Media acts as the growing ears, eyes and voice to a global Peoples that now goes so very much more above "letters from the front lines". CNN itself born under a baptism of fire during the first gulf war correct and we have had eyes on globally ever since. Thanks. From the Vietnam war to this global Vietnam to the Georgia-Russian conflict examples of history repeating itself with little lessons learns unfortunately.

I am a veteran of the Cold War...an often all-too forgotten era in our history.

I served as aircrew on board carrier-based helicopters. Our primary job was hunting submarines...Soviet submarines especially. Our secondary job was search and rescue.

I served from 1987 to 1995. I remember the Yorktown incident. What many of you do not know is that this was by far not the only incident of its type at that time, nor was it the last major incident. It was probably the last major incident "reported."

There were also submarine-to-submarine collisions, one of which was believed to have resulted in loss of life on the Soviet side. Although this was (supposedly) an accident, there were some incidents I am aware of that could be considered deliberate acts of aggression. For example, there were fairly frequent incursions by Soviet aircraft into NATO airspace. There were also a few incidents (one of which I was involved in) of Soviet submarines approaching far too close to our battle group, and evading upon discovery. One tailed an aircraft carrier so closely it nearly collided with it. This might not sound so serious, until you realize that such behavior automatically classified such submarines as "hostile"...which means it risked being destroyed, and starting a war. Fortunately, all of these dangerous scenarios I am aware of played out to peaceful conclusions: the collisions were deemed as "accidents;" Soviet aircraft turned away upon being intercepted; and the Soviet subs, once caught, would surface and move out of the area. However, all of these incidents were militarily "near misses," meaning they could have all resulted in war. I want to also point out that the Soviets were not the only ones playing these dangerous games. The US Navy was doing the same, especially the submarine fleet; they were just better at not getting caught!

I will not go in to details about specific incidents, as they are probably still classified. I will tell you that the Cold War was not so cold, and that many men lost their lives performing their duty. I lost several friends from in-flight accidents while they carried out their missions. I nearly lost my own life on a few occasions doing the same. It was a very dangerous, but necessary job at the time, and I am proud to have been a part of such an important time in our history.