The Wisdom of Four-wheeling applied to Kinetic Military Action.

In Montana you'll see a wide array of four-wheel drive vehicles. In supposed high-society areas such as Missoula you'll see these vehicles in the form of the light, fuel efficient, venerable Subaru. In most other areas the 4X4 comes in all shapes, sizes, makes and models. You can make the easy distinction between those who own their 4X4 for practical reasons and those who own them just for show and impractical reasons. If it is a stock 3/4 ton pick-up with remnants of alfalfa blowing around in the back or with a utility box loaded with tools, it is the most practical of all; the work truck. If it is a truck that you see running around town with mud covering every square inch of its slightly roughed up body, you're probably seeing a work truck that is also used for some off-roading leisure and still fills a practical niche. However, if it is pristine with over-sized tires and chrome wheels, it probably ranks in the least practical "look-at-me" category. This isn't to say that the "look-at-me" 4X4s never see dirt and mud, but they might only see these when it isn't necessarily practical to.

The practical 4X4 driver tends to know when to use all four wheels or when to "lock it in". For the most part a four-wheel drive vehicle is operate using only the rear wheels. It is only when the terrain gets too muddy or snowy to progress any further that the practical driver throws it in 4-high and, usually to avoid getting stuck, will turn back. You see, the idea of four-wheel drive is to get you out of a situation where you'll get stuck, by bringing one or two more drive-wheels into play, depending on if you have a positive traction or limited slip drive axle. All of the jargon aside, the idea is if you get stuck in two-wheel drive, you've got a backup. If you get stuck in four-wheel drive, you're done. Some hardcore off-roaders will have a third redundancy in the form of a winch. In the case of the winch, I find it more useful mounted on the back of the vehicle, because continuing forward is more likely going to get you into more trouble. The idea, here, is to get the vehicle back into the terrain you were just in and that the vehicle can handle. Summation? If you're bogged down, you don't want to go further into the bog using all of your resources.

However, this is exactly what the term "Kinetic Military Action" implies. Moving our military around from troubled area to troubled area, using all of our resources to go deeper into these areas. It is only a matter of time before we're going to get stuck and then we're done.

Before and during the 2008 Presidential election, we heard the term "Exit Strategy" thrown around a lot. That strategy is very similar to the metaphor of four-wheeling; to have a backup to get us out when it gets too much to go any further. Yet, we're just finding new areas to go into and without the advice or approval of anyone in our legislature.

In a speech, given by Obama about how the Republicans wrecked this country he says this:

"They drove our economy into a ditch and we got in there and put on our boots and we pushed and we shoved. We were sweatin' and these guys were standing, watching us and sipping on a Slurpee. And they were pointing at us saying how come you're not pushing harder? or how come you're not pushing faster? And when we finally got the car up, and it's got a few dings and few dents, they got some mud on it,,,we're going to have to do some work on it. They point to these guys and say; Look what these guys did to your car! After we got it out of the ditch! Then they've got the nerve to ask for the keys back. I don't want to give them the keys back! They don't know how to drive!" ~Milwaukee Wisconsin speech 2008~

Classic Obama, claiming the Republicans can't drive the economy, but takes the military out for a spin and could very well get it bogged down in another conflict. I'd like to place an ad, now, for a new well-rounded practical driver.

The Sword of Damocles.

Power for nothing and your hyperbole for free.

The massive temblor and ensuing tsunami have seriously changed the lives of most Japanese and have tragically ended many lives as well. This tragedy is on par for other tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami at Banda Aceh. The triple whammy is coming in the form of a nuclear disaster that, if you focus on Western Media, is putting this event on par with Chernobyl.

I am not a nuclear physicist nor am I a power plant engineer, but I have been studying previous nuclear accidents and the construction of safer nuclear facilities as a result of those accidents.

The two accidents that I studied were both intriguing and informative in light of the current situation at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. I, of course, read many articles and viewed many documentaries on Chernobyl, which is the most severe nuclear accident in the history of nuclear power: International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) Level 7. The other event was a more obscure, INES Level 4, event that occurred in the Idaho desert in 1961. The event was at the country’s nuclear power research laboratories at the National Reactor Testing Station, now known as Idaho National Laboratory. The reactor in this event was known as SL-1 or Stationary Low-power Reactor Number One. It was designed to be small and portable so that it could be used at remote Army outposts for generating 200 kW of power.

