June 06, 2006
"A Link In A Great Chain"
General
George S. Patton's Normandy Invasion Speech:
"Be Seated."
"Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullshit. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American."
"You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the hell shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood."
"All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit."
"There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about fucking. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!"
"My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted hell out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you."
"All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in hell would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to hell."
"Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men."
"One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the hell he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time."
"You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable."
"Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-bitch Patton again.'"
"We want to get the hell over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit."
"Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the hell with that idea. The hell with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have."
"There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the great war, you won't have to cough and say, 'I shoveled shit in Louisiana.' No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named George Patton!'"
"That is all."
God Bless the veterans of the Great Crusade launched on this day in Normandy, France in 1944, and the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen that today carry on that same fighting spirit.
Update: BlackFive has far more.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
09:52 AM
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1
If he gave that speech now he would have to stand down for sensitivity training.
Posted by: David Caskey at June 06, 2006 09:13 AM (6wTpy)
2
The Greatest Generation endured the Depression,defeated the Nazis, socialists, communists, Imperial Japan, rebuilt Europe and Japan, found a cure for polio, invented open heart surgery, put a man on the moon and the Baby Boomers have come up with MTV and 12 million illegal invaders. God bless "The Greatest Generation". They must be turning over in their graves seeing what Boomers have done to the country they sacrificed to defend.
Posted by: Jeff 1 at June 06, 2006 10:36 AM (25qu6)
3
Sensitivity training, hell! He would be labeled and extremist by some career Pentagon bureacrat, marched out to a podium to apologize for his "insensitive" remarks, and unceremoniuosly shown the door. Just like a an Admiral I served under in the mid 90's! Welcome to the "United States fo the Offended"
Posted by: khmllr at June 06, 2006 10:42 AM (x/T0s)
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If all of our politicans had this mentality America would be such a better place and we would not be dealing with islamic terrorist, liberals, commie's or socialist. Maybe this "War on Terror" will produce a another great leader, maybe we should just clone Patton and let the fun begin!
Posted by: Boodge at June 06, 2006 10:54 AM (ISE4+)
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I am a 'Boomer' and I must take exception to Jeff 1's analysis of all the Baby Boom Generation. I volunteered for the military and combat duty in Viet Nam (as did many 'Boomers') and it was Baby Boomers who elected Ronald Reagan who ended the Cold War. I could give more examples. We 'Boomers' do have our useless scumbums for sure, but remember, it was the 'Greatest Generation' that raised the Boomer scum, gave us the no win war in Viet Nam etc. Apparently there were alot of rear echelon yellow bellies who procreated after "The Big One-WW II" but didn't heed the words of General Patton. MY father, a WW II Marine veteran of three island campaigns taught me right along with many other Boomer parents. So let's not tar all Boomers. I don't appreciate being lumped with the likes of Bill and Hillary et al.
Posted by: Jim P. at June 06, 2006 10:55 AM (bgRAn)
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Thanks so much for posting that CY, I'm teary. The greatest generation indeed. You never know what you've got until it's gone.
Posted by: Cyrus McElderry at June 06, 2006 11:40 AM (eMGg4)
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Jim P. you stole the words right out of my mouth. I'll add that Jeff didn't get here spontaneously, there had to be a boomer in there somewhere, so he's unhappy with his parents. I'm sure that they find that interesting.
Posted by: Mike H. at June 06, 2006 11:46 AM (Wb/8Y)
8
Thanks so much for posting that CY, I'm teary. The greatest generation indeed. You never know what you've got until it's gone.
Gone,
Hell. They're being reinforced.
The Old Guard is dead or dying, but a new Greatest Generation is being formed as we speak in the deserts of al Anbar, the jagged mountains of Afghanistan, and in the steamy jungles of the Philippines and a thousand other places we may never hear of.
Today’s soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are as brave, as noble, and as heroic as their grandfathers—no more, no less, and they are doing the same deadly work of destroying another guise of fascism.
It would be nice, perhaps, to have all Americans understand the stakes of this war and why we must win, but you go to war with the media that you have, not the media that you would like to have.
The media and the left refuse to confront the realities of Dar al Harb and Dar al Islam, and so this Next Great Generation fights under-supported and under-appreciated.
Our Greatest Generation continues to be made, insuring that as the elder Generation passes, it does so knowing that essential Liberty stands well-protected.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at June 06, 2006 12:06 PM (g5Nba)
9
Ironic that in this day and age of incredible communications technology, no one communicates as clearly as one who no such advantages, but had to rely on gut feelings and simple phrases to change the world.
Posted by: I.M.Pistov at June 06, 2006 12:09 PM (nghlK)
10
CY -- Wow. I really was moved by the post, and I was trying to show you what it is I like about your blog and that I appreciate you hosting comments from someone you disagree with. I'm disappointed that you took it as an opportunity to snipe. Would you rather that I went away? That's not a rhetorical question. I've been polite and tried my best to present my viewpoint clearly, but if you just want an echo chamber then I don't see the point anymore.
--Cyrus
Posted by: Cyrus McElderry at June 06, 2006 12:21 PM (eMGg4)
11
Cyrus, I was pointing out that we are creating a new Greatest Generation that is being under-recognized as heroes because politics have become more important to some than either human liberty or patriotism.
If you find that my stating what I hold to be a self-evident fact as "sniping" then it is indeed your right as an American to be offended and go elsewhere if you so desire. I welcome people of other viewpoints to debate but beg no one to stay or go.
If I sound a bit snippy, it's because I just had my lunchbreak and made the mistake of scanning through a comment thread at the Democratic Underground.
It's enough to sicken anyone.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at June 06, 2006 12:46 PM (g5Nba)
12
CY -- I read too much into your reply to me then. I was thin skinned there.
First let me point something out to you Boomers who resent being lumped in with other Boomers. You can talk about women, blacks, Jews, Boomers, or anyone else as a group. There's nothing wrong with this if you treat members of that group as individuals, right? What you are asking for is political correctness.
The right has lost its way. The greatness of the Republican party is in personal responsibility; a man should be judged by his accomplishments, not his birth, and the cream should rise to the top. Look at Bush: his character was never tested. He never learned a trade. He was a playboy for most of his life. He'd be nobody now except for his birth. On this very day he is pushing for legislation that will allow him, Paris Hilton, Mary Cheney, etc to inherit millions of dollars that they didn't earn tax free. These people don't want the cream to rise, they want aristocracy. As an American nothing gripes my ass like an aristocrat.
Bush wanted war but didn't have the guts to do it right: a draft and a wartime tax. It's a bedrock conservative principle that you don't pay for wars on credit. How long will these guys get away with the crazy notion that you lower taxes to raise revenue? How many times has he raised the debt ceiling now? Would you let your children do that with their credit cards? Shinseki was absolutely right about too few troops. Bush Sr was a war hero and an amazingly accomplished person; he knew that the aftermath of toppling Saddam would be a nightmare. Bush Jr. thought he was done in 2003. He'll be Mr. Mission Accomplished for the duration of recorded history.
The right is eager to attack Clinton and Gore and Kerry as losers. However each of them worked hard all their lives. Clinton has not much backbone, but he is a self-made man, and as president he was an effective administrator and diplomat; Bush is neither of these things.
You want to think that Bush's "principles" or "moral compass" is his saving grace. Here's his principles: yesterday he denounced gay marriage to try and score some points with religious groups. Here's his "instincts": he attacks a secular country in a war on Islamic fascism, while Iran really is building WMD and Iraq wasn't a threat to anyone in the world.
You all can complain that I'm not supporting the troops, but this isn't true. I don't know what it means for them to win at this point. I don't see much indication of the Iraqis pursuing democracy, especially compared to the enthusiasm they have in killing eachother. All we can do now is stay in control so that Shia don't take over. Wouldn't be better off now if we could engage Iran millitarily?
We're constructing permanents bases in Iraq. How do you square this with building a democracy? The administration clearly doesn't intend to leave.
As usual thanks for hosting and considering my opinions CY.
