I was born on the 24th of August in the year 1940.
By the Chinese years, it was the year of the Dragon.
That means that this coming year I will be 70 years of age.
This decade has only a few hours to go, we will be starting a new decade.
In the 1950s there was only radio for most households, very few had the new thing name Television.
By the early 1960s color TV was coming on to stay, making black and white TVs things that most stored.
Now even those early color TVs are giving way to better TVs.
Than came pocket calculators made possible by improvements in electronics.
In the 1980s or early 1990s computers started to show.
After that came the internet, which made possible to read text, be on some message boards, chat rooms where like everything, you were in a virtual reality, you could communicate faster than ever before.
E-Mail and EReaders might make 'snail mail' and books, things of history.
Just like radio, black and white TVs.
Now, if your mind can think it, I wager its someplace out on the internet.
But with the good, there will always be some bad.
From porno, to the stealing of personal IDs for criminal purposes.
We enter into a decade with two wars that we are waging.
I could see Afghanistan, but no way could I see our preempt war in Iraq.
When Iraq first got started, to say anything against that war, might get you called a traitor, 'old gloom & doom' or any other thing.
Now, some have come to see what you had seen back in 2003; it was going to cost in human suffering and placing a great deal of stress on our military and our national budgets.
War also brings out the best in some, but it will always bring out the worst of mankind.
What are wars good for?
Not much!
This New Year, will also be some 40 years, since I was last in Vietnam.
I came home very angry, I spent many a year, reading and more reading to try a find a reason to the INSANITY, we call Vietnam.
Was it as some say, a place where we showed the world that we would make a stand against world communism in the 'Cold War'?
If that was so, why wasn't it ever said to us, doing the fighting?
LBJ said, he would never send 'American boys to do what Asian boys should be doing.'
Yet, he did just what he said he never would do.
Was it from arrogance or over-confidence?
Could also say that was why we got into the quagmire we call Iraq?
A quote if I may;
"The commitment of our forces to this fight [Iraq] was done with the casualness and swagger,
That are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions -
or bury the results."
--Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbolt, USMC, Ret.
I think that might give us an idea, some never knew what they were getting into because the had taken a pass in their youth because they had 'other priorities'.
Iraq like Vietnam, was started on lies, than ever so many deaths, we're told we have to stay the course or all those deaths will have been in vain.
I hope and pray, that those fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, don't have to fight their own government to get the health care they earned and deserve, like most of us from what history calls the Vietnam War.
Its been some years from the day, I took my first breath.
This last month, of this last year of this decade, was a time, I again came into contact with a dear friend and fellow Marine 'Old Uncle Pete' as he signs his letters, that I had feared was dead.
So here wishing you a HAPPY NEW YEAR (the year of the tiger).

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"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time,
And your government when it deserves it."
--American author Mark Twain (1835-1910)

To a Marine
Honor is loyalty and dedication to God,
Country, Corps, Family, and Self.

When a member of the military died, he took another piece of America with him.
How many more pieces can we lose before we become totally lost ourselves?
- John Cory

TO THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES'
AND THOSE WHO SERVED BEFORE,
THAT OTHERS MAY SAY PROUDLY
I AM A MARINE!

Semper Fidelis
Ricardo
Not as Lean, or as Mean, but Always A Marine!