Plenty of Troops
on 09/06/2005 at 12:12 PM
OCM, The US Army Corps of Engineers is 97% civilians. Only three percent are soldiers/officers. Here’s their homepage.
They are active in projects all over this country. Iraq has very little to do with the USACE. Army engineering battalions are separate from the Corps of Engineers. The USACE does deploy advisory teams to Combat Engineering units for advice and assistance. THEY ARE SEPARATE ENTITIES.
Where are you getting the idea that we don’t have enough engineering folk to rebuild here?
and here’s the Wikipedia entry. I hope it’s not too long or “pompous” for you.
con·sum·mate Pronunciation Key (kns-mt)
tr.v. con·sum·mat·ed, con·sum·mat·ing, con·sum·mates1.
1. To bring to completion or fruition; conclude: consummate a business transaction.
2. To realize or achieve; fulfill: a dream that was finally consummated with the publication of her first book.
2.
1. To complete (a marriage) with the first act of sexual intercourse after the ceremony.
2. To fulfill (a sexual desire or attraction) especially by intercourseI’m not being a smartass here, OCM. I just want to understand what you mean.
Speaking of hospitals...Did you know that the hospitals in NO had been told to move their emergency generators up to at least the third floor because of the flooding risk? Did you know that Bush failed to move those generators? Yeah, it’s all his fault.
He also failed to put diesel generators into the buildings where the electric pumps are that constantly pump out NO. What a loser. I mean he expects a city with a half billion dollar annual budget to buy their own generators. How was poor mayor Nagin supposed to know that the pumps would stop when the electricity was cut? sheeeesh.
Okay, I’ll try again: THERE AREN’T ANY MORE THAN POSSIBLY A HANDFUL OF ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS IN IRAQ AS ADVISORS TO COMBAT ENGINEERS AT THIS OR ANY OTHER TIME. THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS IS 97% CIVILIANS AND ALL OF THEM ARE RIGHT HERE IN THE U.S. DOING USACE PROJECTS.
COMBAT ENGINEERS ARE NOT ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS.
ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS ARE NOT COMBAT ENGINEERS.
THESE ARE TWO DIFFERENT ENTITIES.
Just as all our troops are not in Iraq or Afghanistan all our combat engineers are not there either. We presently have only about 12%-15% of our total strength in Iraq, Afghanistan or Bosnia/Kosovo (remember Bosnia and Kosovo?) at any time.
I went to Dictionary.com
Okay, let’s try it: “Stin, the
consummateperfect/complete word here is IF”Sorry it still doesn’t make sense. Perhaps you meant “operative word is IF”.
Okay, what will I say?
(I dunno, but at least he used the word correctly this time and you know he’s not a consummate grammarian)
Yeah, I noticed that. Shh, let me do this.
Okay, we’ve sustained damage from a hurricane. Severe damage across four states. Some towns in Mississippi have been completely blown away.
It’s not the first time this has happened. People in Florida are still rebuilding from last season’s hurricanes, remember how many times they got pasted? Hurricanes were coming in one after the other for a while like freight trains. They’re rebuilding by themselves with insurance and federal aid. Yep the Feds are rebuilding or have rebuilt/repaired their properties in Florida. Usually by private contractors. Perhaps the SeaBees and combat engineers are doing some stuff on their own bases, but mostly it’s private contractors.
The Corps of Engineers is on the scene repairing the levees and pumping the water out of NO. They’re also repairing any damage on the Mississippi river.
Nowhere are they mandated to rebuild private housing. They’re not even responsible for rebuilding or repairing local or state government facilities. Indeed, I think it would be illegal for them to do so. They build dams, levees and the like. That’s their job. They are responsible for flood control and maintining all navigable waterways in the U.S. Period. End of story. Finis. The end. Ththththat’s all folks. ENDIT. Full Stop.
Guys, there are no SeaBees in Iraq. The Navy’s construction batallions are all stateside in .... Gulfport, Mississippi which is their headquarters and where they train. Oh, shit. Did I forget to mention that Gulfport was utterly destroyed and the SeaBees had to be evacuated along with everyone else.
Never mind. Consummate that!
That’s just it, OCM. The military are there helping. Didn’t you see the Marines landing in Mississippi? They came barrelling in on those LCACs and helos right off of USS Bataan. They are now being moved to N’awlins. 82nd Airborne has sent in 5,000 troops. There are uncounted National Guardsmen already there, the Corps of Engineers are doing their thing pumping out the city and fixing the levees. Ships and aircraft are offshore in support for rescue and supply missions.
Nope they weren’t there the minute the storm passed. Then again N’awlins wasn’t affected as much by the storm as by the flooding when the levee broke after the storm had passed.
The Bataan was kept south of the storm to keep it from being a causalty. Having ridden out hurricanes at sea I can assure you that it’s an adventure. At least the chow line is short.
Bataan doesn’t move much faster than 30 kts (35 mph), tops. That makes it take time to get from one place to another. Then there’s water depth close to shore to consider. Ships captains are averse to running their ships aground. It’s a bad career move.
The ships out of Norfolk, even the nuclear powered ships, also travel at a limited speed. We don’t have 500mph ships...yet. They also have to travel by sea which means that they’ve got to go all the way around Florida to get to the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve made that trip, it takes a while. Days, in fact, even at 26 kts (30 mph).
On the other hand Mayor Culpa has already sent his cops to Las Vegas on R&R and expects the military to do the jobs of the cops. Not only did he not implement his disaster plan, he’s ignoring the provisions of Posse Comitatus. If indeed he even knows what that is.
Nope, I wasn’t in “prick mode”. You’ve never seen me in “prick mode”, OCM. I will admit that sometimes I can start out writing a post that way but I always edit it to be civil. Sometimes I scrap them altogether and move on.
I’m not a grammar nazi either. I usually try to puzzle out what someone is trying to say. I got totally lost on your “creative” construction. Grammar does help make the meaning of something more clear rather than ambiguous. Get too “creative” and you’ll lose the meaning of what you’re trying to say. I like to keep it simple and clear. Then there’s vocabulary. More people seem to be trying to imitate Norm Crosby. Sometimes it’s funny, most of the time it’s just sad.
You are more of an observer of grammar than you know or like to admit. Try speaking or writing English with grammatical rules from another language and you’ll get things like: “Pass me through a rag.” How do you interpret that gem? Does the guy want to be passed through a rag as he seems to be saying or does he want you to give him a rag through an opening to where he is? Yes, somebody actually said that to me once. He intended the latter meaning, of course.
Poetry? Yeah, I do poetry...There was a young man from Nantucket…
Seriously I’m more a Robert Service, Rudyard Kipling E.A.Poe sort of poetry guy when I read poetry. Nothing ambiguous about those guys.
Ferlinghetti was hit or miss as far as I could see. It’s been a while though. Perhaps on review it might be better than I thought.
I once met a retired sea captain in Galveston. He was a poet as well as an admirer of Robert Service. I learned one of his poems. Beautiful stuff. It’d bring you to tears. It’s been thirty years and I can still recite it. He wasn’t ambiguous either.