Best,
Cyrus
Posted by: Cyrus McElderry at June 06, 2006 01:59 PM (eMGg4)
13
We're constructing permanents bases in Iraq. How do you square this with building a democracy? The administration clearly doesn't intend to leave.Kind of like those permanant bases that we still have in Germany and Japan, where democracy clearly never took root...
Posted by: marc at June 06, 2006 03:28 PM (oLZks)
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Cyrus- I don't resent Jeff 1's lumping me with the Boomers who gave us MTV and the illegal immigrant flood. I wanted him to know that not all of us Boomers are of that stripe and to know that it was the WW II generation parents that are at least partly responsible for those Boomers being the way they are. I should have put a smiley face at the end of my sentence about not appreciating being lumped with Bill and Hillary, so everyone would understand that I am not resentful or brooding, but merely don't want Jeff and his generation to think all Boomers are like them- ie: Viet Nam Vets, and Reagan voters don't appreciate being thought of that way :-) Bill and Hillary are, in my opinion, self serving narcissists and not the kind of people I was raised to respect, admire or emmulate. I couldn't follow the rest of your post, it didn't seem to logically follow my earlier post.
Respectfully,
Jim P
Posted by: Jim P at June 06, 2006 03:45 PM (bgRAn)
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What are you talking about? Patton DIDN'T INVADE NORMANDY. He invaded North Africa, Siciliy and came into Europe well after D-Day, but on D-Day he was in Britian as part of a ruse to make the Nazis think he was going to lead a bigger invasion at Calais.
Posted by: Radcliffe at June 06, 2006 04:25 PM (2TFAz)
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Jeff is RIGHT. The Baby Boomers aren't worth the crap that came out of the ass-holes of those men who died. So that you could lament about your present day problems and woes. Patton would have been cashiered out of the service by the likes of KERRY, CLINTON, KENNEDY, DURBON, etc, etc..
I'd like to kick the ass of the journalist who made it known that Marines killed civilians in Iraq. We had the same moaning during the Vietnam War. Who cares that a few civilian Iraqis died because of combat. Who cares? I DON'T...Cry babies. That's all you are. That's all you'll be. I was born during that "Depression".
Posted by: Tony at June 06, 2006 05:12 PM (Ffvoi)
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Radcliffe, I'm not sure what point your comment has.
At this moment in history, Patton commanded both the First and Third U.S. Armies in England.
The First Army was entirely fictional, but the Germans didn't know this. The threat of Patton invading France at Calais froze 18 German divisions in the region for almost two months. At this moment in time, deception was his primary mission.
He also had the very secret, very real command of the Third Army, which broke out of the Normandy hedgerows on August 1 as part of Operation Cobra.
Patton did give this speech, his most famous, prior to the invasion of Normandy. I'm not quite sure of your point.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at June 06, 2006 05:27 PM (0fZB6)
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Folks, I'd like to remind you that this is a "G-rated" blog, despite this rather rare entry where the profanity in the main post was a matter of historical record.
Please refrain from language that would keep posts and comments from being "work-safe."
Thank you.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at June 06, 2006 05:31 PM (0fZB6)
19
IF OLD 'BLOOD & GUTS' WERE ALIVE TODAY, THE CONFLICT IN AFGHANISTAN & IRAQ WOULD BE OVER.
Posted by: RALPH BARBER at June 06, 2006 05:34 PM (x8usJ)
20
With the exception of LT.General Mattis,most of the military has way too many perfumed princes and princes who fit Patton's description of weenification right now,we have em' in Congress,Both parties,and all of our government entities,and they have too much influence inside our schools as well,as some have posted they would've tried to force him out,anyway,for saying words such as this,too bad we don't have anybody saying that to those dingies in Washington because they need to hear these comments too.
Posted by: Lisa Gilliam at June 06, 2006 06:44 PM (IKZ20)
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CY, thanks for posting this. =) I had read it once before and almost forgot how good it was. It must have been amazing to hear it.
Cyrus-
I think you must be talking about a Kerry and Gore from an alternate dimension.
Kerry married two wealthy women; it's debatable that he's ever worked at anything, except marrying money.
Gore's father was a well known political figure (and bigot), and certainly had many of the same advantages that you ascribe to President Bush.
As for Bill Clinton, he may have come from a somewhat 'broken' home, but making an insane ROI in futures and the whole Madison Guaranty/ fundraising/Whitewater property buy-in smacks a bit of elitism, don't you think?
As for your statement that people like the President want an aristocracy, that's just plain silly. The top 50% or so of wage earners pay a whopping 95%+ of the taxes. Something like 83 or 84% of all taxes are paid by the top 25%. You know those top 50% of all wage earners include middle America as well as well as small business owners, right? Good GOD the wealthy get reamed with taxes and funny enough, they take the LEAST from the government; gripe at Congress because it spends money as if it grows on trees.
As for the President being a diplomat and leader, if the people I have to play footsie with are Putin and Chirac, pardon me if I pass on the 'diplomat' part of the job description. Being a 'diplomat' doesn't necessary mean being effective.
Funny thing about Iraq, too... they manage to keep making milestones toward democracy. Shaky ground sometimes, but it's progress. This is a perfect example of why I get frustrated with libs; they have short attention spans. When the next new shiny object comes in to view, you turn your attention there and eschew the previous shiny object and say it was rusty, inferior and generally defective; they expect everything to be quick and perfect. How do you take decades of tyranny and dysfunction and turn a country around on a dime? It's not possible; the former Soviet satellite states are still battling with separatists, corruption and scandals and it's been 15 years.
Your tantalizing comment hinting that libs see Iran as a threat to be dealt with is a red herring; if that is the case, why aren't they all lined up saying we should carpet bomb Iran's enrichment facilities to the stone age? If 'dealing with Iran' is the right thing to do, then we should do something, shouldn't we?
As for Iraq not being a threat to anyone in the world, you forgot the millions of Iraqis... or don't they count? Didn't Saddam gas his own people? Didn't he host a terrorist camp near Salman Pak? Wasn't Zarqawi enjoying the Iraqi weather for a while? I try to not wait to be swarmed with bees before I destroy the nest. Taking out Saddam was the right thing to do.
Posted by: linlithgow at June 06, 2006 09:33 PM (pd+a8)
22
My respect for Patton.
He recognized the Soviet menace, then made the mistake of LETTING IT BE KNOWN publicly that he was willing, nay EAGER, to stop that menace NOW!
They pulled him out of the war.
We let USSR fester for another 40 years, meanwhile killing another 10-20 million of its own (and other) citizens...
My respect for Patton!
Posted by: Karridine at June 06, 2006 09:47 PM (JofWr)
23
I agree with most everything that I've read here, except the part about the killing of civilians in Iraq. Who cares if a few civilians get killed? I do. Or should I say 'murdered'? I'm not talking about the little shavers in that other town where there had also been reports of a massacre, but where in fact some loving Iraqi moms and dads thought it prudent to have their kids in the same house where an Al-Qaida puke was being harbored-- and Puff the Magic Dragon got called in to entertain. No. That stuff happens.
But to shoot a little kid in cold blood, anywhere? If any of our guys did that, I say volunteer 'em to be beheaded. Do Americans do such things? Hell, yes. William Calley should have been executed for what he did in Viet Nam. Did it happen in WWII and we just didn't read about it? Yep. Pops was a grunt in the 9th Infantry...humped N. Africa, Sicily, France, The Hurtgen...and he tells of a guy they found was volunteering all the time for prisoner escort...but the Germans weren't showing up in the rear.
So, are some of us like the murdering terrorist scum that seem to be running 98% of the "cradle of civilization"? Yes. But damn few, and the fewer, the better. You shoot a child in cold blood around me, brother, there'd better be someone in between us who thinks you deserve a fair trial.
Posted by: SgtRock at June 06, 2006 11:18 PM (J/2LK)
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Linlithgow --
Kerry married two wealthy women
So?
it's debatable that he's ever worked at anything, except marrying money.
Not so! He went to Nam, was an activist, then passed the bar and worked for years as a humble prosecutor, then senator.