The story of the SL-1 shows the aspects of a nuclear reactor on a scale that most laymen can understand and the event that killed three maintainers (the only fatalities from nuclear reactors in the U.S.) helped spur many safety precautions that are now standard in the design and functioning of nuclear reactors.

There are two types of reactor designs used in the majority of power plants and they are Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) and Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR). The main difference between the two is that in a PWR there is a third water circuit that allows heated water to vaporize to run the steam turbines. In the BWR that circuit is combined in the containment vessel surrounding the fuel rods where the water is allowed to boil in the low pressure and high heat generated by the fission of uranium atoms. The water in a PWR is not allowed to boil when under pressure in the containment vessel. The water has three main functions in both types of reactors. Firstly it is there to cool the fuel rods during fission. Next, it acts as a moderator that slows the speed of neutrons released in the fission, or chain reaction, to moderate the reaction and the efficiency of the reaction. Finally it is converted to steam and used as thermal power to run the turbines and generators.

The SL-1 was a BWR that had been shut down during the Christmas break in 1960. A three-man crew came in on January 3, 1961 to prepare the reactor for start up. In a reactor there is a control rod made of carbon and cadmium or some other material such as indium or silver to capture all the neutrons. To restart the reactor the control rod is slowly removed from the core to initiate fission. The neutrons are what split the atoms in the fission and when captured, by the control rod reinserted into the core, they no longer create fission. The SL-1 had 5 of these cadmium control rods and all were inserted in between the fuel rods when the reactor was shut down, or SCRAMed, before the Christmas break. These control rods were also detached from their drive motors for special maintenance and needed to be reattached, hence the 4 inches they had to be removed manually.

The term “SCRAM” comes from the earliest safety precaution used on the first reactors. A rope was tied to the control rods and used to remove the rods to start the fission. A man with an axe was positioned near the rope in case of emergencies to chop the rope to let gravity reinsert the rods for shut down. This man was known as the Safety Control Rod Axe Man or S.C.R.A.M. The control rod, in this case, has been referred to as: The Sword of Damocles.

At about 9:01 P.M. on January 3, 1961 an alarm was sounded at a fire station 10 miles from the SL-1 site. The coded 2-2-1 alarm indicated a temperature spike at the SL-1 facility, but indicates the facility as a whole including the administrative offices there. This was the third alarm that day for that facility. The two previous alarms were related to a faulty detector in the building’s boiler facility. The fire crew arrived at the facility about 9 minutes after the alarm was sounded. They first checked the alarm that they had check twice already that day. It was not the culprit. Further inspection soon revealed a radiation alarm in the control room. The fire fighters went back out and retrieved meters to test the level of radiation and these instruments proved too small in scale to accurately measure the Roentgens/hour that were present, and the needles went off the gauges. The SL-1 had exploded.

The outer walls of the reactor room contained the explosion of the SL-1, even though the facility wasn’t designed to do so. The cylindrical building that housed the reactor now contained the radiation released in the explosion. The heroic efforts of the fire fighters over the next 5 hours ended with the extraction of two of the casualties from the highly reactive facility. The first removed was Navy Electricians Mate McKinley who was still breathing but died on the way to a nearby hospital. The second casualty removed was the body of Army specialist Byrnes who had died instantly in the blast. The last victim of the reactor explosion was Army specialist Richard Legg who had been pinned to the ceiling of the reactor room by one of the control rods. It took several days to devise a plan to extract the body of Richard Legg, by using a large makeshift stretcher attached to the end of a crane boom that was inserted through a freight door and positioned under the body to catch it when dislodged from the ceiling.

The incident report concluded that the central control rod had been pulled far beyond its 4-inch maximum limit of travel. This resulted in the instant restart of the reactor and exceeded the prompt excursion of the reaction. All of the water surrounding the core was instantly and explosively vaporized. It is still not known; do to lack of survivors, as to why the rod was pulled so far out, so quickly.

