April 14, 2003
War Stories...
BAGHDAD (April 11) - Marine Cpl. James Lis, 21 years old, is worried that for the rest of his life he'll be haunted by the image: A clean-shaven, twentysomething Iraqi in a white shirt, lying wounded in an alleyway and reaching for his rifle -- just as Cpl. Lis pumped two shots into his head.
"Every time I close my eyes I see that guy's brains pop out of that guy's head," Cpl. Lis, from Shreveport, La., told his platoon mates Thursday, as they sat in a circle in the ruins of the Iraqi Oil Ministry's employee cafeteria. "That's a picture in my head that I will never be able to get rid of."
For Marine infantrymen now occupying the eastern half of the Iraqi capital, the worst fighting is probably over. But they're just beginning to cope with the psychological aftershocks of having faced death and inflicted it.
One lesson the military learned from painful experience with post-traumatic stress disorder after Vietnam is that troops may come home more mentally intact if, as soon as possible, they talk to each other about what they've gone through. In infantry school, Marine officers are taught to encourage their troops to talk about their experiences after battles. So, platoon by platoon, many Marines in Iraq are starting to hold informal group-therapy sessions -- "critical incident debriefings" in military parlance -- in which they share their feelings about what they've seen and what they've done.
"The touchy-feely stuff -- that's no joke," Second Lt. Isaac Moore told the platoon he commands in Lima Company of the First Marine Division, Seventh Regiment, Third Battalion. "If you keep picturing this guy and you shot him in the head, you've got to talk about that.
"Though a few had been shot at in Somalia, none of the 47 Marines of Lt. Moore's Second Platoon had seen any real combat before arriving in Iraq. Even during the war's first weeks, it seemed unlikely that they'd have to test their mettle. Iraqi forces always ran away before the platoon arrived. The platoon's first scrape was a minor encounter three weeks ago near Zubayr in which somebody took a few shots at the Marines, who returned fire for 40 minutes to no practical effect. No one on either side was hurt.
As they moved into Baghdad, however, the platoon ran into an escalating series of firefights with pro-regime militants armed with rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. The fiercest was a battle Tuesday in the shell of a large building under construction in the city's southeast. The platoon began taking sniper fire, and the Marines soon found themselves shooting at enemy fighters just a few feet away, in a maze of pillars and open staircases.
It's a fight that has left deep marks on the young men. That's what Lt. Moore wanted them to talk about. So as they relaxed on cushions stripped off Oil Ministry sofas and awaited orders to patrol the city for Fedayeen holdouts and foreign suicide squads, the lieutenant invited each Marine to tell the platoon what he experienced, and how he felt about it.
Cpl. Anthony Antista, 29, from Monrovia, Calif., initially celebrated after he shot dead two Iraqi paramilitary men in a corner of the building site. But the exhilaration instantly gave way to guilt, especially for having felt glad that he had taken lives. "Hey, I shot two people," he told his comrades immediately after the fight.
The rest of the platoon brushed him off. He persisted: "I shot two people." They thought he was bragging. What he was really doing, he said, was trying to find someone who might understand how bad he felt.
It's an issue that was still on his mind two days later. "I can't share my pain with you because you don't accept that I killed two guys," Cpl. Antista told his comrades. To emphasize his point, he removed the magazine from his rifle, emptied the round from the firing chamber and acted out the encounter. He showed how he raised his rifle and fired. Then he sat on the ground and demonstrated how the Iraqis slumped when the rounds hit them."
The life just flowed right out of them," he said in a pained voice. "They were like Jell-O."
Staff Sgt. Matthew St. Pierre, 28, from Vallejo, Calif., faced off with an Iraqi fighter whose eyeglasses and face reminded him of one of his own Marines, Lance Cpl. Lance Carmouche, a 21-year-old machine gunner from Beaumont, Texas. The sergeant, the platoon's senior noncommissioned officer, took two shots as the Iraqi popped up from behind a low wall five feet away. He wasn't sure whether he hit the man, but the sergeant saw his body later."
