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Bruce Gagnon tells Ray McGovern a story about Bath Iron Works...
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2013/05/ray-mcgovern-working-for-peace.html
SATURDAY, MAY 04, 2013
RAY MCGOVERN: WORKING FOR PEACE
I had lunch with Ray McGovern today. He swung by Bath and we walked down to our nice local Thai restaurant for a meal. He was interested in the huge crane at Bath Iron Works that hangs over the city like a bad memory. I told Ray about the USS Cowpens that was built in Bath and launched in 1989. This Aegis cruiser became the first US Navy ship to launch ordnance in the opening stages of the Iraq War when she fired 37 Tomahawk cruise missiles in George W. Bush's "shock and awe" attack in 2003.
I told Ray the sad story about the woman Lieutenant on-board who was driving the ship when it launched those missiles. She came to one of my talks in Boothbay, Maine some years ago and would become close friends of Mary Beth and I. She also became a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Veterans For Peace here in Maine. She told us how, after their cruise missiles had been fired on a defenseless Baghdad, she went below deck to join the crew watching the burning city on TV. The Navy personnel on the ship were cheering with each new explosion and she felt sick. This remarkable young woman today suffers from a severe case of war trauma.
Ray is no stranger to these kind of stories. He's been around war and peace activism for many years now.
Ray came from his native New York to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
<snip>
SATURDAY, MAY 04, 2013
RAY MCGOVERN: WORKING FOR PEACE
I had lunch with Ray McGovern today. He swung by Bath and we walked down to our nice local Thai restaurant for a meal. He was interested in the huge crane at Bath Iron Works that hangs over the city like a bad memory. I told Ray about the USS Cowpens that was built in Bath and launched in 1989. This Aegis cruiser became the first US Navy ship to launch ordnance in the opening stages of the Iraq War when she fired 37 Tomahawk cruise missiles in George W. Bush's "shock and awe" attack in 2003.
I told Ray the sad story about the woman Lieutenant on-board who was driving the ship when it launched those missiles. She came to one of my talks in Boothbay, Maine some years ago and would become close friends of Mary Beth and I. She also became a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) and Veterans For Peace here in Maine. She told us how, after their cruise missiles had been fired on a defenseless Baghdad, she went below deck to join the crew watching the burning city on TV. The Navy personnel on the ship were cheering with each new explosion and she felt sick. This remarkable young woman today suffers from a severe case of war trauma.
Ray is no stranger to these kind of stories. He's been around war and peace activism for many years now.
Ray came from his native New York to Washington in the early Sixties as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then served as a CIA analyst from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985.
<snip>