The things learned from this accident were invaluable to the future of reactor design. One possible reason for the over-extension of the rod was due to Boron chips, deteriorating in the slide channel for the control rod led to a sticking situation. Today’s control rods are spring-loaded to the inserted position to overcome sticking. Also, the rods are never manually removed from the core in today’s reactor maintenance. Another innovation came in the form of containment. Today’s reactors have 3 levels of containment: the Zircaloy tubes for the uranium pellets, the reactor vessel and an outer steel/concrete containment shell. The biggest thing learned from the SL-1 incident was that once the water moderator is removed from the fuel rods, the fission also ceases. This is very important when looking at how reactor cores are moderated, especially when looking at Chernobyl, which used graphite blocks to moderate neutrons.

The incident at Chernobyl could have been far worse than it was, and it was very bad to begin with. The design of the reactor at Chernobyl was quite different than the BWR and the PWR. The fuel rods at Chernobyl were inserted into a grid of graphite blocks to form the core. The core was cooled by water and control rods were used to start and stop the fission. However, the graphite allowed for positive pressure voids, which allowed the fission to continue for a longer period of time after the control rods were insert to shut down the core. This can be viewed as a sort of “dieseling” for reactors. The other risk is that even when the water is vaporized the graphite moderator continues the chain reaction and meltdown is inevitable in a situation where the coolant level drops or is vaporized. The reactor at Chernobyl did have an outer containment, but it was filled with sand rather than concrete. This cheap solution to containment actually was the saving grace at Chernobyl. When the reactor went supercritical, all the coolant was vaporized and the containment vessel around the core exploded. This explosion also breached the outer containment and released the sand, which in turn encased the molten core in glass that oozed through the lower levels of the facility as it cooled and solidified. This actually contained much of the radiation and the fissile material and stopped the chain reaction. If it had not, this core could have gone from fission to fusion according to scientists that inspected the facility for years after the incident. Fusion is what makes an atomic warhead a weapon of Mass Destruction. Fission is used to bump the materials into a situation known as fusion and the energy released can be as great as 50 megatons, which the Soviets achieved with their Tsar Bomba warheads. Scientists and physicist claim that there was enough material at Chernobyl to create at least a 50-megaton explosion and if the sand hadn’t encased this material, it was highly probable that this would have occurred. The largest atomic bomb ever detonated by the U.S. was “Castle Bravo” which yielded 15 megatons, double the expectations of the physicists that created it. The top of the mushroom cloud reached 70,000 feet into the stratosphere with a width of 9 miles. This detonation eliminated an island at the Bikini Atoll.

Looking at the past and going over the incidents that lead to safety innovations in nuclear reactors, we can see that the dangers are immense. The U.S. learned quite a lot from its research out in the deserts of Idaho and our innovations in reactor construction make them the safest in the world. For example: the 3 levels of containment kept Three-mile Island from releasing deadly radiation.

General Electric leads the world in reactor construction and it is their 40-year old Mark I PWR that sits in Fukushima’s Daiichi facility and is the center of current nuclear concerns. In addition to the 3 levels of containment there is an outer structure that houses the whole reactor and its containments. This building is what exploded several hours into the incident after the earthquake. The earthquake would have triggered the spring-loaded control rods to SCRAM the reactors immediately. The reactors still have residual heat produced by the slight amount of free neutrons that do not immediately get absorbed by the control rods (about 3% of the heat when running at critical fission). The coolant is needed to completely cool the core after shutdown, but this was lost as a result of the earthquake and loss of power. The redundancy generators also failed due to a tsunami that took out the generators. The heat is enough to cause a partial meltdown of the core and this molten uranium and zircaloy can act as a moderator and restart the fission. The resulting build-up of pressure from vaporized coolant that the plant workers are desperately introducing to the core, has to be released to maintain the integrity of the reactor vessel. This release of, essentially, radioactive hydrogen was being contained in the outer building, but it built up too much causing the explosion of the outer building. The radioactive hydrogen will lose its dangerous levels of radiation within a few minutes; hence the reason the engineers must of felt it necessary to contain it within the building; to allow it to decay before release to the atmosphere. Reports are that the 3 levels of containment are still intact. In the worse case scenario, the core could go into complete meltdown and melt through the bottom of the containment vessel. In the containment shell below the vessel is a bed of graphite (the moderator at Chernobyl) that will encase the molten fissile material and contain the further release of neutrons. This may be a lesson from Chernobyl but I couldn’t find anything on the decision to use graphite in the bottom of the containment shell.

