[Note: This isn't exactly what I said at the toast, but the story's the same.]

I am in the odd position for most best men; I’ve actually known the bride much longer than I’ve known the groom. But I can tell you the exact day when Sean and I first met. It was May 26, 2001. Some friends of ours needed some grunt work to help clear out the flower bed, and I heard that Katharine’s new flame, Sean, would be there. I looked forward to going.

The biggest thing that we needed to do prior to tilling the beds was to rip out the holly bushes that were there. Sean and I aggressively attacked the first bush, talking all the while and starting to build the basis of the friendship that would take us to this day. Eventually, we got the branches pruned from the bush and were left with the trunk. We broke up the root system a bit, and then went about deciding how to remove the stump.

Predictably, I had the idea that I’d use my truck to pull it out. I fished out some rope, and we tied it around the bush and then to the tailgate of my truck. I pulled forward, the rope broke, and Plan A was revised.

I looked at Sean; he looked at me. “We can pull this out.”

We braced our feet against the brick border. Hand over hand, Sean and I made a quick count and then a great shove. A couple seconds later, the stump gave way and we were on our asses, everyone laughing.

I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for our friendship.

Sean and Katharine, thanks so much for letting me be a part of your special day. May you be blessed with many wonderful years of marriage as you spend the rest of your days together. I love you guys.

[Now I cry.]

That sums up last night.

Except for Stephen Granade … who is the DEVIL! THE DEVIL! Dude, you so did not need to go there with that comment about Kat’s folks … well, you know.

A good time was had by all, except for whatever poor bastards were in the hotel rooms next to mine, since we were probably kind loud.

Despite my last considered act before going to sleep involving downing a ton of water, my sinuses are just absolutely killing me. I think that means that it’s time for a quick, steamy shower, breakfast in the lobby, and plotting the day’s fun.

T-8:30 and counting …

You know, the biggest problem with NASA is that, over the last 15 years, no one has given much of a damn about NASA.

Not George H.W. Bush, not Bill Clinton, and not George W. Bush.

Bush pere was left to figure out how to manage foreign and domestic policy in a post-Cold War world, and in a lot of ways, NASA was a Cold War relic. The Space Race was won; unfortunately, it was won in the 1960’s and had decayed in the 1970’s. The lax attitudes of the 1980’s then caused the Challenger disaster, which dealt NASA a blow. Rather than accept Challenger as a lesson learned–that politics shouldn’t drive management decisions that override safety–the prevailing attitude came to be, “We can’t lose any more astronauts.”

There’s not much you can do to make zero-loss-of-life a 100% reality. You do as much as you can, but poop still happens. No one outside the NASA community wants to accept that, and no one inside the NASA community wants to voice it. To voice it seems callous to the disinterested observer.

Columbia’s disintegration was a tragedy, but it was just a result of waning interest and funding in NASA from Washington in the Clinton-Bush years. Clinton used Dan Goldin–installed by Bush pere–as his hatchet man with a mantra: “Faster, Better, Cheaper”. Goldin damn near killed NASA.

Bush fils doesn’t have anyone in his entourage with any kind of space experience. His NASA Administrator? And old OMB guy–a beancounter. Amazingly, Sean O’Keefe is providing leadership.

But there’s no vision.

None.

Don Peterson doesn’t say it in this op-ed, but it’s there: that everyone is reacting to perceived issues is dangerous. “Full envelope, full escape” seems to be the growing mantra for crew support. Unfortunately, to worry about such a capability for STS ignores STS’s biggest contribution to manned spaceflight: cargo carrier.

All the stuff we build here on this contract all goes into STS. None of it could go in a rocket. None.

Everyone’s running scared, but … all you’ve got to do is make sure that the safety people get listened to and that the quality people aren’t grumbled at like they always are, and this problem largely goes away.

NASA draws some of the most talented minds in the world, and the contractor community’s right behind them. What NASA needs is better oversight, better management, and more resources. It doesn’t need a new crew transfer vehicle; not today.

1. A full three hours before you went home from work, you were already daydreaming about it. “… and I’m going to walk in the door, take off my dress shirt, and collapse on the couch.”

2. You daydream about the nap while driving home, then remember that you’re driving and that daydreaming might not help you to get there. Of course, after you think about it, you start drifting back to it.

3. You actually get home and take the nap … and sleep through the UPS delivery, a roommate cooking himself dinner, and, later, the same roommate baking cookies.

4. You wake up and look at said roommate eating said cookies and saying, “Man, I needed that, eh?” Then he looks at you and says, “I don’t think you’ve moved in the last three hours.”

Most people don’t consider being in a wedding a vacation. Let me tell you … Sean and Katharine’s matrimony couldn’t come at a better time for me.

Goin’ to the chapel and they’re — gonna get married …

You know, I’m sure that there’s going to be carping about President Bush requesting $87B from Congress for Iraq.

This is, however, an outcome of what happens when you invade a country and take it over.

The American people just aren’t used to this. The last time that an American flag truly flew over another country’s soil was in Germany nearly sixty years ago.

I see no one trying to figure out the costs of the German Occupation, Berlin Airlift, etc. and trying to compare that to Iraq.

Now, I’m aware that my comparison might seem a bit ludicrous, considering that the German occupation [and, lest we forget, the Japanese occupation] occurred at the end of World War II, where you certainly had a ton more countries involved in the whole schpiel. But I think that my point stands: the war in Iraq was completely separate from the conflicts that preceded it:

• Balkans: Multi-national force in peacekeeping role; would-be nation-states exercised varying amounts of autonomy and authority at varying times.
• Somalia: Interdiction of warlords; once nose bloodied, U.S. largely withdrew.
• Gulf War: Iraq ejected from Kuwait, march on Baghdad stopped by Bush pere.
• Grenada: Quick strike to remove leadership.
• Viet Nam: Interdiction of spread of communist power; U.S. withdrew without bombing North into submission and rebuilding country in own image.
• Korea: Status quo ante largely restored along 38th parallel; UN involved.

It hasn’t been this way since Germany and Japan.

Those efforts cost had to cost unbelievably large sums, but the thing to note is that each of those two countries was relatively more economically advanced than Iraq is now, comparing each nation to its peers. Germany and Japan had sizeable military-industrial complexes fueling their war-machine, and while those facilities were largely bombed, you had a ready and willing workforce who understood their place in society and had marketable skills.

Iraq had an army, a secret police, and a scratch-out-life economy.

Of course it’s going to cost lots of money.

Now, Bush is right in asking the rest of the world for help: economically, it’s to everyone’s advantage to have a stable government in Iraq. It’s got a large part of the Fertile Crescent, if you remember that from Western Civ, within it borders. It’s got a sizeable supply of oil.

The rest of the world could indeed be right to tell Bush to go piss up a rope. They didn’t ask for this war per se, but America seemed to do so. In effect, the US has been asking for this war for the better part of the last half-decade; remember, the push for regime change started when Clinton was in office. Would Clinton have ever started this kind of war? Most assuredly not–he would have gone to the Johnson and Kennedy school of piecemeal approaches, rather than the Roosevelt and Truman school of achieving victory at any reasonable cost.

Bush fils is just cleaning up his father’s mess. This is a war that the United States was far more prepared to fight in 1991 than in 2003. You had a larger force structure at the ready and far less decay in Baghdad than the present. If you intervene 12 years ago, I imagine that Iraq is a fully-functioning country at the time, whether truly democratic or at least mouthing those terms, with a working economy.

Instead, we’ve got a mess, and we need one hell of a mop.