Gore's father was a well known political figure (and bigot), and certainly had many of the same advantages that you ascribe to President Bush.
Sure, Kerry was born rich too. Gore is working hard now on global warming, because he feels that is the highest use of his life. My point was that Bush's resume is pathetic in comparison to these other men.
As for Bill Clinton, he may have come from a somewhat 'broken' home, but making an insane ROI in futures and the whole Madison Guaranty/ fundraising/Whitewater property buy-in smacks a bit of elitism, don't you think?
Look I don't feel strongly about Clinton. He was a Rhodes Scholar, probably the highest academic honor. He lost money in Whitewater I thought? Anyway to this day I don't understand what he did there. He was never charged with anything, and it sure wasn't for lack of trying. He is much closer to the American idea of the ambitious man rising to the top than Bush is.
As for your statement that people like the President want an aristocracy, that's just plain silly. The top 50% or so of wage earners pay a whopping 95%+ of the taxes.
I don't understand your point, not at all.
Good GOD the wealthy get reamed with taxes and funny enough, they take the LEAST from the government
No they don't. They pay 20% by and large, that's what cap gains and dividends and interest are now. Warren Buffet complains that his secretary has a higher tax bracket than he does. You appear to be grossly misinformed. Do you like having a higher tax rate than Paris Hilton? It gripes my... hindquarters.
Being a 'diplomat' doesn't necessary mean being effective.
Okay...
Funny thing about Iraq, too... they manage to keep making milestones toward democracy. Shaky ground sometimes, but it's progress.
The elections are encouraging, but as I said I'm convinced that the Shias and Sunnis are so inimical to eachother that I can't see them trusting eachother enough to have effective leadership.
This is a perfect example of why I get frustrated with libs; they have short attention spans. When the next new shiny object comes in to view, you turn your attention there and eschew the previous shiny object and say it was rusty, inferior and generally defective; they expect everything to be quick and perfect.
I'm not a liberal, but your characterization of liberals is puerile. It's no less tiresome than when liberals say "conservatives are heartless".
How do you take decades of tyranny and dysfunction and turn a country around on a dime? It's not possible; the former Soviet satellite states are still battling with separatists, corruption and scandals and it's been 15 years.
You're right. However, the administration told us that we were invading Iraq because they had WMD and were willing to use them on us. I'm fine to with asking our soldiers to fight under those conditions. If they had said, we need to sacrifice our youth and untold billions to bring democracry to Iraq, I would have said, take a hike. I wish the people of Iraq well, but I couldn't look into the eyes of a young soldier and say, go risk your life to help these people. This is especially tragic now IMO, as I can't envision what success would look like there. The problems in Saddam's Iraq were not our fault.
Your tantalizing comment hinting that libs see Iran as a threat to be dealt with is a red herring; if that is the case, why aren't they all lined up saying we should carpet bomb Iran's enrichment facilities to the stone age? If 'dealing with Iran' is the right thing to do, then we should do something, shouldn't we?
Again I don't generally speak for liberals. I do think we should do something about Iran. I guess I'm not following you here.
As for Iraq not being a threat to anyone in the world, you forgot the millions of Iraqis... or don't they count? Didn't Saddam gas his own people? Didn't he host a terrorist camp near Salman Pak? Wasn't Zarqawi enjoying the Iraqi weather for a while? I try to not wait to be swarmed with bees before I destroy the nest. Taking out Saddam was the right thing to do.
Sure, Saddam is the worst manifestation of humanity, sure. But he WASN'T a threat to anyone when we attacked. Charles Duelfer, Bush's man to run the WMD investigation, said, "We were all wrong." You guys seem to think it's okay that Bush made a mistake. It's not, he screwed up tremendously. Bin Laden wants to force moderate Muslims pick sides, and that's exactly what the invasion of Iraq is forcing.
Posted by: Cyrus McElderry at June 07, 2006 11:31 AM (T8RbL)
25
Marc --
Kind of like those permanant bases that we still have in Germany and Japan, where democracy clearly never took root...
That is an interesting point. However there wasn't an insurgency in either of those cases. There are lots of people in Iraq who view our troops as religiously unclean and so forth. It is not at all obvious that the eventual government of Iraq will in fact want our troops to stay on. Clearly this isn't something the administration is planning on. The figure I heard was 14 permanent bases.
Posted by: Cyrus McElderry at June 07, 2006 11:36 AM (T8RbL)
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Cyrus,
Some interesting points, but you're wrong on the last post.
There was an insurgency in Germany that lasted quite a while and actually caused some real problems. Good ol' History Channel.
As for the next "Greatest Generation". I couldn't agree more. The men and women I served with were some of the bravest, most honorable people I will ever have the privilage of knowing. Not perfect mind you, as noone is, but truly Great all the same. I have complete faith in our future if people of this caliber still volunteer.
Just my 2 cents...
Posted by: rick at June 07, 2006 05:46 PM (cU7n5)
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Last, first. No, there wasn't a real insurgency in Germany, though there had been plans for one. From what I last read about it, a total of either one or zero people were killed by it, the the one possible was a German Mayor. I forget the name of the operation.
But now on to real meat. Cyrus, Cyrus, Cyrus. Bush had no resume? Governor of the second biggest state in the country (I bet he'd governed more "constituent hours" than Clinton had when he went to DC)? Yale grad? Prosperous business leader? (I know, the left sees business as a necessary evil to support the government, but most of us out here know that it's business and not Uncle Sugar that creates wealth.)
No, his IQ isn't up there with, say, Ann Coulter's (and I dare you to read her rez and tell me she ain't wicked smahhhht) and as an Engrishi teacher I can't condone his massacre of my mother tongue, but, hey, who's perfect?
Clinton is a bright fellow, but he's nobody's genius. Jimmy Carter was probably the smartest of our recent presidents, and look what he did to us! Check that--look what he's still doing to us! His greatest legacy will be having bought North Korea the time to get nuke weapons. In spite of having been privy to what a LA-LA-land NK really is (as was I, during and after the Carter admin) and the fact that they had adhered to no agreement of substance EVER, he stuck his beak in in the name of peace just as Clinton was finally going to lay the hammer down on their nuke program, and got them TO SIGN AN AGREEMENT! Which they broke, and when the jig was up said, "Oops. We lied. So spank us." So when airy-fairy Seattle goes up in smoke some day, thank that very intelligent man for it. I'll take Reagan and common sense to a Rhodes Scholar or a Naval Academy/GaTech/Union College grad and leftist government any day.
You're right...Saddam wasn't a real threat when we attacked...and he could have proved it by letting the inspectors do their jobs. Of course, when a tape of one of his cabinet meetings--during which he admitted the plan was to just wait the inspectors out and start up when they leave--surfaced last year, it got very little play in your side's media. Of course, given Saddam's unblemished past (hmmm...not many infidels were among the million-plus who died during the Iran-Iraq war, nor were many infidels gassed in Kurdistan, nor were any infidel women raped or kidnapped from Kuwait)we should have known that he would allow his country to go to war with a country that had, a decade earlier (i.e., back when we actually believed a Soviet-equipped army was worth a crap) beaten him in a hundred hours...just to prove how misunderstood he was!
That said, I say screw it, let the United Nations take Iraq over...they wanted it so badly. I b'lieve we can get our troops out of there pretty quickly. Have them face north, do a right face, and march.
And Gore...a hard-oh-so-hardworking man. He's hard at work on his 2008 campaign. Or save the world...from all of those evil Republicans who think there should be actual debate on the subject of global warming, rather than Michael Moore...I mean, Al Gore just telling us that he has researched it and no real scientists disagree (if they were real scientists, after all, they would agree), telling us all we've got to do is screw up our economy while allowing China, Korea and India to keep pumping crap into the air...and it'll be Peace Train time, baby.
Posted by: SgtRock at June 07, 2006 11:18 PM (J/2LK)
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SgtRock -- Dangit I'm a conservative. I'll play "token liberal" for today only.
