All that Glitters

Friday was huge . Everyone was dressing up in their glittering finery.

It is the end of Ramadan, of course, so there are more than a billion people letting off some steam. By the time I was figuring out which sober dark suit to wear to the big ceremony, the insurgent attacks had already begun in central Iraq . The most colorful one featured an attack on a police checkpoint in the Sunni Triangle city of Buhriz , north of Baghdad .

At least sixteen police were killed or wounded. The insurgents used a caravan of five cars and were armed with RPGs and AK assault rifles. The sunlight did not glitter off the metal, since the weapons were covered right up to the last minute.

The police went down swinging, killing at least two of the attackers. They might have been slow on the trigger, since the insurgents were dressed in burkhas and the cops might have thought it was a group of women in the cars.

The upside is that the police stood and fought, and the downside, of course, is that the islamo-nazis are willing to go transvestite to achieve surprise. I don’t know if there is a fatwa about that. Must be, otherwise you would not risk your immortal soul, right?

I risked nothing in preparing my own masquerade to get downtown. Nice shirt, button-down, sedate tie. Double-breasted, dark London-cut suit. Very slimming and respectable. The only glitter was the subtle gleam of the lapel pin of my last military decoration in my buttonhole. The ceremony was going to require a certain amount of gravitas, and I was going accordingly.

I stopped by the office at New York Avenue to let them know that I had succeeded in getting myself dressed and was on the case, then I roared out of the garage and down into the tunnel under the Capitol (when is someone going to try to blow that one up? I wonder every time drive that way) and then over the bridge that spans the Anacostia and up to the front gate of Bolling Air Force Base.

They are going to decommission the base and disestablish the 12 th Wing that manages it and turn it over to Navy administration under the terms of the Base Reallocation and Closure report. I don’t know when. Congress still has ten days to over turn the President’s recommendations, but I think it is a done deal.

There is a lot of activity, locked and loaded, ready for implementation the second the Congressional clock ticks down. DIA is going to build a new campus

I followed the signs to VIP parking, which was in front of the new building where the DNI is going to set up temporary digs, out from under the protective and confining wings of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Admiral who is in charge of the construction was there, meeting and greeting, and check-in was smooth. Security unobtrusive, but palpable.

I could ramble on about the people who were there- it was everybody- and the excellence of the ceremony. There was shiny brass glittering in every direction. The guest list included the acting DEPSECDEF, and the DNI and the STRATCOM Commander, the current Director of DIA and the one who would relieve him.

The medals and colorful ribbons reflected the golden sunlight through the glass of the soaring lobby, and the spear-tips of the flagpoles glittered in the light.

The Pentagon intelligence people were there, and the Community people, and the vendor community. The ceremony itself was crisp, tight, lots of motion. Medal presentations, establishment of a major new command, tribute, all in rapid-fire machine-gun order. No time to get bored, the audience was up and down on command from the podium. The marshal music was crisp, booming from the balcony over the unfinished lobby of the new building were we were seated.

The ceremony blended the traditions of the Army and the Navy, and there was emotion and a tear or two in the recounting of 37 years of active duty by the outgoing Director.

It was the best military ceremony I have attended. I am still mystified that I was part of all this for so long, and how familiar and alien it feels at the same time.

There was a reception afterwards, jam packed with dignitaries. I talked about the things you must do when you retire with some of my colleagues who had recently transitioned from uniformed life, and whose suits still looked like they were fresh from the rack.

“You have thirty days to change your divers license, right?” said one of them.

“Yeah, that sounds right,” I said. I thought about that. I have been retired for over two years, and I still have the drivers license in my wallet from my old beloved Michigan . The address on it is that of my parents, as though I had just been away at college for thirty years.

I had the uncomfortable realization that I needed to take care of that. I had a Russian coming by Big Pink to give me an estimate on replacing the radiator units on the walls that heats and cools me. Ten years ago, I would have thought that he would be including listening devices at no charge.

But it is a new world, or so they tell me. Maybe the surveillance devices still come as a complementary service.

I left the base and headed south on 295 to merge onto the Beltway and cross the Woodrow Wilson Bridge into the Dominion of Virginia. The spans of the mighty new bridge are rising on the footings that loom over the deck of the old bridge that is shaking itself to pieces. Cranes on barges are lifting the new steel sections on, one by one.

It is interesting to watch the progress of mighty public works. The next time I am down there, it might be complete.

I got off the Beltway at the Alexandria exit, which was all torn up in preparation for the new traffic flow to the bridge. The sun glittered off the water. It was a wonderful day to be alive. Now, I thought, for the Russian heating and air conditioning people.

And then a trip to the one-story Tower of Babel that is the Department of Motor Vehicles office over on Four Mile Run.

That is the one place where we are all equal here in America: Hispanic and Muslim and Indian. All the glitter in the world will not make the line move any faster.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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