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And so farewell. It's off back to Blighty after three years in Washington DC (District of Crisis). I'm afraid I leave Obama in a mess, Congress in turmoil, a new Secretary of State with too much hair (envy envy), a new Defence Secretary with a tough face but an unknown disposition, let alone the capability to deal with orchestrating a military superpower on its financial knees,  assault rifles still for sale at Walmart - do you want the ordinary rounds or the dum-dums, Sir? - and a foreign policy which basically asks the baddest people on earth not to be too bad - still, better than Bush's "you're with us or against us" I guess. Don't get me wrong, I love this country, the people are great, the Pentagon took me into its vast family, the burgers when good are wonderful - this is my justification for a hint of belly - the old cars, I mean the great shiny beasts with wings, white leather seats and cruise-me-baby looks are a sensation to watch in the frequent parades that go on in Old Town Alexandria - any excuse for a parade this place (I've always wanted to write like that, putting the subject at the end of the sentence, very Latin), and Chesapeake Bay is the best location to go for a serious cooling down, destressing time. New York of course is fun fun fun. Didn't get to see Boston, Memphis (sorry Elvis), New Orleans, Kentucky, or the Niagara Falls, all of which were on the must-see list (I vowed NEVER to write that and I promise it's the last time), nor did I drive in a fancy car (see above) through Montana, North Dakota or buffalo country in Nebraska. So much achieved in three years, yet so much unseen, undone and unwitnessed. Too much work but all very interesting and absorbing and enlightening.

Things I'll miss: passing conversations, like the other day I heard two blokes coming up the escalator behind me, one saying to the other: "We gotta push the agency's mission to the limit." Other bloke: "And beyond." First bloke: "Uhun!" Gotta be the CIA, up in town for a three-courser. But when they got past me - yes, I was standing, well I can't walk up every time, that's why they move on their own you know to let us fatigued people have a rest - it was two fat blokes in a hurry. So perhaps not the CIA, more like the Waterworks Agency or the Pavement (sorry, Sidewalk) Construction Agency, or maybe the Burger Agency if there is one, there must be. Also on the miss list: there are still states where racism is alive and well but where I've been, Washington and surrounding areas, integration of all the different ethnic groups, colours, religions, is fabulous to see. Just totally natural and unsurprising and as it should be. I don't think I ever feel that in Blighty. Also the weather, can be spectacularly changeable, huge dumps of snow, glorious sunshine a few days later, hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, tropical storms - and weather predictions pretty well always accurate. Still get a kick when Criminal Minds is interrupted with the nasal sort of out of this world Star Trek voice saying: "Go to your cellar immediately and prepare for winds of up to 99mph, stay away from windows and above all stop watching Criminal Minds." 

The Pentagon, bless it, I will miss hugely. You get to love the place , that spurt of excitement when you swish your security pass through the swishing machine and the barriers open and no one steps forward to shoot you, the "how yer doin" from endless people in uniform as you walk down endless corridors, the "hey Mike" greetings as I approach the Pentagon Press area, the queuing for a capuccino in the cafeteria, picking up conversations like : "We're sending SOF to Yemen (Special Operations Forces)", "Yeah, QDR is TUP, check with COLM soonas." (sorry not a clue). "I'll have a tall latte with vanilla shot". (no, no idea ha ha ha). And oh those great one-to-one chats with "US officials", no name no department can be mentioned but serious players who know everything. Ask and you get an answer, not Hollywood dramatic scoop stuff, but still pretty damn useful and impressive for including in a dispatch for Her Majesty's Times.  Never did get my shoes buffed up by the shoe-buffing-up chap next door to the Chinese laundry. Some conversations there I bet, nuclear war, the lot.