This reactor is one of the best designs available and is the result of many years of incidents and reactor failures at the testing facilities in Idaho. There is little to worry about outside of the immediate area where Japanese officials are already evacuating nearly 140,000 people from a 12-mile radius around the reactor in question. Potassium Iodide is also being distributed to those in the area to combat the deadly affects of radioactive Iodine 131, which has been detected in small amounts. When a reactor does experience troubles, the whole world sits on the edge of their seats because of the many tragedies in the past, but this incident should prove that even when hit with earthquakes and tsunamis a modern reactor can be “fought” by the technicians to prevent disastrous release of deadly radiation and explosively reactive materials (other than the hydrogen).

Though this is still a highly volatile situation and will, unfortunately, result in some injuries and deaths due to radiation, the affects of it will never reach the west coast of the U.S. as many fear it will. The only comparison between this event and Chernobyl will be that we’ve come a long, long way in safety since the days of SL-1 and Chernobyl. If the reactor at Chernobyl were the one struck by an 8.8 earthquake and further damaged by a 30-foot tsunami, it would have killed millions by now.

In the past this powerful source of energy, fission, was the Sword over our heads. In modern reactors, the roles of Damocles and the Sword have switched to their proper positions. We are the Sword, or control, over the head of some awesome power; the power of fission.

Keith Olbermann bows out.

The country's 24-hour political, pundit, perpetual-panic conflictinator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. ~Jon Stewart~

Those words from political satirist, Jon Stewart, were from the more serious portion of his rally to "Restore Sanity and/or Fear", where he talks about inflammatory news commentary.

Keith Olbermann seemed to take those words to heart. The next day Olbermann made the decision to suspend his "Worst Person of the Week" segment, which had become a central and inflammatory portion of his show on MSNBC. Olbermann brought that segment back, repackaged as "(Not Really) The Worst Person", only to cover Sen. Jay Rockefeller's statement about MSNBC and Fox:

There's a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC, "Out. Off. End. Goodbye." It would be a big favor to political discourse. ~Sen. Jay Rockefeller.

We are all well aware of the news pundits' blame game in the recent tragedy in Tucson. This all showed us the underbelly of news commentary, as they all seemed to disregard the warnings of both Stewart and Rockefeller.

The hubris of 24-hour news, driven by their ratings, is their undoing. Olbermann seems to have the clairvoyance to see this and he is bowing out.

This, however, is nowhere near the end of this issue. Newspapers across the country are also seeing the writing on the wall as their subscriptions are dropping. Some commentary on that issue includes the environmentally-driven move away from the "dead tree" editions of major papers, but these media groups are also seeing a decrease in viewership online.

Where are these viewers going?

One theory is that there is a massive move towards Alternative Media and for good reason. One such alternative outlet is Alex Jones, a man labeled as a "conspiracy theorist". His network at Genesis Communications has exploded into the alternative media. Alex has a 4-hour daily radio show, that can be downloaded as podcasts, plus several websites. The three most popular websites are Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com and PrisonPlanetTV.com where you can watch his daily radio show as well as his many full-length documentaries.

Jones has spawned many other alternative news shows, such as Jack Blood's "Deadline Live", Doug Owen's economic news "Blacklisted News", Michael Herzog's "American Awakening" and even Gov. Jesse Ventura's "Conspiracy Theories".

What Mainstream media created in its 24-hour news was the institution of commentary. What is commentary? Short answer; it's what bar patrons do down at the local watering hole when they hash out society's woes over a glass of beer or wine. Having the Mainstream media institutionalize this act, took it away from the average citizen and made it their own. This leaves the average citizen to inject talking points from mainstream media, rather than reasoning the issues themselves. This created a void that Alternative Media is now filling.

I'm not suggesting that the average citizen is driven by conspiracy theories, nor am I suggesting that all alternative media is made up of conspiracy theorists. What Alex Jones brings to the table is a very diverse crowd of professionals in economics, politics and history who all talk about the issues in current and past events. Many of his guests are rather obscure in popular circles, but more and more they are now becoming mainstream. They talk about real issues and actually try to find solutions. Finding solutions, as Jon Stewart alludes to, is not on the agenda of Mainstream news commentary.