Bush had no resume? Governor of the second biggest state in the country (I bet he'd governed more "constituent hours" than Clinton had when he went to DC)? Yale grad? Prosperous business leader?
My point was that his resume doesn't display personal initiative, and in that sense it is weak. He became Governor because of his birth. He went to Yale because of his birth. He wasn't a prosperous business leader. He failed trying to lead two oil companies and got bailed out by his daddy's friends. He made his fortune by selling the Rangers after the taxpayers built them a new stadium under his watch. Loverly.
Clinton is a bright fellow, but he's nobody's genius. Jimmy Carter was probably the smartest of our recent presidents, and look what he did to us!
My point about Clinton was that he demonstrated far more personal initiative than Bush did, I mentioned the Rhodes Scholar thing as a way that he worked hard to distinguish himself. I agree about Carter.
it got very little play in your side's media.
IMO the biggest problem with the media is that it's owned by people like Rupert Murdoch and Sun Myung Moon. I grant there are lots of liberal elitists working in the media, but as a problem they are a distant second. There's an element of city mouse/country mouse here too.
let the United Nations take Iraq over
I don't think any of the UN members are eager to send in troops, for Kofi Annan or George W. Bush.
And Gore...a hard-oh-so-hardworking man. He's hard at work on his 2008 campaign. Or save the world...from all of those evil Republicans who think there should be actual debate on the subject of global warming, rather than Michael Moore...I mean, Al Gore just telling us that he has researched it and no real scientists disagree (if they were real scientists, after all, they would agree), telling us all we've got to do is screw up our economy while allowing China, Korea and India to keep pumping crap into the air...and it'll be Peace Train time, baby.
Why do you hate Gore so much? I don't want him as my president but I believe he's a good man, and he does work hard.
I grew up around a university and could tell you stories about liberalism that would have you rolling on the floor. Not once did I ever hear anyone wanting to ban Christmas or cripple the economy or etc etc. People like Limbaugh and Coulter say these things to get people excited.
There isn't a debate about global warming. This is not a media elitist thing, or an Al Gore wants to ruin the economy thing. There is a terrific preponderence of scientists who haven't any doubt that it's real. It seems the ultimate in liberal mushy thinking simply to ignore the problem.
Best,
Cyrus
Posted by: Cyrus McElderry at June 08, 2006 01:28 AM (T8RbL)
29
Good GOD the wealthy get reamed with taxes and funny enough, they take the LEAST from the government
No they don't. They pay 20% by and large, that's what cap gains and dividends and interest are now. Warren Buffet complains that his secretary has a higher tax bracket than he does. You appear to be grossly misinformed. Do you like having a higher tax rate than Paris Hilton? It gripes my... hindquarters.
Ask Governor Corzine of NJ how he kept all his money while working for the stock firm..Also the new Secretary of the Tresaury. How did he make all that money and kept it. They pay nothing thats close to what you pay.
Posted by: Tony Racemus at June 10, 2006 11:37 PM (wZLWV)
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March 13, 2006
Choices
Aurora, or
Batesville?
I turn 35 today. Funerary contributions are appreciated...
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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35? Hell, I have socks that old!!!
Posted by: Retired Spy at March 13, 2006 07:49 AM (rhncG)
2
Happy Birthday! Oh, I'd go with Batesville.
Posted by: seawitch at March 13, 2006 09:25 AM (k2vnA)
3
Happy Birthday.
Almost enough candles to worry about the smoke alarm.
Posted by: ArthurStone at March 13, 2006 11:00 AM (iI6rf)
4
Suck it up. I've got 20 years on you and was already 3 years into a 25 year run in the USMC when you born. You've got some amazing times ahead of you. Enjoy them and Happy Birthday!
Posted by: USMCVet at March 13, 2006 12:48 PM (oQofX)
5
Hey Old Timer! I turned 32 yesterday! Happy Birthday!
Marshall Neal
Bakersfield, CA
Posted by: Marshall neal at March 13, 2006 01:14 PM (Qa0tQ)
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Have a good one CY. I go over the hill this year - you know - 50!
Posted by: Specter at March 13, 2006 04:14 PM (ybfXM)
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Happy Birthday, CY! I was 35 once, and my 85 year-old mother confirms it!
Posted by: Tom TB at March 13, 2006 05:05 PM (y6n8O)
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Happy birthday, young 'un! I wouldn't order that casket just yet.....
Posted by: lady redhawk at March 13, 2006 06:09 PM (SkAw4)
Posted by: Ray Robison at March 13, 2006 07:45 PM (4joLu)
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Wait until you hit 42, cowboy.
In the words of Monty Python...
"I'm not dead yet..."
Happy Birthday!
Posted by: WB at March 13, 2006 08:13 PM (v7W1e)
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I thought Monty Python's words were:
"It's a Norwegian Blue and it is sleeping!"
Posted by: Specter at March 13, 2006 08:48 PM (ybfXM)
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More Python Words...
"If you hadn't nailed it to the perch he'd be pushing up daisies by now..."
Posted by: WB at March 13, 2006 11:19 PM (v7W1e)
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I should have YOUR problems!
Thirty-fve...it was a very good year.
Happy Birthday, 'KID'.
Posted by: Maggie at March 14, 2006 08:01 AM (QKXCW)
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Young pup- by the time you need a casket they will be converting us into dog food.
Posted by: olddawg at March 16, 2006 09:31 AM (7nc0l)
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Cowboy up! Jeepers, I hit 50 this past October. You don't hear
me whining, do you? Okay, just there, now that
was a whine, but nowhere else!
Lord knows I haven't the stamina for long-term whining anymore. Hmmm ... wonder if I can stay awake for the evening news ... hmmm...
Posted by: benning at March 18, 2006 06:12 PM (GXvlP)
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• Use caution when driving, operating machinery, or performing other hazardous activities. Clonazepam will cause drowsiness and may cause dizziness. If you experience drowsiness or dizziness, avoid these activities.
• Use alcohol cautiously. Alcohol may increase drowsiness and dizziness while you are taking Clonazepam. Alcohol may also increase your risk of having a seizure.
• Do not stop taking Clonazepam suddenly. This could cause seizures and withdrawal symptoms. Talk to your doctor if you need to stop treatment with Clonazepam.
What is Clonazepam?
• Clonazepam is in a class of drugs called benzodiazepines. Clonazepam affects chemicals in your brain that may become unbalanced and cause seizures.
• Clonazepam is used to treat seizures.
• Clonazepam may also be used for purposes other than those listed in this medication guide.
Posted by: CLONAZEPAM at April 08, 2006 11:39 AM (xOmTJ)
17
I am a Wisconsin resident who is absolutely ashamed of my communist senator. I relaize he wants to be President, but the price he is willing to pay is startling. Can you good people imagine compromising the ability of your President's Intel gathering in order to gain some headlines for yourself? Ultimately though, I love his methods. It proves beyond any reasonable doubt that the dems CANNOT be trusted with national security. Geezzzz.
Posted by: Jim Hellen at May 12, 2006 11:06 PM (uVx2d)
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January 16, 2006
Allergic to Heroes
"He was not a saint, he was just another human being."
So were the words of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Georgia as quoted in this CNN article about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. That is all that should be said (and all I will quote from this sad article) about the foibles about a man who's legacy we commemorate today.
Sadly, some people are allergic to heroes.
The deeds of a brave and noble man are no longer allowed to exist on their own merits without being provided "context" by those who have provided nothing else with their lives. One can only assume that Steven Spielberg is working on a script now lionizing James Earl Ray.
Pretender Kings will trade upon Dr. King's sacrifice for their personal glory, delivering speeches designed to put the spotlight on them, not the Reverend Doctor and his message. Let's remember Dr. King for the good he did and what he accomplished, not for how others would use his memory for their purposes.
More About Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The King Center
The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute
Time Magazine 100 article
Wikipedia entry
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as Bennett pointed out on this morning's radio program, King's speeches were filled with Biblical references and metaphors, with a certainty that God Himself had a plan to solve the problems of America and the world, with optimistic talk of the greatness of America... in short, all the things that King's bloody-shirt successors have totally forgotten in their race for self-promotion and enrichment.