Will miss Obama, a cool dude but his 30-minute answers to every question get a bit tiresome, John McCain (failed Republican presidential candidate and awesome Vietnam prisoner-of-war), getting madder by the day, positively explosive on every subject, Hillary Clinton, seriously impressive and clear favourite to be President in 2016. I saw her in the flesh the other day when she was at the Pentagon for a special award from the military. After travelling round the world about 30 times and hitting her head, she looked relaxed, well-coiffured, red-jacketed and superstarish. A Big Plus for the US of A. Shan't really miss Leon Panetta. Nice guy but if he mentions one more time he's the son of an Italian immigrant I'm going to get the Agency to intervene. Yes the CIA, not the Waterworks Agency. I've discovered that the CIA and the 16 other intelligence agencies are packed with men and women who are just that, men and women, dedicated and some of them very clever and brave, but basically they make mistakes like everyone else, except that mistakes in their line of work can be fateful. Need I mention 9/11? 

Enough already. Time to sign off. Time to go home to Blighty. Time to say goodbye to the US of A. It's been a ball. See yer.

superpower stuff

You need to read the following conversation between two people in one of the ring corridors of the Pentagon to appreciate its significance. The Pentagon employs 23,000 people and occupies nearly 4 million square feet of office space. It's a thunderstorm of activity involving uniformed and civilian brains who are in charge of the world. They can send drones from one country to another and kill people travelling in a Toyota pick-up who were thought by someone in one of the thousands of locked rooms to be nasty terrorist types and worthy of being targeted by Hellfire missiles, there are people who do nothing else but draw up contingency plans to strike at potential enemies or react to scenarios not even imaginable by the average ordinary human being, there are political wonks who advise and whisper into the ears of President-selected politicians about what to do when to do it what to say when to say it how to do it why to do it why not to do it, there are meetings and meetings and meetings, and telephone calls. In fact someone once added up the phone calls made on an average day and it was 200,000, that ran along 100,000 miles of telephone cable. Someone actually had the job of going " one,two, three....." he must have been sick of Alexander Bell by the time his day was over. So that's a lot of blaa blaa blaaing, some of it so secret the blaa blaa has to be scrambled so it sounds like phswzzv$. 

To help the mindblowing amount of work and clandestine planning going on in the biggest office building in the world and the most famous five-sided construction in the history of the universe - by the way as part of the imminent huge cuts in the defence budget being contemplated because of the failure of the President and Congress to agree a deal on national deficit-reduction, planners reckon a lot of money can be saved by reducing the building to four sides - apparently 4,500 cups of coffee are drunk each day - yes, that little man has been at his adding machine again - and 6,800 soft drinks. No wonder half the vast Pentagon population are overweight.

 You enter this scheming complex for the first time like a man lost in a desert filled with dromedaries. There are A rings and D Rings and E Rings etc etc and there are 17.5 miles of corridors but whoever designed this mighty concrete beast thought of a way of ensuring that whichever colonel in  whatever room you wished to visit you would take no more than seven minutes to get from one place to another wherever it is in the building, thanks to those concentric rings, like being on a fairground roundabout, except that when the music stops at the fair you get off and run away to get candyfloss. In the Pentagon the music never stops. You just go round and round, and if you don't know where the hell you are, I can tell you it takes a darn sight longer than seven minutes to track down your colonel.

For a start there are 131 different stairs and 19 escalators. Get on the wrong one and you're in D Ring instead of B Ring. You stop and ask a passing uniform where Room 356 on B Ring is, he says, always says: "It's very easy. Take staircase 12, go down 18 steps, turn right, go down the long corridor, you'll see pictures of Second World War fighters on the walls, don't stop until you reach Staircase 15, then go up and you're in B Ring. The room you want is down on the left." "Thanks a lot." "By the way, who do you want to see? " "Colonel Wrisctfrdeinhio." "Oh, yeah I know him, I think he's moved to E Ring, do you know where that is? " SEVEN MINUTES HA!!!

If you don't know the time there are 4,200 clocks on hand to help you, all on Zulu time of course (look it up), and when desperate you can choose from the 284 "rest rooms" - if you can find them, that is.

Well, there we are, a brief glimpse inside the Superpower Machine that is the Pentagon. So taking all of that on board, here is the top secret conversation I overheard in A Ring the other day as I was hurrying to see some Marine colonel:

One official: "So, what's happening?"

Second official: "Nothing."