The attempt to come up with solutions is exactly what makes the Alternative Media so attractive. It is what was missing from the surrogate bar crowd, known as commentary news.

But what might make Alternative Media more dangerous than Mainstream Media is the very pejorative that it has been labelled: "Theorists". If people do not discern fact from fiction or apply objectivity to the alternative media, this could perpetuate what commentary started: Political Discourse.

If people can see alternative media as a complete circle of discussion, rather than mainstream media's open-ended discussion, then it can be a great tool for debate and, possibly, for solutions.

Alternative media treads where only bar patrons once treaded, into the realm of solving the world's problems. It is imperfect, but a progressive step in society. Reveal the problems and work together to fix them on a grand scale. In that view alternative media can be seen as a nationwide think-tank, involving everyone. One of Jones' main ideas in his show is to open up the program for callers for hours of discussion...and he doesn't screen any of those callers. He loves all the new directions that callers take the show.

If Keith Olbermann could see this, he could come back with his own alternative media show. He could be the harbinger of change in media. His action could lead others like Palin, Maddow, Beck, and all the other commentators to strike out into the fast-growing world of the alternative media. So long as they remember that they would have to offer up reasonable solutions to the problems they bring to the table.

Tragedy begets political derision.

First and foremost, I wish to express my sincerest condolences to all who lost loved ones in Tucson and to all who have been affected by the horrific event there.

The media, however, seems to lack the same sympathy that most U.S. Citizens are expressing in this moment of tragedy. The attack has only moved into the political spectrum for them. The media is focusing its reporting on "who is to blame" and making it a political thing. Not one news outlet is focusing on the lives affected by this tragedy.

Judge John M. Roll; a defender of the 10th Amendment and State's Rights, is among the victims.

Rep. Gabriella Giffords; another defender of the 10th Amendment as well as a defender of the 2nd Amendment. May she make a full recovery.

Then there is the 9-year-old little girl, Christina Green, whose father expressed his wishes that the government not use this tragedy as an excuse to further repress the U.S. population. Upon hearing John Green express that sentiment, a columnist by the name Jeanne Sager attacked the parents for their actions. I won't go into her scathing article, but will post it for you to read: Should Christina Taylor Green Parents Get Off TV?

The BBC is even reporting "The Febrile Politics" of this tragedy and helping build the fervor against everyone's favorite target; Sarah Palin.

The Left is pointing blame at Fox News and the Right is pointing blame at MSNBC. In fact, if you look at the majority of the articles put out by the mainstream media, you'll see them all pointing fingers at one another and crying; "inflammatory", "hate-baiting", "fear mongering"... All the while, they collectively fail to realize that they are all to blame for the derision in this country.

Which brings us to the real problem: Who is the enemy? Well, it could be the ratings-driven media. It could be the activist media. It could, even, be the apathy of the media.

Solution? Find a new way. Get rid of commentary and activist media. Report the news and only the news. Sounds simply enough, but then when you look at the empires of capitalism surrounding these media outlets, you start to see that it would be next to impossible to ask our journalists to step away from their "hard-hitting" "insightful" "commentary" "ratings-driven" money machines.

There is a watch group that could be a good model for the answer to mainstream media: Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), but they too cater to "both activists and journalists". The "active" media seems to be at the root of the problem. Is it time to get away from that? I tend think so, especially after seeing how they have acted in the face of this tragedy.

As for where we should put the real blame for the Tucson Massacre? The man in custody known as Jared Lee Loughner.

Navy Camaraderie.

I've been following a viral story about a Navy Captain who is being demonized for a humorous video. This is my view of this story.

If you haven't heard the story, it is about a lewd video that is unbecoming a Naval Officer. The officer is Captain Owen Honors and the video was part of a series of videos he made for the crew while serving in the capacity of Executive Officer of the USS Enterprise. I watched the video and it is clearly evident that it was created in a humorous manner that depicts the antics of shipboard life.

The problem is the lack of understanding of how the military functions. The #1 rule in the military is "Work hard. Play hard". The role of the Commanding Officer and the Executive Officer is to play "good cop/bad cop". The XO is always the "good cop" and one of his duties is to build camaraderie among the crew by being the master of "play hard" ceremonies.

