ABSTRACT
Once in, it is hard to find one’s way out from the militaryindustrial-media-entertainment labyrinth. Over the years I have collected a variety of objects-some found, some given, others taken on the sly-that act as bread crumbs for back-tracking my journey. They are scattered around my desk, hanging on the walls, perched on the shelves of the cubicle I constructed at the edge of my living room to write this book. The defense industry shows, filling enormous convention centers with the Sturm und Drang of the latest simulation technologies and killing machines, yielded the most plunder: promotional posters, branding luggage tags, videos, and mouse pads that would most likely fetch a fair price on eBay. I have a nice collection of match covers from hotels and motels, restaurants and bars, mostly from franchises like Holiday Inn, Ground Round, and The Olive Garden that ring America’s military bases and training grounds, offset by a few exceptions, like the classical cherubs from Tabard Inn in D.C. (from the Pentagon trip to interview Andrew Marshall) and the cigar-chomping bulldog on the 44th Aero-Squadron Bar and Steakhouse in Venice, Florida (from my search for the “real” Mohammed Atta). There are a couple of 9 mm blue (good guys) and red (bad guys) sim-rounds that I pocketed as souvenirs after my cameraman took one to the earlobe during an exercise at
29 Palms (some blood was spilt but the videocamera never dropped); coasters and cocktail napkins kept as mementos but also for their wine-stained scribblings of overheard conversations; business cards accepted as potlatch and reciprocated in kind that now invoke no recognizable faces; and most valuable of all, PX coffee mugs and T-shirts, of “Operation Desert Storm,” “OPFOR,” “All But War is Simulation,” and “Bin Laden: Wanted Dead or Alive,” brought back to appease the home front after long absences on the road.
