from the archives......the General

I guess I should add this disclaimer to this post.

“I did not quote the good general verbatim, and if I misquoted the good General, I’m sorry. But this is Death’s Door, not the fuckin New York Times, and I write slower then a muthafucker and find it hard to read my own goddamn writing. But I should add that in general, the below shit is more or less what the good General said. I should also add that the good General did not utter the words, shit or fuck. In fact the good General never cursed at all. I unselfishly supplied the cursing of my own free will”.

Yesterday some of us got the chance to hang out with General Eberhart, the commander of Norad and hear him talk on a few things. Excluding the fact that I was in a roomful of suits, the General came off as very interesting. I’ll try to hit on some of the things that he talked about that peaked my interest. He mentioned his local roots, meaning that he lived for a while in the Olathe, Ks area and his wife went to school around here. This was all said during the “warm & fuzzy” part of his talk, before he got down to the good shit.

1. “Kill all terrorists whenever and wherever they are found. The good General was very clear on this.

2. The war against terrorism is long-term. It will be this generations “Cold War”, in the fact that it will last years.

3. A lot of the confusion on the morning of 9/11 was due to the fact that four separate commanders were trying to coordinate shit that morning. That command system is now gone, in its place there is now only one command in charge.

4. He’s real big on new technology, especially satellite communications. This is due in part to all the overloaded landlines on the morning of 9/11, and that the only people that could communicate were people on cell phones.

5. He thinks Bush is wrong in thinking that America won’t be attacked again. The General sees an attack happening in the next six months. Not using planes, or shit like that, but on a soft target like rail or infrastructure.

6. The military isn’t stupid, let them do their job because there’s just shit that the military understands very well. I took this for what it sounded like, let the military go to work and keep the politicians out of the mix, and the military will get the shit done. Also I took this as one of those “grain of salt” statements.

7. I asked the General how he felt about the 9/11 Commission treating him like somebody’s bitch. He replied that off the record the Commission has some good people in it who are just trying to do their job. But fuck em, they had their minds made up about shit long before he walked into the room.

8. Another interesting thing came up when the General was asked about all the foreign and private satellites in the sky, and did they pose a risk to American forces during time of war? He had a very cool answer for this one. “If you are a private company or foreign nation with satellites whose orbit takes them over a war zone, the United States Military will ask you to turn them off during the fly-over”.

What if you’re told “hell no”? “Then the United States Military will make your shit disappear”. He went on to say that he won’t discuss how, but their shit will stop working.

In ending General Eberhart stated that he wants the U.S. Military to turn into the SAC (Strategic Air Command) of the 21st century. “Always prepared and ready to go, but never used”.


"and the monkey flipped the switch"