lEFT cAPS lOCK oN. i'M lEAVING iT lIKE tHIS.
Sunday, January 12, 2020
The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #166
Before You Click On The "Read More" Link,
Please Only Do So If You Are Over 21 Years Old.
If You are Easily Upset, Triggered Or Offended, This Is Not The Place For You.
Please Leave Silently Into The Night......
The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #864
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Saturday, January 11, 2020
The Final Flight of Extortion 17
A few minutes past 2 a.m. on August 6, 2011, at a dusty forward operating base 40 miles south of Kabul, Afghanistan, the rotors of two U.S. Army CH-47D Chinooks began to turn. Operating with no lights save for the faint green glow of night vision goggles and cockpit instrument panels, the two helicopters, call signs Extortion 17 (“one-seven”) and Extortion 16, lifted into the darkness and accelerated toward a destination less than 20 miles west.
Extortion 17 and its 38 occupants would not return. A Taliban fighter shot the helicopter out of the sky with a rocket-propelled grenade and all aboard were killed—the single greatest loss of American life in the Afghan war. Those killed ranked among the world’s most highly trained and experienced commandos, including 15 men from Gold Squadron of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, popularly called SEAL Team 6. Just three months earlier, members of a counterpart SEAL Team 6 squadron successfully raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin Laden. In light of that raid’s success, the shootdown of Extortion 17 incited a flurry of conspiracy theories: The Taliban were tipped off; it was a trap; it was retribution for the killing. No evidence has emerged to support any of these claims. Instead, two rigorous U. S. military investigations followed every moment of the mission to determine what went wrong on Extortion 17’s final flight.
The mission had begun about four hours prior to the shootdown, when the two helicopters touched down side by side in Juy Zarin, a village in the bare rock-walled Tangi Valley of Wardak Province. As two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, an Air Force AC-130 gunship, and a small fleet of unmanned surveillance aircraft orbited overhead, a platoon of the 75th Ranger Regiment and members of an Afghan special operations unit stormed down the rear ramps of the Chinooks and into the night. Their target: an Afghan named Qari Tahir and his group of fighters. Intelligence had revealed Tahir to be the senior Taliban chief of the Tangi Valley region, with probable ties to upper-echelon Taliban leadership in Pakistan. As the ground assault force rushed toward Tahir’s compound, Extortion 17 and 16 sped back to base, where they were refueled, and awaited word to extract the team, evacuate wounded, or race reinforcing troops to Juy Zarin.
Psycho Chicken
The first time I heard Psycho Chicken, I was on an Army Base in Germany inside a beer tent, sitting with some friends and drinking beer during Octoberfest in the 80's.
Every year, this Army base would host the German-American Octoberfest on the base, inside the gates, and allow German nationals to enter in order to drink beer with Americans and foster good will with the locals (they were generally mildly hostile).
Anyways, on the stage was a pretty good cover band, playing some good 'ole Rock and Roll. On an Army base in the 70's and 80's there were a few songs that a band had to cover, Sweet Home Alabama, Free bird, and... I think my memory is failing me here...
So then I heard Psycho Chicken for the first time. Really cool bass line, I loved the lyrics and the guitar play was really interesting. I had to find out what band it was from.
I'm not sure how I know this, but the Military has to approve of a band, and all their songs and lyrics must be approved before they are allowed to go on the Military circuit and play on the bases all across Europe (which was much more extensive than it is now). And this is how Psycho Chicken came to be. The band had to change the lyrics from "Psycho Killer" to "Psycho Chicken" in order to be able to play it on Military bases.
In some ways I was disappointed and in some ways I liked the new title, because back then I was one of those "Long Haired, Maggot Infested FM Types", according to the great Rush Limbaugh.
I Present To You:
PSYCHO CHICKEN:
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