There was one?

In the movie Stripes, on the first day of boot camp, the drill instructor, Sgt. Hulka has the recruits sit in a circle in the barracks and introduce themselves. They each share a little bit about their background and their reasons for enlisting in the Army.

The guy who speaks immediately before John Candy’s character, “Ox,” introduces himself as Howard J. Turkstra, and then points out that the guys in his car club call him “The Cruiser.”

He goes on to — Aw hell, I’m not gonna do it justice. It’s better if you just watch it for yourselves.

Enjoy.

I had a roommate at The Basic School in Quantico who tended to occasionally do and say some pretty scatterbrained things, and whenever he did, the rest of us would say, “There was one?”

I haven’t been able to get that line out of my head as I keep hearing and reading about the fact that, despite having stiff-armed the U.S. in its current and ongoing operations against Iran, and to secure the Strait of Hormuz, the UK and France are now going to gin up their own nifty plan to secure the Strait and restore freedom of navigation in surrounding waters.

It’s as if they missed the fact that the U.S. Navy has pretty much already done all that.

As I write this, two U.S. guided missile destroyers, the USS Frank E. Petersen and the USS Michael Murphy, have already transited the Strait and are setting the conditions for mine-clearing operations.