Nothing funnier than this, you deserve a medal.

Instead, let me highlight some of the things that stood out for me in the story, and perhaps relate them to your extremely limited remarks.

Thousands of sheep die. Estimates range from 3,483 to 6400. That sets off no alarm bells in your mind?

But to go on. Now according to the story, veterinarians were called in to euthanize the few remaining surviving animals. That rather pisses me off. The government paying veterinarians premium bucks to do what a nickle .22 calibre slug could accomplish. But never mind… I’ll come back to this point.

Then we do find a slight oddity; the use of the word acetylcholinesterase. In common parlance, one would refer to the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, or the enzyme that neutralizes it as cholinesterase. Before my stroke I could have told you the exact chemicals resulting from this action, but I couldn’t really say now with any certainty. If I was guessing, one of the resulting residues is probably acetic acid. But I digress.

I see nothing about the Peck family or Mr. Baranowski getting compensated for anything that happenned to them as a result of this incident. I’ll bet they did not get a cent. Nice to hear that some of the sheep owners recieved some compensation, but I’ll bet it was the absolute minimum the government could possibly get away with. (I’ll admit that I have a little bias here, since I know with certainty that the government, on several occassions deprived me of my own resources even though I proved, using the IRS’s own criteria that I had been improperly assessed for many years. The so-called IRS “appeals officer” Larry Staubaugh laughingly told me I could only get the last three years of these improper assessments back. If WE make a mistake, the government can go back on us for a decade. But if the government makes a long standing mistake for many years, we lose all they took, when we prove it except for the last three years, at the time of the discovery of the error. A logical error and an outrageous double standard.)

But getting back to the issue at hand. Was the Army consistant in this matter? I think not. And I think it is quite significant that Baranowski’s medical records so conveniently disappeared. Do you think the Freedom Of Information Act might be able to come up with them?

Let me ask you to entertain a little logic, as an officer and a gentleman, and see if the Army’s position is in the slightest degree credible.

They blamed the entire incident on the “relocation” of a waterhole. The sheep got confused and disoriented. So confused that 3,483 to 6,400 suddenly died of thirst. If that were the case, it strikes me that the animals not yet dead would recover quite nicely in fairly short order if they were wet down and allowed to drink a bucket of water. Yet the surviving sheep here were “euthanized.” Why?

Let me put a finer point on this. I was once dizzyingly, deliriously thirsty. Close to finding out if there was a diety. Then, accross a ravine, I saw a wooden water tank. I scrambled desperately. I got to it. I climbed the rebar ladder hoping against hope that I would find access to water on top and that there was no padlock requiring me to climb back down to find a big rock to smash it with. I could tell there was water in there by kicking the wall of the tower on the way up, but I couldn’t tell how full it was. If the tank was only half full, I couldn’t jump in with any assurance I could get back out again. In which case, I could assuage my thirst and then drown.

I got to the top. There was a hinged door right there by the rungs I was climbing. No padlock! I heaved that sucker open. Right there, within six or eight inches from the top was dark scummy water right below the cobwebs and ancient corpses of many dead insects. I just swept my forarm accross it, sweeping the surface debris aside, immersed my face and drank. And drank. And drank. And barfed (over the side, not into the water) and drank some more. Best damn water I ever came accross.

My point is, I recovered my wits and my health very quickly. I was still lost, but it was no longer a critical emergency. Sheep are pretty delicate I guess.

I love my country, but I would be very pleased if equity were more readily available from its’ various agencies. Basic honesty is really a good thing for government. It may actually be even more important than capitalism or socialism. I hold it to be subversive for government to as untrustworthy and arbitrary as I have seen them be. Patriotism should be inspired by the full spectrum of current behaviors of our various government appendages. So why is it that at every turn they lie? Two quick examples: There is a Taxpayer Advocates office. Sounds encouraging doesn’t it? But it is an employee with an IRS I.D. number who you will make contact with if you try to avail yourself of their “services.” And at every turn, when you appear in U.S. Tax Court, and in the voluminous exchanges of paperwork before you actually get to court, you are frequently and gratuitiously assured by the judges or their clerks, both in writing and over the phone, that the U.S. Tax Court is entirely independent of the IRS. Nonsense! And that fiction is not made more true by its’ constant reiteration.

Your last remark, Commander, indicates to me that you have made your pronouncement of the “facts” of the matter, and that’s that. Guess I’m stuck with believing what I will.

I look forward to seeing what appears on the new currently empty blog with your name and the description “collaborating strategically towards new integration.”