Now every time I see Lance Cpl. Carmouche, I think of him," Sgt. St. Pierre told his men. A few minutes later in the fight, Sgt. St. Pierre found four Iraqi men in a small enclosed area. Three were apparently dead, but one, wounded, reached for his weapon. The staff sergeant shot him between the shoulder blades. The man again reached for his rifle, this time more slowly. The staff sergeant shot him in the back of the head.
When the gunfire quieted, the staff sergeant "eye-thumped" the Iraqi's body, to make sure he was really dead. The process involved poking the man in the eye with a rifle muzzle, the theory being that no man alive can avoid scrunching up his face in response to such a provocation.
It was an "eerie feeling," the staff sergeant recalled, "like I just did what the Lord in the Bible says not to do." But he added, "we did nothing wrong. They made no attempt to surrender, and we put them down."
Lt. Moore, 26, tried to comfort his troops by relating his own experience as a hunter, growing up in Wasilla, Alaska. He shot his first caribou at the age of seven or eight, he told them. It was thrilling to see the animal fall. When he got closer, however, he saw the caribou was still alive, convulsing in pain. The boy was unsure whether he was supposed to feel good or bad.
Over years of hunting caribou, bear and other animals, he grew accustomed to eye-thumping and death. So when Lt. Moore looked down from a staircase in the building in Baghdad and saw three Iraqis below, he didn't hesitate. The men had been wounded by a burst of machine-gun fire, but they were still moving. The lieutenant shot one man point-blank in the head and watched the results; the next man was twitching and got the same treatment."
It's gross, but here's the thing," the lieutenant told his Marines. "That queasy feeling -- I don't get that at all."
Keep in mind, he continued, the kind of die-hards they are fighting. To illustrate his point, Lt. Moore told them about something that had happened earlier in the day: A man who had escaped from one of Saddam Hussein's prisons after 13 years walked back to Baghdad to look for his family and somehow got past Marine guards at the Oil Ministry. The Marines found him curled up asleep in a corner. The man, Lt. Moore recounted, had acid and electric-shock burns on his legs.
The people who did that to the prisoner, the lieutenant said, are the sort of people the Marines were killing. "This is not somebody you need to worry about killing," he assured his troops. "When you stand outside the Pearly Gates or whatever you believe in, you're not going to be looked at any differently for what you did here."
Cpl. Lis, however, couldn't shake it off so easily. A genial jokester with a sand-colored buzz cut, the corporal has had the platoon's closest brushes with death in Iraq. He recounted them, one after another, for his fellow troops. On Wednesday, when the Marines seized the Oil Ministry, Cpl. Lis climbed to the roof to take a look at downtown Baghdad. A bullet heading towards his face missed him only because it hit the narrow metal rail in front of him.
At one point during the gunfight at the construction site, Cpl. Lis threw a hand grenade at an enemy fighter, only to have the Iraqi throw it back at Cpl. Juan Nielsen, a 26-year-old from Los Angeles. The grenade exploded, sending small pieces of metal shrapnel into Cpl. Nielsen's outer left ear -- a painful, but minor wound that turned out to be the only American casualty of the fight.
Later, Cpl. Lis saw a pineapple-shaped Iraqi grenade land less than eight feet in front of him, and two others -- Sgt. Timothy Wolkow, 26, from Huntington Beach, Calif., and Cpl. Dustin Soudan, 21, from Girard, Pa. Cpl. Lis yelled at the others to get down, and they crouched, covering their heads as it exploded. None of them were injured.
Then there was the moment that he worries will always haunt him: He saw the young Iraqi in the white shirt lying on his back, his right arm extended above his head, where a rifle lay. Another rifle was near his left arm. When the man moved his right arm toward the rifle, Sgt. Wolkow shot him. The man started moving again, and this time both Marines shot him in the head, Cpl. Lis firing twice.
Then Cpl. Lis performed the eye-thump ritual on the man. "It's the sickest feeling I've ever had in my life," he said at the therapy session.