Military men and women are a different breed, we don't play by the Politically Correct rules that most of the civilians do. This kind of fun, off-the-wall humor isn't offending to any of us, but it does, apparently, offend the general public. Much of the misunderstanding comes from not seeing the world of the military through the eyes of those who serve.

I have another, personal, experience that became misconstrued and was, and still is, used to demonize a U.S. President when he bolstered camaraderie. The civilian masses simply know the story as the "Mission Accomplished" fiasco aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Here is the real story through the eyes of the military.

The Lincoln Battle Group deployed to the Indian Ocean, leaving San Diego on July 20, 2002. Our initial mission was to provide air and sea support for ground forces in Afghanistan. This was our role in Operation Enduring Freedom. We successfully flew thousands of sorties in keeping our troops protected from the sky. In November of 2002 we transited into the Persian Gulf to continue support of OEF, but to also participate in the decade-long Operation Southern Watch. Scuttlebutt was that we may extend the war on terror into Iraq. This is months before the civilians learned of this. We were set to "out-chop" from the 5th fleet and the operations in the combat zone in December. Rumors turned into actual preparation for a possible return to the Gulf to participate in the opening campaign against Iraq.

Navy deployments, unlike the Army deployments, are 6 months long and our time was up and we headed for Perth, Australia to spend Christmas there. The news, that Christmas, was dominated by Bush's ultimatums for Iraq to disclose all documents related to their nuclear program. We knew the odds of us going back were high and when we pulled out of Australia to head home, Admiral Kelly told the crew that if we were to be called upon for action in Iraq we would have to re-surface the flight deck. The point of no return on our way home was Guam. If we stopped there it would be to re-surface the flight deck and we would turn around and head back to Iraq. We never made it as far as Guam.

It was New Years Day and we hadn't even made it to Indonesia when we realized that we were heading south again. We were on our way back to Perth to resurface our flight deck. It has become known as the "Big U-Turn" and Admiral Kelly quipped "Get Over It!".

We returned to the Gulf to "relieve ourselves on station" January 20th, the very same day we were scheduled to pull into San Diego to end our "war cruise". The rest is history known as "Shock and Awe".

We did our job and we did it well. Ground forces were in Baghdad when we finally "out-chopped" for the second time on the same cruise and were relieved by the USS Nimitz, on station. We had over 300 reporters onboard with us that planned to stay with us because we were going to end our record-breaking deployment by making a record-breaking run across the Pacific to return home. We made that run in three days and we were welcomed home by the President of the United States, our Commander in Chief, George W. Bush. Our 6-month initial mission and our secondary 4-month mission had both been accomplished and we returned home with all souls onboard, we didn't lose any crew members which is a rarity even on peace-time deployments. A banner was placed on the "island" (superstructure) of the ship that declared "Mission Accomplished". This was an announcement for the Lincoln Battle Group's mission status. It felt good to finally be home.

After Bush's speech to the nation from the flight deck, he spent nearly an hour with us on the flight deck as the Secret Service agents tried to wrangle him down to his other engagements. During this meet-n-greet Bush pointed up to the banner and stated; "I'm going to catch hell for that, you know." We didn't really know, but it soon became evident that our mission status had become misconstrued to represent the mission status of all our brethren still fighting the war on terror, which simply wasn't the case.

Now, you've read the events as seen through the eyes of the military and seen how things get misconstrued. Does XO Honors' "lewd" video still garner a harsh condemnation?

The Montana Fort Assiniboine.

Author's note: This is an old blog that I wrote back in November of 2007. I'm dusting it off and reposting it to show some of the history of the Hi-line and to also get something up that will help me fall back into my "groove" so to speak.

To have simply named this article "Fort Assiniboine" would have been too ambiguous, as there is another Fort Assiniboine further north in Canada. This is the story of the U.S. Ft. Assiniboine near Havre, Montana. Most of my research is simply looking for articles and references to Fort Assiniboine and my realization of the two different forts occurred to me when reading an entry in Father Pierre Jean DeSmet's journals about his description of Ft. Assiniboine and it didn't describe the one near Havre. Father DeSmet (of historical importance to the Bitterroot Valley) was describing lakes and streams and large mountains....describing the second oldest fort in Alberta, Canada.

