Via AmericaBlog, I see that right wing republican crackpot James Inhofe (r – Loonyville) longs for the good old days …

Iraq, as Inhofe described it according to the Tulsa World, is a markedly different place than what the rest of the world seems to think it is:

Contrary to most reports, Inhofe said, many Iraqis are pleased about the U.S. intervention.

"Iraqi security forces now number 275,000 trained and equipped," he said. "The commanders in the field and the Iraqis say when this reaches 325,000, that would equal 10 divisions, and that’s what we need to take care of our own security."

Inhofe has visited Iraq 11 times.

"What’s happened there is nothing short of a miracle," he said.

Nevertheless, Inhofe said the current international situation makes him "wistful for the Cold War."

Understand…this babbling nutcase didn’t just live through the cold war, he is part of the generation that gave it to mine.  And you just know he was as much of a war hawk back then as he is now.  Wistful is he?  I’ll bet.  But the point of view of those who were wielding the nuclear bombs was a tad different from those of us who were being told that as long as we practiced our duck and cover drills everything would be okay…

Flashback: Rockville, Maryland – 1966

It is a warm sunny summer weekday.  I am 12 years old and school is out.  I have the whole day long (except for when I am in Vacation Bible School) to myself.  This day I’ve taken a walk down Rockville Pike to Children’s Supermarket, to check out the model car kit section, and then over the Congressional Plaza shopping center and the model car kit shelves at Kresge’s 5 and 10 cent store, and the G.C. Murphy’s.  There is a small toy section at the J.C. Penney’s store, but it never amounts to much so I seldom go there.  I have a routine.  First Children’s…then Kresge’s…then Murphy’s…then back home with a stop for a burger, fries and a shake at the McDonalds along the way, or the Minute Mart to get a Sprite and some candy, whatever trading cards I happen to be collecting at the time (I still have my complete collection of the first two James Bond sets), and maybe this month’s issue of Mad Magazine.

It is around 3 in the afternoon on a weekday, and when I get to Congressional Plaza it isn’t very crowded with shoppers.  There are just a few of us wandering the arcade.  There are cars in the big parking lot in front of the stores, but it isn’t even close to full.  I check the Kresge’s and then I am on my way down the arcade to Murphy’s.  My mind is off in some day dream somewhere.  Then I hear the civil defense siren at the front of the parking lot start revving up.

I’m here to tell you that unearthly sound from those Federal Signal Corporation Thunderbolts is something most of us of my generation will probably take to our graves.  It was an uncanny, wailing noise with a ragged buzzing undertone that pressed close to you, and faded into the distance, and then pressed close to you again as the horn rotated slowly around on top of its pole. 

In Maryland, in Montgomery County, every first Saturday of the month at 1 o:clock they’d test the damn things, and there was one on a pole just a hundred yards or so from the apartment my folks and I lived in.  The thunderbolts had this a big metal box at the base of the pole that housed an air compressor of some kind that you could hear kick on before the siren made any noise.  It would force air up a long stand pipe up to a square horn that looked like it had been stretched too thin at its base.  I later learned that the shape was deliberately designed to overload the horn’s throat and give it its weirdly distorted sound.  The horn would rev up to a loud ragged wail, rotating around 360 degrees for as long as it was on.  Then it would wind slowly down to a stop with a warbling dying noise that just sent chills through you.  The whole thing was painted bright Civil Defense yellow and mostly it just sat there quietly behind the apartments I lived in, giving me the creeps.

(An aside: It took me years to make the mental switch from associating the letters "CD" to compact music disks and not the logo for the Civil Defense bomb shelters and sirens that were everywhere.  AM radios back in that time had two frequencies marked with the "CD" logo on them, that you were supposed to tune to in case of a nuclear attack.  That was how I first learned to associate the letters "CD" with music.)