And let's not forget "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character".
Let's build a memorial to him, but don't you dare expect me to conform to what he SAID.
Posted by: dave at January 16, 2006 11:57 AM (VnUb/)
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Dave:
You say, "Let's build a memorial to him, but don't you dare expect me to conform to what he SAID."
What on earth is THAT supposed to mean? Was it a rather feeble attempt to cast aspersions on those who are now 'talking the talk' but never did 'walk the walk?'
Posted by: Retired Spy at January 16, 2006 01:57 PM (AaKND)
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CY-
I'll bite.
Why would we assume Steven Spielberg is writing a film script 'lionizing' James Earl Ray?
Illuminate us.
Posted by: ArthurStone at January 16, 2006 02:33 PM (hGNke)
4
I believe CY's item could just 'possibly' be a bit of sarcasm in light of the way Spielberg rewrote and sugar-coated the history a wee bit on the Israeli retribution for the Palestinian butchery of innocent athletes in Munich. Ya think, Artie?
I like CT's definition of 'sar
chasm' ....
Posted by: Retired Spy at January 16, 2006 02:48 PM (AaKND)
5
RS, you would be correct. That was a
Munich reference.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at January 16, 2006 03:52 PM (2lbsG)
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It is a shame how many racial hucksters have taken the mantle of MLK Jr.
Posted by: Shoprat at January 16, 2006 04:55 PM (FKD+M)
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Retired Spy & CY-
Seen the film?
Posted by: ArthurStone at January 16, 2006 04:56 PM (hGNke)
Posted by: ArthurStone at January 17, 2006 04:17 PM (UnGrU)
9
or you're being ignored, and rightfully so. ;-)
Posted by: Toby928 at January 17, 2006 06:28 PM (ATbKm)
10
Both actually.
They didn't see the movie and they don't like me pointing out that obvious fact.
Posted by: ArthurStone at January 19, 2006 02:47 PM (3StSI)
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December 07, 2005
November 11, 2005
Thirteen Folds
Our church was honored this past weekend when three American soldiers presented our congregation with a flag in recognition of the small acts we have performed for our military at home and aboard. As they presented the flag, the sergeant leading the detail explained the significance of each fold.
Via US History.org:
- The first fold of our flag is a symbol of life.
- The second fold is a symbol of our belief in the eternal life.
- The third fold is made in honor and remembrance of the veteran departing our ranks who gave a portion of life for the defense of our country to attain a peace throughout the world.
- The fourth fold represents our weaker nature, for as American citizens trusting in God, it is to Him we turn in times of peace as well as in times of war for His divine guidance.
- The fifth fold is a tribute to our country, for in the words of Stephen Decatur, "Our country, in dealing with other countries,
may she always be right; but it is still our country, right or wrong." - The sixth fold is for where our hearts lie. It is with our heart that we pledge llegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it tands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
- The seventh fold is a tribute to our Armed Forces, for it is through the Armed Forces that we protect our country and our flag against all her enemies, whether they be found within or without the boundaries of our republic.
- The eighth fold is a tribute to the one who entered in to the valley of the shadow of death, that we might see the light of day, and to honor mother, for whom it flies on Mother's Day.
- The ninth fold is a tribute to womanhood; for it has been through their faith, love, loyalty and devotion that the character of the men and women who have made this country great have been molded.
- The tenth fold is a tribute to father, for he, too, has given his sons and daughters for the defense of our country since they were first born.
- The eleventh fold, in the eyes of a Hebrew citizen, represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon, and glorifies, in their eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
- The twelfth fold, in the eyes of a Christian citizen,
represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in their eyes, God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost. - When the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost, reminding us of our national motto, "In God we Trust."
A sincere thanks to all of you who have served our nation's military.
Your sacrifices are not forgotten.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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Thank you so much for posting this: I didn't know anything about it! I'm passing it around to my blog-buddies....
-- R'cat
CatHouse Chat
Posted by: Romeocat at November 11, 2005 09:17 AM (k1vkj)
2
According to
Snopes
The American flag isn't folded in this manner because the thirteen folds correspond to the original thirteen states, or because the folding produces a shape resembling a cocked hat, or because each of the folds has a special symbolic meaning. The flag is folded this way simply because it provides a dignified ceremonial touch that distinguishes folding a flag from folding an ordinary object such as a bedsheet, and because it results a visually pleasing, easy-to-handle shape. That this process requires thirteen folds is coincidental, not the product of design.
Posted by: snopes at November 12, 2005 01:01 AM (vLrl+)
3
Perhaps the Snopes version is correct... perhaps not. They provide no support for their contention, and they
do occasionally get things wrong.
They are, after all human.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at November 12, 2005 09:41 PM (0fZB6)
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October 25, 2005
One More Stop to Make
Good luck and Godspeed on your final journey, Mrs. Parks.
Rosa Parks, American Hero, dead at 92.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
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Thank god for the liberals in the Congress and Supreme Court for ending that despicable system. Otherwise, Ms. Parks would probably still be in jail. Remember: it was conservatives who opposed civil rights. Sure would be nice to hear you all admit how wrong you were.
Posted by: joe at October 25, 2005 10:27 AM (HDulo)
2
Ummm, Joe - Republicans passed the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, which were opposed by the Democrats. The first black men elected to the congress and the senate were on a Republican ticket. The civil rights act of 1866 was passed by - you guessed it - Republicans, as were the subsequent 1870, 71 and 75 acts when Democrats kept going around the rules. But thats not what you were talking about, right?
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 - thats what you meant, I'm sure, since it was around the time of Parks. The act was almost 10 years after Parks famed protest on the bus, but better late than never. Yes, I'm sure I was very wrong to support that act 19 years before my birth, but hey - what can a single-cell organism do? In both the House and Senate, Democrats voted in the 60th percentiles to pass the act, while Republicans voted in the 80th percentile. So, let me get this straight - who opposed civil rights?
It would be nice to hear Democrats come out and say "We now garner the most black votes because of FDR's work projects and entitlement programs, which bribed the black community in a time when the president was unwilling to move forward on civil rights."
Posted by: Josh at October 25, 2005 02:05 PM (S6Wcf)
3
Nice misdirection, Joe.
Keep in mind that it was Democrats and Dixiecrats (every single one a Democrat, though Helms and Thurmond later become Republicans) that tried to block civil rights legislation, while Republicans forced it through.
But that's okay, Joe. Liberal Democrats had their revenge with LBJ's Great Society, almost utterly destroying the black family unit.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 25, 2005 02:48 PM (g5Nba)
4
Notice I said "conservatives"? Not Republicans? Sort of makes you look evasive huh? I understand - uncomfortable truths and all. And I was talking about the 1957 bill, and "you conservatives" generically. We're still waiting for that apology, btw.
Posted by: joe at October 25, 2005 03:01 PM (HDulo)
5
I can't say much about what happened when my father was in junior high, nor will I apologize for something that occurred decades before my birth. I will not apologize for something I didn't do.
But what is your excuse for pushing
today for the same kind of social programs that destroyed the black middle class and left so many mired in poverty? The Liberal social policies pursued for the past four decades up to this very second have done far more to destroy black American families than anything Bull Conner could have ever dreamed of.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 25, 2005 03:45 PM (g5Nba)
6
How about saying, "Conservatives were wrong to have opposed civil rights laws"? Especially since you want me to do something similar in regard to liberals and public assistance programs.
Lyndon Johnson said something about "You don't take a man who has just shed his chains and put him in a race and expect him to compete with all the other runners." So why should 400 years of being treated like dirt not take a few decades to be erased? Blaming government programs for the fact that blacks aren't equal yet is just a convenient excuse.
Just how well those programs work may be debateable. But saying a bunch of well-meaning people trying to conoct ways to help are worse than Bull Connor, who probably wanted blacks lynched, is just despicable. It is the sort of comment that just shows how reprehensibily clueless conservatives are on racial issues. I wonder where you would have stood in the 1950s. And that Bull Connor comment IS something you could apologize for.
