SOS--Send Freedom Fighters to Pacific Street

Red alert! Democracy is under attack! Foreign terrorists? Not. Try our own fearless leaders, elected and otherwise. Whereas the U.S. Marines urban warfare "exercise" was rejected by the communities of San Francisco, San Luis Obispo, and even Sand City, this Saturday's party slid through the Monterey bureaucracy like K-Y jelly at a Tailhook convention. If the Marines are indeed defenders of the American Way, instead of charging up Spaghetti Hill to DLI, they should swing a left on Pacific towards city hall. They could interrogate City Manager Fred Meurer and his sidekick Fred Cohn who knew about the mock invasion last summer, but didn't make it public until January. And Mayor Dan Albert and the entire City Council, who rubber-stamped the invasion without a public hearing. Hey, Squid understands the city is willing to do what it takes to keep DLI and the Naval Postgraduate School open, but wouldn't a round of golf with the top brass suffice?

Forget the Citizenry, Save Those Birds!

A little bird called the Western Snowy Plover may do what the citizens of Monterey couldn't. Today, the Coastal Commission is considering concerns that may keep the Marines from landing on the Naval Postgraduate School beach. Topping the list is the snowy plover, a threatened species that nests on that very beach. Saturday at 10am, the State Parks folks are holding a lecture at the Monterey Beach Hotel on, well, saving the snowy plover. At the very hour when 150 Marines will plow over plover nests just yards away. Maybe after the Marines intercept the device of mass destruction, they'll still have time to take in the lecture. Marines should, after all, know the enemy.

The Few, the Proud, the Unemployed?

One underlying reason for aforementioned exercise could be a militant fear of obsoletism. At least that's what a Washington Post article on the Monterey invasion concluded last Saturday. "There is always someone seeming to say, do we need a Marine Corps?" former three-star Commanding General Paul K. Van Riper lamented to the Post. "So you'd better offer something unique." And that something is a state-of-the-art networking system that soldiers will unveil in Monterey. In a brilliant public relations stunt, the Marines are going to show this country they're still on top. Glory, Hallelujah! Hollywood couldn't have thunk it up better.

--Squid (tentacles aflutter as the Marines advance...)

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