Sgt. Wolkow had a more fleeting reaction. "As much as I love the Marine Corps and want to kill people, for a few seconds there was a kind of eerie feeling," after the first time he shot the man, he said. "It went away, and I shot the guy some more."
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submitted by John Daniel...
April 09, 2003
April 05, 2003
Who's Smarter? by Cindy Osborne
Thanks to Mike Benish for this article via MeowMomaGin.........
The Hollywood group is at it again. Holding anti-war rallies, screaming about the Bush Administration, running ads in major newspapers, defaming the President and his Cabinet every chance they get, to anyone and everyone who will listen. They publicly defile them and call them names like "stupid" , "morons", and "idiots". Jessica Lange went so far as to tell a crowd in Spain that she hates President Bush and is embarrassed to be an American.
So, just how ignorant are these people who are running the country? Let's look at the biographies of these "stupid", "ignorant" , "moronic" leaders, and then at the celebrities who are castigating them:
President George W. Bush: Received a Bachelors Degree from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He served as an F-102 pilot for the Texas Air National Guard. He began his career in the oil and gas business in Midland in 1975 and worked in the energy industry until 1986. He was elected Governor on November 8, 1994, with 53.5 percent of the vote. In a historic re-election victory, he became the first Texas Governor to beelected to consecutive four-year terms on November 3, 1998 winning 68.6 percent of the vote. In 1998 Governor Bush won 49 percent of the Hispanic vote, 27 percent of the African-American vote, 27 percent of Democrats and 65 percent of women. He won more Texas counties, 240 of 254, than any modern republican other than Richard Nixon in 1972 and is the first Republican gubernatorial candidate to win the heavily Hispanic and Democratic border counties of El Paso, Cameron and Hidalgo. (Someone began circulating a false story about his I.Q. being lower than any other President. If you believed it, you might want to go to URBANLEGENDS.COM and see the truth.
Vice President Dick Cheney: Earned a B.A. in 1965 and a M.A. in 1966, both in political science. Two years later, he won an American Political Science Association congressional fellowship. One of Vice President Cheney's primary duties is to share with individuals, members of Congress and foreign leaders, President Bush's vision to strengthen our economy, secure our homeland and win the War on Terrorism. In his official role as President of the Senate, Vice President Cheney regularly goes to Capital Hill to meet with Senators and members of the House of Representatives to work on the Administration's legislative goals. In his travels as Vice President, he has seen first hand the great demands the war on terrorism is placing on the men and women of our military, and he is proud of the tremendous job they are doing for the United States of America.
Secretary of State Colin Powell: Educated in the New York City public schools, graduating from the City College of New York (CCNY), where he earned a Bachelor's Degree in geology. He also participated in ROTC at CCNY and received a commission as an Army second lieutenant upon graduation in June 1958. His further academic achievements include a Master of Business Administration Degree from George Washington University. Secretary Powell is the recipient of numerous U.S. and foreign military awards and decorations. Secretary Powell's civilian awards include two Presidential Medals of Freedom, the President's Citizens Medal, the Congressional Gold Medal, the Secretary of State Distinguished Service Medal, and the Secretary of Energy Distinguished Service Medal. Several schools and other institutions have been named in his honor and he holds honorary degrees from universities and colleges across the country. (Note: He retired as Four Star General in the United States Army)
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld: Attended Princeton University on Scholarship (AB, 1954) and served in the U.S. Navy (1954-57) as a Naval aviator; Congressional Assistant to Rep. Robert Griffin (R-MI), 1957-59; U.S. Representative, Illinois, 1962-69; Assistant to the President, Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Director of the Cost of Living Council, 1969-74; U.S. Ambassador to NATO, 1973-74; head of Presidential Transition Team, 1974; Assistant to the President, Director of White House Office of Operations, White House Chief of Staff, 1974-77; Secretary of Defense, 1975-77.
Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge: Raised in a working class family in veterans' public housing in Erie. He earned a scholarship to Harvard, graduating with honors in 1967. After his first year at The Dickinson School of Law, he was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as an infantry staff sergeant in Vietnam, earning the Bronze Star for Valor. After returning to Pennsylvania, he earned his Law Degree and was in private practice before becoming Assistant District Attorney in Erie County. He was elected to Congress in 1982. He was the first enlisted Vietnam combat veteran elected to the U.S. House, and was overwhelmingly re-elected six times.
National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: Earned her Bachelor's Degree in Political Science, Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Denver in 1974; her Master's from the University of Notre Dame in 1975; and her Ph.D. from the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 1981. (Note: Rice enrolled at the University of Denver at the age of 15, graduating at 19 with a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science (Cum Laude). She earned a Master's Degree at the University of Notre Dame and a Doctorate from the University of Denver's Graduate School of International Studies. Both of her advanced degrees are also in Political Science.) She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Morehouse College in 1991, the University of Alabama in 1994, and the University of Notre Dame in 1995. At Stanford, she has been a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, a Senior Fellow of the Institute for International Studies, and a Fellow (by courtesy) of the Hoover Institution. Her books include Germany Unified and Europe Transformed (1995) with Philip Zelikow, The Gorbachev Era (1986) with Alexander Dallin, and Uncertain Allegiance: The Soviet Union and the Czechoslovak Army (1984). She also has written numerous articles on Soviet and East European foreign and defense policy, and has addressed audiences in settings ranging from the U.S. Ambassador's Residence in Moscow to the Commonwealth Club to the 1992 and 2000 Republican National Conventions. From 1989 through March 1991, the period of German reunification and the final days of the Soviet Union, she served in the Bush Administration as Director, and then Senior Director, of Soviet and East European Affairs in the National Security Council, and a Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. In 1986, while an international affairs fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations, she served as Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 1997, she served on the Federal Advisory Committee on Gender -- Integrated Training in the Military. She was a member of the boards of directors for the Chevron Corporation, the Charles Schwab Corporation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the University of Notre Dame, the International Advisory Council of J.P. Morgan and the San Francisco Symphony Board of Governors. She was a Founding Board member of the Center for a New Generation, an educational support fund for schools in East Palo Alto and East Menlo Park, California and was Vice President of the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula. In addition, her past board service has encompassed such organizations as Transamerica Corporation, Hewlett Packard, the Carnegie Corporation, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, The Rand Corporation, the National Council for Soviet and East European Studies, the Mid-Peninsula Urban Coalition and KQED, public broadcasting for San Francisco. Born November 14, 1954 in Birmingham, Al abama, she resides in Washington, D.C.
So who are these celebrities? What is their education? What is their experience in affairs of State or in National Security? While I will defend to the death their right to express their opinions, I think that if they are going to call into question the intelligence of our leaders, we should also have all the facts on their educations and background:
Barbra Streisand: Completed high school Career: Singing and acting
Cher: Dropped out of school in 9th grade. Career: Singing and acting
Martin Sheen: Flunked exam to enter University of Dayton. Career: Acting
Jessica Lange: Dropped out college mid-freshman year. Career: Acting
Alec Baldwin: Dropped out of George Washington U. after scandal. Career:Acting
Julia Roberts: Completed high school. Career: Acting
Sean Penn: Completed High school. Career: Acting
Susan Sarandon: Degree in Drama from Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Career: Acting
Ed Asner: Completed High school. Career: Acting
George Clooney: Dropped out of University of Kentucky. Career: Acting
Michael Moore: Dropped out first year University of Michigan. Career: Movie Director
Sarah Jessica Parker: Completed High School. Career: Acting
Jennifer Anniston: Completed High School. Career: Acting
Mike Farrell: Completed High school. Career: Acting
Janeane Garofelo: Dropped out of College. Career: Stand up comedienne
Larry Hagman: Attended Bard College for one year. Career: Acting
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While comparing the education and experience of these two groups, we should also remember that President Bush and his cabinet are briefed daily, even hourly, on the War on Terror and threats to our security. They are privy to information gathered around the world concerning the Middle East, the threats to America, the intentions of terrorists and terrorist-supporting governments. They are in constant communication with the CIA, the FBI, Interpol, NATO, The United Nations, our own military, and that of our allies around the world. We cannot simply believe that we have full knowledge of the threats because we watch CNN!! We cannot believe that we are in any way as informed as our leaders.