Posted by: joe at October 25, 2005 04:52 PM (HDulo)
7
Just how well those programs work may be debateable. But saying a bunch of well-meaning people trying to conoct ways to help are worse than Bull Connor, who probably wanted blacks lynched, is just despicable.
Ever heard the phrase, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions"? You created for blacks a living hell, and then try to excuse yourself for your near genocidal incompetence.
Pathetic.
Hundreds of societies far older and more entrenched have changed far more radically in far shorter periods of time than has black America. Perhaps if liberals and faux race-baiting "leaders" like Al Sharpton would get out of the wya, black Americans would quit thinking of themselves as victims and start appliying their God-given talents.
You ascribe to Connor lynching while admitting you cannot prove your charge, and you think someone owes
you an apology?
The phrase, "When hell freezes over" comes to mind.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 25, 2005 05:29 PM (0fZB6)
8
You're DEFENDING Bull Connor's racial views??! You are truly off the deep-end.
And handing someone food stamps is pretty f'ing far from "genocide." Hyperbole much?
Instead of saying people are playing "victim", maybe you should buy a clue. Just because life is dandy for you and your white male friends are doing fine doesn't mean it is for everyone.
You are a dangerously insensitive person, as well as someone who has not a clue about reality. The phrase "let them eat cake" comes to mind with you.
And yes, letting a facist like Bull Connor off the hook like that is worthy of an apology. Unless you think siccing dogs on people is the American way. You probably do.
Posted by: joe at October 25, 2005 05:57 PM (HDulo)
9
Joe, instead of trying to divert attention away from the facts that well-intentioned, yet seriously misguided, people have crippled the ability of a race to think and act for themselves, how about you address the issue. Give some examples of how food stamps and welfare don't lead to an entitlement complex. Defend your position that some blacks don't jump at the chance to play the victim, and that leaders like Sharpton don't contribute to that. Can you do that without resorting to an ad hominem attacks in 9 of 11 sentences you wrote in the previous rebuke?
Posted by: Josh at October 25, 2005 06:11 PM (S6Wcf)
10
You say stop diverting attention, yet you continue to do it (my original post was about conservatives having a shameful history in respect to Rosa Parks, and you are still saying, 'Well, how about now...").
And you ask me to admit a little, but you are so incapable of making any concession to reason that you wrote that ridiculous defense of Bull Connor against my supposed "slander." If you are so unwilling to engage in reasonable debate, why should anyone take you seriously? (By the way, that you would even have the stomach to have written that is deeply disturbing. You've got problems, serious problems.)
And as for facts, how about those "hundreds of societies" that have changed "far more radically" in "far shorter" time? If there's hundreds, how about naming, oh, say, 20 or 30?
Don't forget, blacks are the only ethnic group in America subjected to legal bondage and segregation, something that as late as the early 1970s, the President was still dragging his feet about fixing (I refer to Nixon telling people to kill desegregation enforcements efforts on his WH tapes.)
Again, your blindness to reality, and your simplistic retreat into self-help mumbo-jumbo (like some late night tv ad), just show why conservatives are so bad at race relations.
Posted by: joe at October 25, 2005 06:29 PM (HDulo)
11
You're having problems recognizing that whether you intended it or not, your kind destroyed generations of black families, something that racists like Bull Connor never dreamed of. You still hold that you didn't slander Connor, even when the burden of proof is upon you to prove a charge you made. Of crouse, accusation, not proof is all it takes onteh left, isn't it? Sadly, about the only thing you are capable of is name calling, not reasoning.
Your idea of "reasonable debate" is having me apologize for something I didn't do. Sorry, that dog won't hunt. You are the apologist of failed ideologies, not I.
Want 20 or 30 societies that have changed far more radically in a far shorter period of time? In the interest of saving time, can I simply offer up Eastern Europe in the 1990s? Germany in 1945, and again in 1989? Japan at the end of of World War 2? All of known Europe after the Black Death, or societies in the Americas and Far East after encountering Europeans in trade? Societies often change radically, not incrementally.
Of course, understanding history isn't your strong point, is it?
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 25, 2005 07:07 PM (0fZB6)
12
Joe has been tossed; his last post deleted. One
ad hominem too many...
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at October 25, 2005 08:12 PM (0fZB6)
13
Jeez, some people just get all worked up.
Posted by: Josh at October 26, 2005 07:27 PM (S6Wcf)
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September 11, 2005
Nine Eleven Zero Five
The Ground Zero Cross
From September 11 News:
You are looking at what some people believe is a miracle.
Two days after the disaster, a construction worker found several perfectly formed crosses planted upright in a pit in the rubble of the heavily damaged 6 World Trade Center.
The large, cross-shaped metal beams just happened to fall that way when one of the towers collapsed. An FBI chaplain who has spent days at ground zero says he has not seen anything like it on the vast site.
As word of the find has spread at ground zero, exhausted and emotionally overwhelmed rescue workers have been flocking to the site to pray and meditate.
"People have a very emotional reaction when they see it," says the Rev. Carl Bassett, an FBI chaplain. "They are amazed to see something like that in all the disarray. There's no symmetry to anything down there, except those crosses."
God be with those who died on September 11, 2001. God be with their families and friends.
Note: Incredible as it may seem, there are forces on the far left that seek to erase the memory of what was lost that day.
The Far Left has attempted ot hijack the Ground Zero Memorial in lower Manhattan and turn it into a "Blame America First" monument. Don't let them Got to Take Back the Memorial and sign the petition.
Don't let leftists desecrate the memory of "The Flight That Fought Back." Go to Michelle Malkin's to see how a liberal L.A. architect is trying to turn the Flight 93 memorial into a tribute to the terrorists.
Update: John in Carolina finds a touching story of friendship worth dying for in the South Tower.
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Does anybody know if this cross is still there?
I can't believe the ACLU would have allowed it to stand.
Personally, I hope it stands there permanently as part of the memorial. The sight of it brings such comfort.
Posted by: Dorothy at September 11, 2005 05:56 AM (rlTb4)
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Dorothy:
I believe that the cross has been saved for inclusion in the eventual 9/11 memorial/museum. It was removed from the site in a ceremony after the rest of the site was cleared of debris so that reconstruction could proceed.
The Port Authority has said that the cross would be included in the museum/memorial in some fashion.
Posted by: lawhawk at September 11, 2005 05:39 PM (mbJF1)
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NEVER FORGIVE and NEVER FORGET 9-11...
http://texasfredshouse.blogspot.com/
I posted a nice pic memorial there yesterday...
God Bless America...
Posted by: TexasFred at September 11, 2005 05:40 PM (qX3iX)
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Probably you've noticed this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/10/AR2005091001188.html
Forgetting means hard-won lessons will be lost.
http://mistersnitch.blogspot.com/2005/09/our-after-911-site-is-online.html
This is a 5-minute video memorial. No burning buildings, no rubble, no explosions, no speeches, no screeches, no Bin Laden, no bodies. Just a remembrance of some people whose lives were cut short through no fault of their own, with poignant candid snapshots from their lives, accompanied by a musical background.
Posted by: Mr. Snitch! at September 12, 2005 12:40 AM (2CNDQ)
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August 22, 2005
Cindy Sheehan or Gandhi?
"It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct. The mandates have no sanction but that of the last war. Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home."
So who said this, Cindy Sheehan or Mahatma Gandhi.
Hard to tell isn't it?
In 1938, we didn't yet know men like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden.
In 2005 the "anti-war" movement has no such excuse.
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1
It was Mohandas Gandhi who made those remarks.
Remember, Gandhi was a lawyer, educated in Britain, and knew that the Brits would not tolerate the slaughter of Indians. He did say that passive resistance would not have worked against a morally devoid entity like the Nazis, who could not be happier with unarmed people lying down in the street, so that they could just drive over them! I'm sure the Islamo-Facists of today are eagerly awaiting the latest rant from the hate America far Left!
Posted by: Tom T at August 22, 2005 08:06 AM (ywZa8)
2
Just to clarify: Mohandas and Mahatma are one in the
same person. Mahatma is an honorific, meaning "Great Soul."
