Farewell President Bush

As a 10-year-old youth who spent his spare time watching B&W war films, building Testors scale models, and plinking with his .22 at targets that approximated the most heinous enemies you could imagine, I had a chance to attend the recommissioning of the battleship USS Iowa (BB-61) on a warm spring day in Pascagoula.

Visiting the immense haze gray super dreadnought, bristling with 16-inch guns and Tomahawk cruise missiles, I made extra effort to crawl, slide into, and otherwise creep around parts of the vessel that was…off limits…unless you were part of the crew. As I was a regular visitor to the USS Alabama and did the same there, I feel I had been training for that  very moment for years already.

This set me up for a collision course– literally– with a group who were getting a private, though more sanctioned, tour: Vice President George H.W. Bush.

It was…