Jeff Drummond writes:
I’m watching a cool program on the History Channel about Israel’s response to the murder of her Olympic competitors at the 1972 Olympics.
Mossad exercised extreme vengeance against their enemies.
Israel has been pretty good at plotting the demise of its enemies. Are they a good model for the US to follow?
Usually I think the U.S. is the best at everything, but you have to give a lot of credit to those kickass Jews, the Israelis. The Jews have had so many hardships throughout history, and, out of fear those hardships might end, they settled a country in the midst of violent people who hate them. Thus, they’ve gotten good at kill’n bad people, and I think we can learn from them.
Frankly, I’d like to see targeted killings via cruise missiles used to fight local crimes. Think if some drug dealer standing in an alleyway suddenly get blow to hell or if a known carjacker finds his apartment and himself turned into a fireball. That will make criminals a lot more wary.
Also, it would be cool to watch.
Paul writes:
This is Paul. Honest. Please don’t put my email address up on your site though, I hate spam.
I realized you probably don’t want to answer those 2 questions I posted, so here’re two more.
1) What’s the stupidest Olympic sport? Badminton?
2) If you had to appoint the Head of Homeland Security in your State (say, for example, NJ), would you choose your gay lover or an Israeli poet?
First off, what gives you this idea that I randomly publish people’s e-mails?
Anyhoo…
1) I hate all Olympic sports that are scored by a panel of judges. Real sports should have a clear defined winner such as the fastest, the strongest, the most accurate, or, as in boxing, the one still conscious.
Of the judged sports, the dumbest one to me seems to be that one where people dance around with ribbons. That’s a sport? The original point of the Olympics were for people to peacefully compete in skills used in war, and no wars… not even a single battle… has been won with colorful ribbons. Whoever invented that competition should be shot.
Now shooting – there’s a great sport.
2) That’s hard to answer, as the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Wait a second… I don’t like the implications of that question! I in no way resemble a New Jersey governor!
Alex writes:
I was going to ask you a mind-bendingly and universe-shatteringly intelligent and funny question related to John Kerry’s face, but then I read this and my heart sank:
“Frank Answers is now invitation only, so don’t send me your stupid questions. I hate you.”
I could live with the hate, but Frank Answers being invitation only?
Why, Frank, why?! Why must you destroy the things I love so much?!
PS: I like your hat.
Fine. I’m running out of questions, and this does make good filler at times. Frank Answers™ is now open to everyone again. Just e-mail me your question about politics, science, math, theology, or whatever with the subject “Frank Answers”. Everyone happy now?
P.S. Thanks. I like my hat.
i like your hat too.
“One, Two, Chomps is coming for you” “Three, Four, block the doggie door.” “Five, Six, get your chewie stix.” “Seven, Eight, better stay up late.” “Nine, Ten, Never sleep AGAIN.”
“Happier.”
“no wars… not even a single battle… has been won with colorful ribbons”
Kirk won a battle by having Uhura dance around with large fans. Close enough for me. Now, if the girls were anywhere near worth looking at… but some of them look straight of an episode of Sex and the City: “Why can’t I get laid?” “’cause you’re so ugly I’d rather date Chomps”.
But what about Kerry’s colorful ribbons?? Didn’t he use those to win a battle, or a war, or somethin’ like that? When he threw his pretty ribbons/medals/ribbons over the fence, didn’t he strike down the infamous “Pennsylvania Avenue Ground Squirrels”???
Just Askin’
AIC
Come on, sarahk, I bet you like way more than just his hat ;^)
What about the “name and town dynamic” that was once vaguely amusing to Your Supremeness?
Bozark,
you creeped me OUT, like I was reading something by Stephen King.
shudder
his lips are nice too, Recovering.
Dear Frank Answers,
1. What’s for dinner?
2. Mind picking up the tab?
3. Are you going to finish that?
Thank you,
Mourning in America
By JOHN B. ROBERTS II
NYT
Published: November 19, 2003
AVARRE, Fla. — In the middle of the night on Oct. 23, 1983, the White House learned
that suicide bombers had struck in Lebanon. At the Beirut airport, 241 marines were
killed in their barracks. Ten minutes later a second suicide bomber killed 58 French
soldiers two miles away. The next morning I was asked if I could get away from my
job in the White House policy planning office for a few days to handle the press
advance if President Ronald Reagan decided to attend a memorial service for the
slain marines.
If the president decided to go, I said, I’d go too. I come from a military family.
My father fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I understood the importance
of honoring fallen troops, but I didn’t look forward to going to Camp Lejeune, N.C.
I still remembered what it was like to have childhood friends become fatherless
overnight.
That evening, on Oct. 24, I received a call on an entirely different military matter.
It was from Dana Rohrabacher, one of the president’s speechwriters. (He’s now a
Republican representative from California.) American troops were landing in Grenada,
he told me. He asked if I could come back to the White House to help out on a speech
about the invasion that the president would give the next morning. We worked late
toying with ideas to explain why sending American troops into battle was the right
thing to do.
Two days later, with the Grenada invasion under way, the president made up his mind
about the memorial service: he was going to go. We had just over seven days to prepare,
and so I grabbed the first available flight from Andrews Air Force Base to Camp
Lejeune. It was a noisy cargo plane. The crew gave me disposable earplugs and directed
me to a seat made of webbing. I felt out of place in my preppy-looking blue blazer
and khakis.
The earplugs blocked the engine drone, leaving me to my thoughts. I was uncomfortable
about the task ahead. There would be grief, and anger, and raw pain mingled uneasily
with patriotism and pride and a search to draw meaning from mind-numbing slaughter.
My job was among the most thankless at such a time. Nobody likes the intrusion of
a camera at a time of sorrow. And I was the guy responsible for making sure the
press had a ringside seat. I wondered whether I would be welcomed — or reviled.