The namesake of Fort Assiniboine is a quite remarkable tribe of the Great Sioux Nation. Some times referred to as the Assnipaw, the Ojibwa word for Stone Sioux, primarily because they would use fire-heated stones to boil water for cooking meat . The Assiniboine were found in the vast Great Northern Prairies of North America.

They were allies and trading partners with the Cree, often warring alongside the Cree in their battles against the Gros Ventre (pronounced gro-von) and later the Blackfeet. Ironically, the Assiniboine now share Fort Belknap Reservation with the Gros Ventre in North Central Montana.

During the expedition, Corp of Discovery, led by Lewis and Clark, there were rumors that the Assiniboine were a hostile people and the Corp made every effort to avoid these people, and never encountered them during their expedition. Later in history, it was discovered that the Assiniboine were not as hostile as once believed and became great trading partners with the Europeans that were moving into the area.

The following is the story of the large fort that was named in their honor, Fort Assiniboine.

During railroad expansion in the 1870s many Lakota Sioux fought the survey and construction crews that were found in the Black Hills area of the Dakotas. The Lakota had defeated the Cheynne in 1776 and had taken the land known as the Black Hills. The Black Hills were very sacred ground for the Lakota and the "white man's" trespasses were not welcome.

During the economic Panic of 1873, the U.S. Government sent General George A. Custer and the U.S. 7th Cavalry to the Dakotas as a deterrent to the Lakota attacks. The first clash in what would become the Black Hills War occurred on August 4th, 1873. This is were history gets a little fuzzy, because it was Gen. Custer that discovered gold in the Black Hills, in 1874, during an expedition and while under different auspices. This discovery led the U.S. to attempt a purchase of the Black Hills, which the Lakota refused and this was the beginning of the Black Hills War, a year after the 1873 battle that supposedly start it.

General Custer and the U.S. 7th Cavalry were completely defeated by the Lakota at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25th, 1876.

The following year, near the Milk River in North Central Montana, a massive fort "rose out of the ground."

Fort Assiniboine was constructed as a result of the devastating loss at the Battle of The Little Bighorn.

Chief Sitting Bull, the spiritual leader of the Lakota Sioux that led the attack at Little Bighorn, had fled to the Cypress Hills just over the Canadian border, to hide from the repercussions that were sure to follow the defeat of the 7th Cavalry. The U.S. Cavalry needed to construct a large fort to thwart any attack that Sitting Bull may engage in. The fort was also part of General William Sherman's vision of a line of forts along the Northern and Southern borders of the United States.

The fort was constructed on the edge of what is now The Rocky Boy Reservation (Chippewa Cree). Indians in the area were so impressed by the speed with which the soldiers, led by Colonal Broadwater, were fabricating bricks on the spot to building the structures, that they described it as the fort "that rose out of the ground." Over a four year period, 104 buildings were constructed on Fort Assiniboine, under the direction of L.K. Devlin, a civilian architect hired by the U.S. Government.

Fort Assiniboine was the largest post in the U.S. at the time of its construction. It also was constructed without a perimeter wall, unlike the other frontier posts. The reason for this was that Fort Assiniboine was an Offensive fort and not a Defensive fort. At it's peak, Fort Assiniboine was home to 36 officers and 720 enlisted.

Of those enlisted men of the fort, were two units of the 10th Cavalry, known as the "Buffalo Soldiers". The 24th and 25th units were stationed at Fort Assiniboine between 1895 and 1897. These "black" soldiers had been given their name by local Indians who referred to their curly hair and likened their fighting abilities to that of the sacred buffalo.

The First Lieutenant in charge of the Buffalo Soldiers was also the most famous military man to ever serve at Fort Assiniboine, John J. Pershing, also known as "Black Jack", a nickname given to him later while teaching at West Point, it is a softer version of the more bigoted moniker that he was originally given.

While at Fort Assiniboine it has been written that Pershing showed his superior marksmanship while on many hunting expeditions in the region, taking impossible shots at the local Prong Horn (antelop) and killing them with one shot. During his orders at the fort, Pershing's only expedition in the Indian Wars was to round up a renegade band of Chippewa Cree that had been spotted in the area of Great Falls, Montana and leading them back to Canada. In June 1897, Pershing was assigned to West Point as an assistant instructor in Tactics. He was not a popular officer there because the cadets thought his discipline was too strict. John J. Pershing went on to become the highest ranking officer in U.S. military history. His appointment to General of The Armed Forces during World War I was a specially designed rank, a Gold Five Star which has never been achieved before or since.

