge disrupted the airflow over his engine and it flamed out. The U-2 required a descent to 35,000 feet to facilitate a relight of the engine. So there Kern was, losing altitude, gliding, with MiGs in hot pursuit, right on top of Havana.

“I cut to the south [of Cuba] rather than to the north through that heavily defended area around Havana,” Kern says. “Meanwhile, I am trying to keep track of these MiGs. I had them in my drift sight. And I wasn’t conning [producing contrails] because my engine wasn’t on.”

When the engine flamed out, Kern lost his canopy defogging system. The canopy iced over. All he could see to navigate by was what was visible in his downward-looking drift sight. He flew a box pattern around the western shore of Cuba while descending to 35,000 feet for a relight. “I got a relight on the north shore of Cuba,” Kern recalls.

Meanwhile, Kern had called GCI again and requested fighter coverage from the Florida bases. He learned later that there was almost a mid-air collision between fighters scrambling to get their first kill of a Cuban MiG.

Kern aborted his mission and returned to McCoy. “When I got back, I quickly went to my intel briefing and I got out of there. I figured [wing commander Col. John] Des Portes was going to chew my ass. The funny thing about it is that I never heard a word about it ever,” Kern says.

I was lucky enough to get close to the U-2, ER-2, and WB-57 back in my NASA contractor days. They’re all very cool planes from both historical and aeronautical perspectives.

An surprisingly poorly run campaign is coming to a close:

“She’ll say the stakes are high in this election and it’s imperative that the party come together behind Obama and to put a Democrat in the White House,” said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to candidly discuss the speech.

Clinton will throw her support behind the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee during an event at noon ET Saturday at the National Building Museum in Washington.

Obama will not attend the event. He will spend Saturday in Chicago, Illinois.

A CNN poll released Friday shows that the party is divided after a primary season that stretched over nearly 18 months and 57 contests.

Sixty percent of Clinton supporters said they would vote for Obama, but 17 percent said they would vote for Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee and Obama’s rival in the general election. Nearly one-quarter, 22 percent, said they would not vote at all if Clinton were not the Democrats’ nominee.

As the race stands today you’d have to shave those heat of the moment McCain favorable percentages by 80% or more to get anywhere near realistic numbers. That’s unless Obama stumbles or the skeltons (crazy preachers) continue to pop out of the closet. I don’t expect Obama to hold up well as the nominee.

Justice prevails but there one soldier still faces charges:

However, since charges were first announced in December 2006, prosecutors have struggled to make the allegations stick.

Six have now had charges against them dropped, while charges of murder against squad leader Frank Wuterich were changed to the lesser offense of manslaughter.

Wuterich faces trial later this year, along with Colonel Jeffrey Chessani, the highest ranking officer accused over the incident who has been charged with dereliction of duty and violation of a lawful order.

Wuterich told a preliminary hearing at Camp Pendleton last September that he would “always mourn the unfortunate deaths of the innocent Iraqis who were killed during our response to that attack.”

But he said: “Based on the information I had at the time, based on the situation, I made the best decision I could have.”