A Word for Hospitalman Daniel Noble

Hospitalman Daniel S. Noble, 21, of Whittier, Calif., died July 24, as a result of enemy action while conducting security operations in the Dilaya Province, Iraq.
Doc Noble was permanently assigned to 1^st Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force Pacific, Camp Pendleton, Calif.
Semper Fi

A Word for Hospitalman Lucas Emch

Hospitalman Lucas W.A. Emch, 21, of Kent, Ohio, died March 2, 2007, when an Improvised Explosive Device detonated in his vicinity while conducting combat operations in Al-Anbar Province, Iraq.

Doc Emch was a hospital corpsman assigned to 1st Marine Logistics Group, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Semper Fi

A Word for HM1 Gilbert Minjares, Jr.

Petty Officer 1st Class Gilbert Minjares Jr., 31, of El Paso, Texas, died Feb. 7 in the helicopter crash in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

Doc Minjares was assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 14, 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, Cherry Point, N.C. He was a married father of two children, one only a month old, and had been in Iraq only a week.

Semper Fi

A Word For HM3 Manuel A. Ruiz

Petty Officer Third Class Manuel A. Ruiz, 21, of Federalsburg, Md., died Feb. 7 in the helicopter crash in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

Doc Ruiz was assigned to 2nd Medical Battalion, 2nd Marine Logistics Group, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Semper Fi

A Word for Hospitalman Matthew Conte

Hospitalman Matthew G. Conte, 22, of Mogadore, Ohio, died Feb. 1 while his unit was conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.

Doc Conte was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii serving under the command of I Marine Expeditionary Force (forward).

Semper Fi

A Word About Hospitalman Kyle Nolen

Hospitalman Kyle A. Nolen, 21, of Ennis, Texas, died Dec. 21 in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, as a result of enemy action.

Doc Nolen was assigned to India Company, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Division, Regimental Combat Team 7, I Marine Expeditionary Force Forward, 29 Palms, Calif.

Semper Fi

What Guys Do

Remember when I said a few words about Chris Walsh? That's okay; it was three months ago.
A HUGE hat tip to Sean at Doc In The Box for this story. You have to go read this story in the Boston Globe (free registration required for the entire story)because this is a great example of what guys do.

A Word About HM3 Lee Hamilton Deal

Petty Officer Third Class Lee Hamilton Deal, 23, of West Monroe, La., died May 17, as a result of enemy action in Al Anbar province, Iraq. He was operationally assigned to Regimental Combat Team-5, I Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), and permanently assigned to 2nd Marine Division Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, Camp Lejeune, N.C.
HM3 Deal had a life... and he might have had a good life.

Semper Fi

Pardon My Incredulity

So... I am asked to believe that the U.S. backed Iraqi police have elicited unforced confessions confirming U.S. allegations of Syrian support of terrorism which are being broadcast on U.S. sponsored Iraqi television.
I don't know if this link still works... it's a report in the Washington Post last month on the continued employment of pre-OIF police interrogators and their continuing use of pre-OIF methods. Any of those guys look a little the worse for wear to you?
At least one Iraqi blogger also has reservations about the validity of these "confessions."

I could swear that I've seen instances of captives being paraded in front of cameras to confess to all manner of things before... sometime... somewhere...

Priorities

This post has taken me awhile to write... I've started it a few times over a few days, but I go off on tangents.
It bugs me that people who have never served challenge the patriotism of veterans who oppose this war. By not supporting the war I'm not supporting the troops? I can't support one without the other? I would argue that the Administration is supporting the war but not the troops.
Troops aren't stupid! Do you think it's a secret and that Joe will never guess that this whole thing is a crock? Being sent halfway around the world to fight wars that may or may not need to be fought is nothing new. It wasn't even new when I went! Joe's concern is doing the 13 months... a year now?... and getting back home in one piece.
I said earlier that the troops don't pick the wars; you and I do that. I believe that, having committed those souls to combat, we incur an obligation to them... perhaps particularly where our purposes are questionable in the first place.
If Joe can't get home in one piece then he's got to worry about what happens to him and his family now that he's damaged goods... a $12,000 death benefit?... and when the nominee for Secretary of Veteran Affairs is candid about sustaining even the current benefit levels then Joe's got a reason to worry! I don't support the troops? A "success" story like this one gets reported because it's a "man bites dog" story, and Mr. Armour still has to worry about getting rehab and putting food on the table for him and his family. We're closing VA Hospitals? Good grief.
America... or a good part of it... weeps for the 1350+ troops killed in this war. If we abandon the 12,000+ who have been wounded then we should weep for ourselves because we are soulless.