Another important reason for the construction of Fort Assiniboine was the Nez Perce. The Nez Perce, led by Chief Joseph, were trekking their way across Oregon, Idaho and Montana to escape to Canada after the Battle of Canyon Creek, where they had defeated Colonel Samuel D. Sturgis.

On September 30th, 1877, the same year that construction started on Fort Assiniboine, The Nez Perce, camped out in the Bears Paw Mountains near Fort Assiniboine, spotted their pursuer, Colonel Nelson Miles. Without enough time to retreat, but enough time to fortify, the Nez Perce prepared to battle Miles' forces. The outcome of this battle, The Battle of the Bears Paw, was Chief Joseph's surrender and Chief White Bird's fleeing with 50 Nez Perce to Canada

At the end of this battle, Chief Joseph handed his Winchester rifle to Colonel Miles and is quoted as saying: "I am tired; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever."

After the Surrender of Chief Joseph and a majority of the Nez Perce, Fort Assiniboine's mission included, not only the threat from Chief Sitting Bull, but also the threat of Chief White Bird and a hand-full of Nez Perce.

Today there isn't much left of Fort Assiniboine. In 1916 a portion of it was ceded to the Rocky Boy Reservation and its buildings were torn down. A larger portion was ceded to Hill County Montana as part of the 10,000 acre Beaver Creek Park, the nation's largest county park. The few remaining buildings on the post are under the use of the Montana State University system as an agriculture experimentation facility. Tours are rare, but I am planning to see those buildings someday.

The plight of the Nez Perce is an excellent segue to my next blog which will also tie my Bitterroot heritage to that of Havre. Be on the look out for my Nez Perce blog.

"The Imperial Cruise" Review.

I was recently given the book The Imperial Cruise written by James Bradley, the same author who brought us Flyboys and Flags of Our Fathers.

Bradley's father, John, has been enshrined in the annals of U.S. history as one of the men who raised the flag on Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. James wrote of those tales and thrilled movie-goers with the big screen versions of those books. In The Imperial Cruise, James intends to uncover the events that led to that "day that would live in infamy", December 7, 1941. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ushered the U.S. into a world at war and Bradley's question was "Why?" and the book he wrote after his discovery is fascinating to say the least.

The crux of the book explains the expansion of two U.S. doctrines of the late 19th century, The Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny, to the maritime claims of the Caribbean and the Pacific. The man at the center of this expansion is the visceral image of the pioneering U.S., Theodore Roosevelt. Bradley paints the life of the "Rough Rider" with narrower strokes than previous biographies and focuses on Teddy's Teutonic leanings and exposes his racially-driven motives to expand the U.S. sphere of influence beyond the western shore, "following the sun". The conquest of the Philippines and the absorption of the Hawaiian islands were stepping stones to the "Open Door" doctrine into the Orient and China in particular. He referred to it as "civilizing the Orient".

Bradley makes a brilliantly resourced case for the covert actions of T.R. and his yes-man William Taft in making deals behind the backs of Congress. These deals were with the Japanese in their conquests against Russia and Korea, in an effort to create a safety zone or buffer between Czarist Russia and the islands of Japan.

Bradley also relies on Samuel Clemens a.k.a. Mark Twain, the outspoken anti-imperialist who wrote seething critiques about the Moro Massacre in the Philippines, by using his stories to re-paint the fervor of the conquest of the Philippines.

What I find of further interest beyond what Bradley put together were the avenues that could be extended beyond WWII and the Korean war. The Moro were a Muslim group within the Philippines and still control the southern islands of that archipelago. Also, the Chinese "Open Door/Closed Door" U.S. relations created in the very early years of the 20th century. Many reasonable people would tell you that this is all antiquated and has little influence on relations a century later, but I say that once an idea has been unleashed upon the world, it is very hard to put back in the box. What Roosevelt called "civilizing of the world" we still call "spreading democracy". I would surmise that the doctrines espoused in 1900 are still sought today. To that I say history is not something we should emulate, it is something we should avoid and move beyond, especially if it is replete with imperial ideals.

The Imperial Cruise