These celebrities have no intelligence-gathering agents, no fact-finding groups, no insight into the minds of those who would destroy our country. They only have a deep seated hatred for all things Republican. By nature, and no one knows quite why, the Hollywood elitists detest Conservative views and anything that supports or uplifts the United States of America. The silence was deafening from the Left when Bill Clinton bombed a pharmaceutical factory outside of Khartoum, or when he attacked the Bosnian Serbs in 1995 and 1999. He bombed Serbia itself to get Slobodan Milosevic out of Kosovo, and not a single peace rally was held. When our Rangers were ambushed in Somalia and 18 young American lives were lost, not a peep was heard from Hollywood. Yet now, after our nation has been attacked on its own soil, after 3,000 Americans were killed, by freedom-hating terrorists, while going about their routine lives, they want to hold rallies against the war. Why the change? Because an honest, God-fearing Republican sits in the White House.
Another irony is that in 1987, when Ronald Reagan was in office, the Hollywood group aligned themselves with disarmament groups like SANE, FREEZE and PEACE ACTION, urging our own government to disarm and freeze the manufacturing of any further nuclear weapons, in order to promote world peace. It is curious that now, even after we have heard all the evidence that Saddam Hussein has chemical, biological and is very close to obtaining nuclear weapons, their is no cry from this group for HIM to disarm. They believe we should leave him alone in his quest for these weapons of mass destruction, even though it is certain that these deadly weapons will eventually be used against us in our own cities.
So why the hype out of Hollywood? Could these celebrities believe that since they draw such astronomical salaries, they are entitled to also determine the course of our Nation? That they can make viable decisions concerning war and peace? Did Michael Moore have the backing of the Nation when he recently thanked France, on our behalf, for being a "good enough friend to tell us we were wrong"? I know for certain he was not speaking for me. Does Sean Penn fancy himself a Diplomat, in going to Iraq when we are just weeks away from war? Does he believe that his High School Diploma gives him the knowledge (and the right) to go to a country that is controlled by a maniacal dictator, and speak on behalf of the American people? Or is it the fact that he pulls in more money per year than the average American worker will see in a lifetime? Does his bank account give him clout?
The ultimate irony is that many of these celebrities have made a shambles of their own lives, with drug abuse, alcoholism, numerous marriages and divorces, scrapes with the law, publicized temper tantrums, etc. How dare they pretend to know what is best for an entire nation! What is even more bizarre is how many people in this country will listen and accept their views, simply because they liked them in a certain movie, or have fond memories of an old television sitcom!
It is time for us, as citizens of the United States, to educate ourselves about the world around us. If future generations are going to enjoy the freedoms that our forefathers bequeathed us, if they are ever to know peace in their own country and their world, to live without fear of terrorism striking in their own cities, we must assure that this nation remains strong. We must make certain that those who would destroy us are made aware of the severe consequences that will befall them.
Yes, it is a wonderful dream to sit down with dictators and terrorists and join hands, singing Cumbaya and talking of world peace. But it is not real. We did not stop Adolph Hitler from taking over the entire continent of Europe by simply talking to him. We sent our best and brightest, with the strength and determination that this Country is known for, and defeated the Nazi regime. President John F. Kennedy did not stop the Soviet ships from unloading their nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 with mere words. He stopped them with action, and threat of immediate war if the ships did not turn around. We did not end the Cold War with conferences. It ended with the strong belief of President Ronald Reagan... PEACE through STRENGTH.
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"This article is interesting and very true, even more so since the war has already started. It was obviously written a few weeks earlier, even before the Dixie Chicks opened their big mouthes!"
...submitted by MeowMomaGin@aol.com