I just want to mention Petty Officer 3rd Class John D. House, 28, of Ventura, Calif., died Jan. 26, in a helicopter crash near Ar Rutbah, Iraq. House was assigned to Naval Medical Clinic Hawaii, Marine Corps Units Detachment, Pearl Harbor.
Rest in peace, Doc.
Semper Fi

Spreading Democracy

I need to not post on here when my head isn't in it. Yesterday I had a feel for what I wanted to get out but I was distracted. It's not so much my consciousness that I might not be the only one reading this... but that it didn't meet my need to articulate what I wanted to say... and that's just frustrating.
It bugs me that this Administration is pushing this election in Iraq as a huge step forward... and it almost certainly isn't. All other considerations aside, significant numbers of Iraqis won't be able to vote... in this country as well as in Iraq. In Iraq this appears to impact mostly the Sunni population which isn't going to win a popular election anyway, but still...
Here in the United States there are five... five... registration and polling places. Throughout the Southwestern U.S. there are 70,000 ethnic Iraqis who must travel to the old MCAS El Toro site to register and then again to vote at the end of the month.
The White House has pointed to the alleged democratization of Afghanistan as a victory for us. Didn't Karzai campaign primarily in the capital and in Kandahar because he couldn't be protected elsewhere in the country? Oh, I know that there were a kazillion ballots cast and Karzai won by a huge margin. It happens. Wasn't there a precinct in Ohio that polled 117% of its registered voters?
Is it just me or are some cultures maybe not ready for democracy... or whatever we're trying to impose? Even with the tradition of the Magna Carta and British parliamentary process, wasn't the Massachusetts Colony pretty much a religious oligarchy that banished or burned people at the stake? Didn't it take us several decades to start to get things together?
How democratic is the assumption that we have everything so together ourselves now that we have the right and the duty to impose our will and our institutions on other cultures? How right is that?

Thoughts on Possibilites and Limitations

I saw a piece this morning... poll results detailing Americans' hopes for the future under this President. My eye stuck on a line that Bush needed "to find a way to have the whole second term be about more than just Iraq." That put me in mind of Lyndon Johnson's last term... so shoot me but there are parallels!
I saw the statistic that put the percentage of respondents who think it's unlikely Iraq will have a stable government at 53%... 53%!!! What on earth is wrong with the other 47% of you? The Kurds have wanted nothing so much as an independent Kurdish state since forever (which will engage Turkey and Iran)! The Shi'ites and Kurds outnumber the Sunnis by some huge margin and do they ever have scores to settle! Whether it serves them right or not, the Sunnis are pretty much screwed and they know it... Forget about tribal and family turf issues! There is no best case scenario!
Hearts and minds of the people? Have you ever read an Iraqi blog? The people who don't live inside the Green Zone are not loving us so much. You've got to admit that in January, 2005 it sort of sucks to be an Iraqi in Iraq.
My particular beef... apart from humanitarian concerns... is there are more than a hundred thousand of my brothers and sisters under arms in Iraq as you read this whose job it is to try to make this travesty actually work. When the folks who voted to continue this Administration and its policies welcome their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives home from Iraq... what will they say? This isn't WW II... this isn't Korea or even VietNam... this is us, the United States of America, blowing all of the good wishes after 9-11 and destabilizing the entire Arab world on a pretense. Armchair Generalist has a really good piece today on why this is impossible for them.
The Administration would like for the second term to be about more than the war in Iraq... I'd like to be skinny, good-looking, and rich... but it ain't gonna happen.
Footnote: 5/2/2009 I was wrong; it also became about the collapse of the world economy.

Confounded

I'll admit it... I'm a little farklempt. We've stopped "looking" for WMD?
I always thought that this Administration... certainly by now!... would arrange to "find" some Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. For years there have been pieces written on how to dispose of the CW agents deteriorating in storage at Dugway... publicized because environmentalists didn't want that stuff moved anywhere! Back when we first went into Iraq I figured it was only a matter of time... you dig up a few cannisters... you scrape off some U.S. Army markings... maybe you add some Iraqi markings... a few days later it gets dug up in the Iraqi desert! Voila!
Okay... so what? It was too dangerous to handle, and so they just decided to wait until after the 2004 elections to say to hell with it and give up the charade of looking? I know it wasn't character that kept them from doing it!
"The president knows that by advancing freedom in a dangerous region we are making the world a safer place." Alrighty then! So, all evidence to the contrary, there are actually fewer people in the world who hate us now?