The Marine public affairs staff members I worked with over the course of the week
were professionals. They did their best to be accommodating as I laid on requirements
from helicopters and vans to ferry the press, to camera platforms and extra phone
lines for filing reports. When my demands exceeded their authority, the issue would
move up the chain of the command.
A request by the television networks to cover the memorial service live went all
the way to the top. The White House supported the request, but Maj. Gen. Alfred
M. Gray Jr., commander of the Second Marine Division at Camp Lejeune, and later
the commandant of the Marine Corps, resisted the idea. The general, who at the time
was responsible for troops in both Lebanon and Grenada, reminded me sharply that
the networks’ need for extra phone lines at his headquarters came second to his
need to use it as a command center for Marine operations.
I didn’t want to pull rank and draw Michael K. Deaver, the president’s chief image-maker,
into the issue. Something told me the general’s concerns were more about propriety
than logistics. The atmosphere was tense, but I made my pitch. If coverage was limited
to the network news, we would be lucky to get five minutes of broadcast time. Live
television, I said, would bring the unedited memorial service into millions of homes,
allowing the nation to share not only the grief but also the dignity of the service
commemorating the fallen soldiers. The families would still meet privately with
the president and Nancy Reagan. The press would not intrude upon that.
Finally, I said that Americans had been shocked by the attack. Letting them share
in the full memorial service would help restore pride. The general not only relented,
but also invited me to come to the hospital with him to meet wounded marines who
had just been evacuated from Grenada.
There has been considerable discussion recently about whether President Bush has
done enough to honor the lives of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. While
the president writes letters to the families of soldiers who have been killed and
meets privately with them at military bases, he has not attended an open memorial
or a military service. That’s a mistake.
And if given the opportunity, I would tell the president today what I told the general
back then. The commander in chief should publicly honor the individual lives sacrificed
in war. He should show his respect in front of the television cameras. A nation
is a community, and the lives that are lost belong not just to their families, but
to us all. As the only political figure who represents the whole nation, the duty
of commemorating these deaths belongs uniquely to the president.
As a fellow Republican, I would also offer Karl Rove some friendly political advice.
Skipping memorial services makes the president look weak. It creates the impression
that he values his own political standing above the lost lives of servicemen and
women. Avoiding the grieving families invites demagoguery because so many of our
professional soldiers come from the middle and lower classes of American society,
and not the president’s own privileged social class. With an election approaching,
presenting the picture of a president who has time for fundraisers but not for military
funerals would be an egregious mistake.
Finally, there is an asymmetry to the administration’s use of the military in presidential
events. It is wrong to bask publicly in glory on the deck of an aircraft carrier
unless you are also willing to grieve openly for fallen soldiers. You can’t wrap
yourself in the flag while avoiding flag-draped coffins.
Two networks went live at Camp Lejeune when Nancy and Ronald Reagan arrived for
the memorial service. It was a cold November morning. We had deliberately not made
a rain plan, so the president and first lady stood under umbrellas. The pool press,
sandwiched between the podium and the families, knelt in the soaked grass throughout
the service to avoid blocking the mourners’ view. I knelt with them. And although
I was already shivering with cold, I will never forget the fresh chills that ran
through me when I heard the sobs behind me.
The president later said that going to the service was “as hard as anything”
he had ever done. Days earlier, working on the Grenada speech, I had seen war almost
as an abstraction. With the families at Camp Lejeune, it was depressingly real.
At that moment, in that place, I felt a sense of moral accountability for my own
minor role in White House affairs. My feelings couldn’t have been even a tiny fraction
of what the president must have felt that day.
When a subsequent Pentagon review faulted Marine commanders in Beirut for lax security,
the president shouldered the blame. “I took the full responsibility,”
he wrote in his memoir. “I was the one who had sent them there.”
For that reason alone, it is time for President Bush to honor the dead.
John B. Roberts II, who served in the Reagan administration from 1981 to 1985, is
author of “Rating the First Ladies: The Women Who Influenced the Presidency.”
Off topic:
HAHAHA!!! Dan Rather, self proclaimed Queen of the Space Unicorns, has stated here that he believes it is “possible” that “there are little green folks in the center of the earth.”
I’m not kidding, folks.
That reminds me…did they ever televise the Olympic shooting events? That should have been prime time, for sure. And I just would like also point out that Beach Volleyball is a most excellent Olympic sport.
I think you’d make a good governor of New Jersey, FrankJ. I’m sure you’d have no problem finding guys to be your Head of Homeland Security.
“There are people who believe that there are little green folks in the center of the earth,” he said. “I don’t believe that. It’s possible, but I don’t believe it.”
I emailed CBSNews.com with a confidential document I found in a dumpster behind the White House.
It read as follows:
“I, George W. Bush, eat children. I’m writing this memo to myself and I sure hope nobody finds it. To that end, I’m placing this in a dumpster behind my house.”
Oh, and I faxed it to them from Kinko’s as well, just in case.
Just remember – in boxing Frank, if both fighters are still conscious at the end of the fight, it is judges who decide the winner!
I was in Canada (we are too a country) during the olympics. They televised the Olympic Trampoline event. It might not be the lamest, but it is the lamest I’ve seen. Imagine watching a 22 year old doofus in a trapeze uniform bouncing up and down – just straight up and down – for thirty seconds straight, before doing a few flips. Oh, and they show it from above at some point, so you can see if he’s in the middle of the trampoline when he flips. After watching this for half an hour (with commentary) you learn that you’ve been watching the prelims
Astounding.
Why don’t you change “Frank answers” to “Frank questions”? It would be kind of like “Jeopardy.” Your devoted readers could submit answers and you could pose the appropriate question. I think you might have a real knack for such a format.