There are just no words

[docwebster]

(snagged from mcsnee)

Accidental Strafing Divides N.J. Region

LITTLE EGG HARBOR, N.J. - The strafing of a school by a National Guard F-16 fighter jet has divided residents of the fast-growing region around the Warren Grove Gunnery Range. Some fear for their safety, while others consider it profoundly unpatriotic to question the military during a time of war. (emphasis mine)

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They strafed a GRADE SCHOOL, you simple minded freaks! That's not a cause for just questioning, it's a cause for finding the pilot responsible and flogging him to death with his own lower intestine, never mind the dumb sons of bitches in the tower or where the hell ever who should have warned this addled bastard "Hey, this is a GRADE SCHOOL AHEAD, not fucking Fallujah!"

But try this on for size, folks:

But Terry Hickman, a 10-year Army special forces veteran, defended the range and the pilots who train there.

"Let 'em alone; they're over there putting their lives on the line for us," Hickman said as he prepared to hunt deer in Bass River, near the edge of the range. "That guy (the pilot) probably feels so bad about this. He's probably going to get sent overseas and he might not even come back. As long as no one got hurt, this whole thing should just be forgotten."

FORGOTTEN?

Robert Heinlein got it wrong. These aren't The Crazy Years, oh no. These are The Utterly Yammering Mad Years.

(The story in question is here.)

Comments

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm defending the pilot who strafed the school or the controllers on duty at the time, but I've got to wonder what they were thinking when built a school next to a gunnery range.

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

"He's probably going to get sent overseas and he might not even come back."

With the apparent quality of the training he's gotten, I'd say yes, there's a pretty good chance he won't come back, which, I suppose, is why we're supposed to forget about him, and all the other poor schmucks who are being pumped into Iraq underprepared.

[isomeme.livejournal.com]

In 1970, the National Guard shot rifles at a college.

In 2004, the National Guard strafed an elementary school.

My prediction: In 2038, the National Guard will nuke a daycare center.

[nehi.livejournal.com]

Go National Guard. Those one weekend a month, two weeks during the summer training exercizes are really paying off, aren't they?

*eyeroll.*

[pagawne.livejournal.com]

I read those headlines and remember the wonderful pilot who gave his life to ride down a plane so there was no chance of it landing on a school. It landed in the field across the street, and the pilot was the only death. By the time he could be sure he was too low to eject, but over 900 children weren't killed or injured that day. It happened in Tucson, Az. The number of floral offerings left at the gate at Davis Monthan AFB was staggering.