You could hear the sirens for miles and no matter you knew it was only a test, they still sent a slight chill through you whenever you heard them begin revving up.  There were two signals we’d been taught to listen for.  The long winding rev up to pitch, held for a long while, was the incoming attack signal.  It meant proceed to the nearest shelter, the bombs are on their way.  Then there was the one of my nightmares, the one that for some reason they only tested here in Maryland occasionally: a quickly repeating revving up and winding down of the siren, over and over again, up to pitch, back down, and then up again.  That was the imminent attack signal.  It meant the bombs are here, now, right now, take cover wherever you are. 

And…kiss your ass goodbye…  The joke among my friends was that Saturday at 1 o:clock would be the best time for the Russians to launch an attack, since nobody was likely to take the warning seriously then.  But it was one of those grim jokes that cold war kids tell each other.  We’d all done our duck and cover drills, and we all knew that as close to Washington D.C. as we were living, none of it likely mattered anyway.  If the a-bombs started falling, face it, we were all toast.

And there I am, one sunny summer weekday afternoon, a 12 year old kid out on a mission to find a model car kit, with perhaps a half dozen adults also shopping nearby, and we’re all walking down the arcade in front of the stores at Congressional Plaza, just strolling from one store to another, when this CD siren in the parking lot starts going off and it isn’t Saturday and it isn’t 1 o:clock in the afternoon…

I remember this vividly.  We all stop, dead in our tracks.  We look at the horn on its pole out there in the front of the parking lot.  We all kind of nervously look at each other.  One man sort-of shakes his head and sort-of laughs, and it is the most unconvincing laugh I’ve ever heard in my life.  And then we all go on about our business.

I go into the Murphy’s, walk the beaten path to the model car kits, check the inventory, and if the kit I am looking for that day is dancing on the shelves with a little squeal of delight at the sight of me I don’t notice it.  I remember what a friend of mine whose father works for the Atomic Energy Commission told me about what a nuclear attack would probably look like from our point of view.  "You’ll see the bright flash, but there won’t be any noise.  You’ll feel a flash of heat like a really intense flashbulb just went off right next to your skin.  Then you’ll see the tops of the trees in the distance catching fire…about a few seconds before the blast wave hits…"  I am stoically going on about the business I’d been about before the siren started going off and I am not paying the slightest bit of attention to what I am doing.  My eyes glance at boxes of model cars from Aurora, AMT, Revell and IMC while inside I am bracing myself for the bright flash.  I am thinking to myself, it’s probably a fluke…it’s probably a fluke…it’s probably a fluke…but inside I am bracing myself for the flash.  Nothing’s going to happen…nothing’s going to happen.  It’s just a fluke…it’s just a fluke…  All the adults around me are going on about their business too, but nobody is looking at anybody else. 

After a few minutes the siren goes silent.  I began walking back home.  After about an hour and not hearing the imminent attack signal, I began thinking it really might have been a fluke after all.  See?  See?  It wasn’t anything…  Just some malfunction…  A couple hours later and I am home again and I haven’t been burned to a crisp.  I am willing to let myself feel a tad relieved.  I sit down on the bed.  I notice that I am trembling.

There is a news report next day, about how some of the CD sirens had been switched on by accident.

Face it, if the a-bombs start falling, we’re all toast anyway…

Terrorism worries me, but it doesn’t scare the shit out of me either.  Terrorists disgust me more then I have the words to relate, but not nearly as much as the people who once thought that destroying nearly every living thing on planet earth was a moral, let alone a logical self defense plan.  And surprise, surprise, those are the exactly the same folks who are now busy thumping their chests trying to get world war III started in the middle east.  The Soviet Union is gone, and you work with what you have to work with I guess.  But some of us still remember what it was like to live under a real and not an imaginary threat of weapons of mass destruction, when the United States, and for that matter the whole goddamned world, really was at the brink of nuclear annihilation.  Maybe that’s why we aren’t jumping around every fucking time the republicans start ginning up a terrorist hysteria for votes.

You know what nothing short of a miracle is Inhofe?  Nothing short of a miracle is that there is still a world for all of us to live in despite the best efforts of your kind to drag us into nuclear war with the Soviets.  I still have dreams some nights, rarely now, but still, when I hear the sirens wailing out the imminent attack signal.  And you know what Inhofe…Fuck You.

[Edited a tad…]