How to Do A 21 Gun Salute



I bet lots of people think a 21 gun salute is twenty-one guys in uniform each shooting their gun once. If they thought that, they'd be wrong. I witnessed a 21 gun salute when I was 13, attending the funeral of a man I didn't know. Well, technically, I didn't attend the funeral, I was on the other side of the pine hedge in my house doing my math homework while I waited for the 21 gun salute my father had read about in the papers. My horse had a habit of jumping out of the pasture and so he called the school and had Mrs. Dick, one of the office ladies, drive me home for the morning to keep an eye on him. The funeral happening on the other side of the pine hedge in the cemetery, about five yards from the pasture fence, was for Robert L. Shippee, burned alive in his sleep on the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf by two Iraqi missiles, deemed an accident by Ronald Reagan. He was three weeks away from his 36th birthday. The fire burned all night, all day, and all the next night, but US ships nearby helped save the ship and it went on in 1994 to help fight in the Haitian conflict ("Operation Support Democracy "), and fend off Cuban refugees in the waters off Florida ("Operation Able Vigil ") before heading back to the Persian Gulf.



The seven uniformed soldiers shot their blanks in precise coordination, three times. My horse's head perked up for the shots, and then went back to the fresh spring grass. It was 1987. The US was not at war. The Iran-Iraq war killed about a million people before ending, and in that war the Iraqis killed 37 soldiers asleep on the USS Stark, with no US civilian fuss over why a) we were there, and b) why this reckless nation was our ally. Today we'd be at war over that kind of loss faster than I could send an e-mail. But when the attacker is our friend-of-convenience, we look the other way.



What are the results of that fire caused by the Iraqi Mirage fighterplane's Exocet missiles fired at 9 pm on May 17, 1987? Here are a few. Robert Shippee's son grew up without a father. A man serving on watch on the USS Stark that night went mad and killed a woman and her child with a hammer the following year, claiming post-traumatic stress. In 2001 another survivor of the Stark - decorated for his valor during the fire- is on the lam after fleeing his trial for armed robbery. He also kidnapped his son on his way out of town. A mother of one of the Stark casualties was quoted at a memorial service this past May saying she noticed they put a question about the Stark on Jeopardy. No mention of whether the question was answered correctly.



$142 million was spent repairing the USS Stark so it could be battle ready again. Senator Bob Dole led a Congressional request for an explanation, and in response "the administration thought it wise to delay submission of a proposal to sell new F-15 fighter jets to the Saudis*" (due to Saudi Arabia saying it lacked the authority to pursue the fighterplane that had attacked the Stark) (italics mine). The press made very little of the event, since criticizing the government in war time (even if it isn't our war) is taboo. The Iraqi government apologized, the US became more cozy with Iraq, more hostile to Iran.



After a long inquiry, the Navy Times published a gruesomely detailed account of the events of that night in May when the Iraqis fired on the Stark: "Inferno The Like of Which Had Never Been Experienced" by William Matthews (Oct. 26, 1987).



And what are the results of our involvement in the Iran-Iraq war? The USS Stark was placed in harm's way. Iraq was armed (by the US, France, and other NATO nations) with biological and chemical weapons that they used on the Kurds and Iranians in the late stages of the war. Both Iran and Iraq became more militarized. The US agenda of bringing down Iran failed.



Why are we going back for more? Do we really think we can establish a democracy in Iraq to make a model for the rest of the region? Do we think Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey will tolerate such a thing? How many more have to die for our misguided agenda of controlling oil interests under the guise of caring about human rights?



I found out doing some research on the Stark that the word "tattoo" in reference to the sad bugle solo played at the end of the day in Arlington Cemetery- and military institutions in general- comes from the original function: to tell the soldiers to leave the taverns and go back to quarters, and the barkeeps to "tap to" or "shut" the keg stoppers. So here I will leave space for a silent tattoo wishing the US military leaders drunk on power to sober up and keep another international middle east conflict from setting off another volley of three, solitary, blank shots by seven uniformed soldiers to be sounded in cemeteries across the country.

















March is the start of intolerable heat in Iraq, so if the US will make a military move, it will be in the next four weeks.



Read your alternative news sources.



And read *a good Newsweek piece by Jason Manning on the Stark and the continued evolution of our support of Iraq thereafter.



And maybe even read this guy's site- still pissed about the Stark, and the Reagan era in general I guess.