Thoughts in Retrospect

This has bugged me for awhile... but I didn't have this site up and I was just reminded of it last night.
It bothered me from right after 9/11 that the Administration was talking about the "War on Terror." My first thought was, "Right, because the War on Drugs has been working really well."
To my mind the attack on 9/11 was a crime... a mass murder... not unlike the Oklahoma City bombing. Knowing who was behind the attack, and knowing that we have in the past been able to pinpoint bin Laden's location, what's the "War" all about? Next time we see him let's just take him out... the Mossad's been doing that for years if we needed a class on it. In a sense, declaring a War on Terror legitimized bin Laden and his organization as something other than an organization of vicious murderers. By the way, he's still not dead or in custody.
Last night... and I never think to link to the video feed while it's on... KNBC in Los Angeles aired a piece on two Gold-Star Mothers, one of whom shared her late son's misgivings about the invasion of Iraq, and the other who said that she and her late son had been all for the invasion.
The second mother, who described herself as a Christian fundamentalist, said in so many words that the war was necessary, that they had attacked us, and that her son had died so she'd never have to wear a burkha. According to my beliefs, someone is going to pay for lying to that woman and her child... if not in this lifetime then in the future.
Now my question is... who in the Administration decided in the hours after the attacks on 9/11 to call for a War on Terror and was it a deliberate choice to establish a pretext for all of our subsequent acts?

Thoughts on Acceptance

This morning the first article I glanced at dealt with civilization's growing acceptance of... may I say indifference toward... catastrophe. As the numbers grow and grow they become numbing. Christopher Dickey went on to say that perhaps that was why people had stopped talking about the 1340+ killed in Iraq.
160,000 deaths is almost impossible to grasp... I've been to Sri Lanka and Phu Ket and it's still hard to get my consciousness around it... but because I've been there I can reflect on a personal level. Last Sunday's For Better or For Worse strip came to mind... I can think about a Sri Lankan and his family... the employees in the restaurant in Phu Ket where I had my first live lobster tossed into a pot... much as they probably were.
1340+ deaths in Iraq... probably fewer than died in traffic accidents in the U.S. last month... but for most of us... other than for 1340+ families it isn't personal. It's personal to the soldier who was hanging upside down in the Humvee next to her buddy, the driver who didn't make it. It's personal to the soldier who covered the memorial services in Mosul.
We don't even talk about the Iraqi casualties... but it's personal for an Iraqi (and this one).
I think what bothers me isn't so much that in 2004 a major earthquake and tsunami can kill 160,000+ people... that's plate tectonics but the victims and their survivors need our prayers certainly... but it would be such a shame if Mr. Dickey is correct that we have become numb to the loss of life in conflict waged on our behalf. We aren't like that, are we? Please?

A Chaplain's Narrative from Mosul

It's the Holiday Season. Especially this year I'd be the last to try to take anything away from it. That being said I'm also a retired Navy Corpsman who has spent a few holidays eating nasty turkey loaf in a mess tent.
The troops don't pick the wars... you do that... you, through your elected representatives tell us that it's vital to our national interests that we pick up and travel halfway around the world to defend America... that's supposedly why they renamed the Department from the War Department to the Defense Department years back... because we're defending America. Again this year troops are engaged in advancing whatever national objectives took us to Afghanistan and to Iraq... and all the other places we're committed. It isn't politics so far as the troops are concerned... it's their lives.
This link is to the blog of a chaplain who attended to some of the casualties from the bombing of the mess hall near Mosul... 22 dead and 72 wounded. I found it to be a moving but not atypical narrative of a mass casualty evolution. it is real.
Let's try to work it into our Holiday to keep a good thought for the troops. We sent them there.

Thoughts on Today's Bombing

This is the reality. This is what happens during "unconventional" wars. If all you know about war is what you've read then this must come as some horrific surprise... that someone would target a mess hall full of combatants/combat support personnel when they least suspected it. You send your kids over there and maybe you try to reassure yourself that his or her job will keep him or her out of harm's way, but those are your prayers... our prayers. Their prayers - the so-called "insurgents" - are for the strength and commitment to drive us out of there, and they won't pull any punches doing it.
I read about the huge win for democracy in the selection of Karzai to lead Afghanistan - despite reports that he could only campaign in 'safe' zones... and I see a buildup toward the same line of bullshit from Iraq. Someone will be selected at the end of January and Mr. Bush will declare "Mission Accomplished" once again... and men and women will continue to die.