Posted by: at August 22, 2005 11:14 AM (2cgwG)
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August 05, 2005
60 Years After the Whirlwind
On August 6, 1945, Col. Paul W. Tibbets of the 509th Composite Group took off from Tinian Island hours before sunrise and piloted his B-29 Superfortress
Enola Gay towards Japan. At 8:15 a.m., Mocksville, North Carolina native Major Thomas W. Ferebee pulled a lever and watched the 8,900-pound "Little Boy" fall away towards Hiroshima's Aioi Bridge. 43 seconds later, the world officially entered the nuclear age with a boiling, blinding white flash.
Three-score years have passed since that fateful morning, and the veil of time allows revisionists, apologists, and activists to portray the Japanese people as innocent victims of horrible weapons they didn't deserve, and indeed, many individuals were innocent. Japan, however, was reaping what it had sown in Nanking, Bataan, and course, Pearl Harbor.
While our valued allies today, the military society that dominated Japan sixty years ago was more akin to today's Islamic fundamentalists than most would comfortably admit. Fanatical Japanese soldiers were expected to fight to the death, as were all able-bodied Japanese civilians of any age or sex, many only armed with as little as sharpened sticks.
The planners of the invasion of Japan, code-named Operation Downfall, had constructed a two-pronged assault on the Japanese home islands. The opening assault—Operation Olympic—on the southernmost island of Kyushu was expected to generate 250,000 American casualties just in establishing a foothold in the Japanese mainland. The 790,000 Japanese defenders of Kyushu were expected to die, to the last man.
Operation Coronet, the assault on the main Island of Honshu and the Tokyo Plain, was expected to generate one million American casualties by the fall of 1946. The national slogan was "One Hundred Million Will Die for the Emperor and Nation," and every indication was that many Japanese planned to do just that, as 28 million Japanese had become part of the National Volunteer Combat force, armed with everything from obsolete firearms to bow and arrows, swords and spears.
Tens of millions of millions would have died in a Japanese jihad that would have left shell-shocked American soldiers guarding a shattered landscape, and a savaged nation that might have never recovered.
Millions dead, or 200,000 dead?
Major Ferebee never lost a night of sleep for pulling the lever that dropped "Little Boy" from the belly of the Enola Gay. He shouldn't have.
Update: He really shouldn't have. 1996 Nobel Peace Prize finalist R.J. Rummel calls the American decision to use atomic bombs on Japan "democide" and claims it was mass murder worthy of a war crimes trial.
I responded in his comments:
Dr. Rummel, I posit that you start with a false hypothesis: can you categorically state that all democide—which you define vaguely as “murder by government”—is a crime?
Homicide is discouraged in most situations, and yet, there are legally and morally acceptable times when it is implemented in civil societies. The same can be said for suicide, and for your concept of democide.
The Japanese people—not just the military, but the civilian culture that generated that military—were fanatical in a way we most commonly associate now with Islamofascist suicide bombers. From the well-known kamikaze pilots of the air to civilians equipped with primitive blackpowder satchel charges or even swords and spears, the Japanese people were not civilians in the sense we westerners commonly use. They were valid targets, and were expected by our leadership to provide armed opposition to the death.
You further misstate a truth when you make the claim that bombing the “civilians” of Hiroshima, Tokyo, etc were in violation of the Geneva Conventions. That is wrong on many levels, the first being that the Fourth Geneva Convention that covers the treatment of civilians was not signed until August 12, 1949, almost four years after the Japanese surrendered.
Even if the Fourth Convention has been signed before the war instead of after it, the expected use and training of Japanese “civilians” in attacks against American military units would have likely legally classified them as unlawful combatants according to this exact same Convention, just as the Taliban are today.
According to the Geneva Conventions, lawful combats satisfy four criteria: "(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; [and] (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war."
The Japanese “National Volunteer Combat Force” of 28 million “civilians did not satisfy even one of these four criteria. These “civilians” were expected to fight to the death or commit suicide rather than surrender, as tens of thousands of their countrymen, military and civilian, had done on islands across the Pacific, including civilian men, women, and children.
The People's Handbook of Resistance Combat was distributed by the hundreds of thousands in Japan, and sought to teach Japanese men, women, and children to fight with spears against American soldiers with machine guns. They were preparing for a self-induced genocide for their emperor's honor.
The use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and later Nagasaki, were not war crimes, nor were they examples of genocide, nor were they examples of terrorism, nor were they examples of murder.
It was war, a most horrible war against a fanatical enemy that did not honor the concept of “civilians.” This something you seem determined not to understand in your headlong rush to issue condemnation.
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July 19, 2005
Assaulting the Dead
An American hero died today.
William Westmoreland died in Charleston, SC, at the age of 91. His life was extraordinary by any measure. He was an Eagle Scout who graduated at the top of his class from West Point in 1936, and earned the respect of his soldiers fighting legendary German Filed Marshall Erwin Rommel in North Africa during World War II. He was a colonel by 30, and became a general during the Korean War.
He had the distinct honor of being the superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1960-64, where he will soon be laid to rest.
After West Point, General Westmoreland commanded troops in Vietnam during the controversial years of 1964-1968, became Army Chief of Staff in 1968, and retired in 1972.
He became active in veterans' advocacy, and he visited veterans' groups in all 50 states. He led thousands of his comrades-in-arms in a veterans' march in 1982 to dedicate the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington, DC, calling it, "one of the most emotional and proudest experiences of my life."
This is how he should be remembered, as a soldier who dedicated his life to his country and to his men.
This is how the Washington Post would remember him:
One comment, lifted out of context, spoken out of passion, to tear down an entire career and reduce a man's dedication to his country to partisan politics.
I'd try to explain to the Post that this is not the way to honor someone who dedicated his life to preserving their freedom to say what they want, but that would involve explaining the concepts of duty, honor and loyalty, which would only cause confusion in the newsroom.
Update: The L.A. Times, perhaps predictably, proclaims an equally hate-filled view of General Westmoreland's life with the headline,"A Commander Caught in the Mire of Vietnam" and a lead paragraph that reads:
Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the World War II hero who was later vilified for his leadership of the United States' failed war in Vietnam, died Monday night in Charleston, S.C. He was 91.
Classy.
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1
The Charleston community lost a true patriot last night. We truely mourn his loss.
Posted by: scmommy at July 19, 2005 02:12 PM (b3gbN)
2
The MSM's will give second chances and kudos to pedophiles and murderers, but not to an American hero who fought for freedom. They are beyond clueless, and show that they hate America and the military.
Posted by: William Teach at July 19, 2005 06:47 PM (Pzlrt)
3
Well spoken sir. the MSM remain clueless knaves.
Posted by: Thomas Jackson at July 19, 2005 10:45 PM (hTthA)
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July 02, 2005
The unanimous Declaration
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
I've wondered at times if our forefathers knew the greatness we would achieve and trials and tribulations our nation would undergo in the years since they signed our Declaration of Independence. In our brief history our country has defended itself from all attackers emerging as a stronger more united nation.
There are and always have been those who feel the country should be in heading in a different direction. Only through healthy debate are we able to learn and grow and see all sides of the issues at hand. These different perspectives have allowed our great nation to grow and prosper as the world changes around us and as we change the world. However there are times when it is necessary for us to put our differences aside and take care of the task at hand.
By putting our differences aside we have liberated countries.
By putting our differences aside we have delivered entire continents from the grasp of evil.
By putting our differences aside we have become and shall remain a super power for the world to respect and rely on.
This Fourth of July as you spend time with your friends and family please take a couple of minutes to reflect and say thanks to the sacrifices others have made for our way of life. Take the time to thank someone in our armed forces for protecting our way of life and for helping to spread democracy world wide. Take the time to reflect on what it truly means to be an American.
May all of you have a happy and safe Fourth of July.
Cross posted at phin's blog
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June 06, 2005
D-Day Plus 61 Years
Order of the Day
June 6, 1944
"Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
"Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
"But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
"I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!
"Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Supreme Allied Commander
Allied Expeditionary Force
61 years ago today, 156,000 allied troops from the United States, Grean Britain, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Poland invaded Hitler's "Fortess Europe."
Approximately 10,000 allied soldiers became casualties on D-Day, with 2,500 killed. Between 4,000-9,000 Germans soldiers also became casualties on D-Day.
All told, the Battle of Normandy which began June 6, 1944 led to over 425,000 Allied and German troops killed, wounded, or missing.
Less than one year later, VE-Day--Victory In Europe-- was declared on May 9, 1945.
Please take a moment to remember the brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians on both sides that partipated in the liberation of Europe.
Links:
National D-Day Memorial (US)
D-Day Museum (UK)
National D-Day Museum Foundation (US)
American Experience| D-Day (US)
D-Day, Normandy, and Beyond
Normandy, 1944
Operation Overlord: The Invasion of Fortress Europe
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June 02, 2005
Felt Sponges
“Grandpa, I Love You To Death... But I've Gots Bills To Pay”
Was anyone else more than slightly creeped out by the Felt family's enthusiasm to
cash in on their doddering 91-year-old grandfather's mysterious legacy as Deep Throat before he dies?
...Felt's daughter Joan, who persuaded her 91-year-old father to go public as "Deep Throat," lamented that the Post's Bob Woodward would get all the credit -- and profit--if Felt went to the grave with his secret.
"We could make at least enough money to pay some bills like the debt I've run up for the kids' education," she told Felt, according to the article. "Let's do it for the family."
Yes, you have to love a family that pimps out their pre-mortem grandpa.They might as well be humming some of
Stephen Lynch's
Grandfather
A stroke would be nice
Disease would be cool
I'll scatter his ashes
In my new swimming pool
I'll party with Hef
I'll dine with the Queen
So what say we unplug that machine?
Oh Grandfather, die
Before the fiscal year
Oh Grandfather, I
Wish Kevorkian were here
Oh Grandfather, die
Just take your final bow
Oh Grandfather, die
Family hates you anyhow...
Such behavior should be hardly surprising. Felt simply taught his kids to take the advice he gave to Bob Woodward as Deep Throat.
"Follow the money".
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Footnotes
An excerpt of
John Dean's comments regarding W. Mark Felt, who has recently come forward as the famed informant known for 33 years only as “Deep Throat.”
“I never thought he was in the loop to have the information," John Dean, counsel in Nixon's White House and the government's top informant in the Watergate investigation, told The Associated Press. "How in the world could Felt have done it alone?"
Dean said he couldn't see how Felt, then in charge of the FBI's day-to-day operations, could have had time to rendezvous with reporters in parking garages and leave clandestine messages to arrange meetings. Perhaps FBI agents helped him, Dean suggested.
I don't much care about whether Deep Throat was only W. Mark Felt, or a composite character Woodward and Bernstein made up of several sources. As I mentioned briefly in
Ace's comments last night, a 33-year old story doesn't suddenly become newsworthy simply because a character's name changed. It would hardly matter if Lee Harvey Oswald's real name turned out to be Chippy the Wonder Squirrel; the historical record remains the same, only the footnotes change.
What really matters is that a free press (with help) was able to help rein in criminal behavior at the highest levels of American government. What matters is that in this nation, reporters don't have to fear a knock at the door in the middle of the night if they publish a story the government doesn't like. What matters is that Deep Throat, Woodward, and Bernstein were able to help depose a corrupt government using the truth, the law, and the press instead of a bloody coup. That is the legacy of Watergate.
All the rest is footnotes.
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May 27, 2005
Larks and Poppies
In Flanders Fields
Lt. Col. John McCrae, 1915
In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses row on row
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders Fields.
Remember.
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May 19, 2005
Give Them Equality
Via
CNN:
...In a nearly 15-hourlong committee hearing, the most contentious issue was the role of women in combat.
The language would put into law a Pentagon policy from 1994 that prohibits female troops in all four service branches from serving in units below brigade level whose primary mission is direct ground combat.
"Many Americans feel that women in combat or combat support positions is not a bridge we want to cross at this point," said Rep. John McHugh, R-New York, who sponsored the amendment.
It also allows the Pentagon to further exclude women from units in other instances, while requiring defense officials to notify Congress when opening up positions to women. The amendment replaced narrower language in the bill that applied only to the Army and banned women from some combat support positions.
The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps currently operate under a 10-year-old policy that prohibits women from "direct combat on the ground" but allows the services discretion to open some jobs to women in combat as needed.
"We're not taking away a single prerogative that the services now have," McHugh said.
Democrats opposed the amendment, saying it would tie the hands of commanders who need flexibility during wartime. They accused Republicans of rushing through legislation without knowing the consequences or getting input from the military.
"We are changing the dynamic of what has been the policy of this country for the last 10 years," said Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Arkansas.
Added Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the committee's leading Democrat: "There seems to be a solution in search of a problem."
The Democrats are right in opposing this bill, but more than likely for the wrong reasons.
Democrats rightly highlight that this could limit military flexibility, but I'd opine that their real reason for opposition to this bill is the inability of some of the American public to handle female losses in a combat zone. Republicans want women out of the combat zone for exactly that reason, as Rep. McHugh notes. It's about PR, not competency.
Nobody wants women coming home in body bags (or men, for that matter), but Democrats and Republicans alike are simply using this bill as a weapon in political infighting. Cynical anti-war Democrats want women in combat, because their deaths (and assured overblown media hype surrounding the same) can be used as political pressure against the war effort.
Republicans in Congress know this, and, being just as cynical as their foes across the aisle, seek to limit enemy contact so that women in the military so that can't be used as political pawns against them. The American public doesn't like the thought of women being wounded or killed in combat. Perhaps more importantly, we saw with the Jessica Lynch incident that the American public cannot stomach the depraved treatment that women face if captured alive.
Gang rape, sexual torture... these are some of the horrors that people do not want to directly mention by name, but flow through the dark recesses of our minds when we think of women in combat--and it is a risk. Yet while we prefer not to think of it, many of these same dangers are also faced by male American combat forces.
For how many years have we been told that rape is about power and domination more than sex? Women are perceived as being more at risk for this kind of treatment, and with just cause, but the fact remains that all of our soldiers know that this is a risk if they are captured, and yet they still lace up their boots, armor up, and do their duty.
And never, ever forget, women can fight.
For example, Raven 42.
On a Sunday afternoon in March, a convoy of 30 civilian tractor trailers ran into an ambush by an estimated 40-50 heavily-armed insurgents at Salman Pak, Iraq. Three armored HMMWVs of MPs from the Kentucky National Guard that had been shadowing the convoy, charged into the kill zone, upset the ambush, and turned the tables on the Iraqi forces despite intense return fire.
Seven Americans (three of them wounded) killed a total of 24 insurgents and captured 7 others. The ambush was completely routed; the vast majority of the attackers wiped out. Of the 7 members of Raven 42 who walked away, two are Caucasian Women, the rest men-one is Mexican-American, the medic is African-American, and the other two are Caucasian.
One female E5 claimed four killed terrorists killed directly with aimed shots, and the other sergeant claimed she killed another with an aimed M-203 grenade. Who wants to be the one to tell her that she did, "all right... for a girl." Not I.
And it isn't as if American women in combat are a brand-new phenomenon. They've been there, from the beginning. And women have ably served well in other countries, in other wars, both in support roles and on the front lines.
Large numbers of women served in the Soviet Army during World War II--nearly one million-- to great effect. Most did not see front line combat duty, but many did. They flew bombers, performed as snipers, and fought a guerilla war behind German lines. They served, and they served well.
But this isn't about other countries. This is about America.
American women want to serve. Some have died. More will die, whether we want them to, or not. If we've learned anything, it is that there is no frontline in modern warfare, and the enemy can strike a brigade-level base with mortar and rocket fire, as easily as they can a support convoy, or an infantry combat patrol.
My advice to Congress? Let them fight. America's female soldiers earned that right, even if you don't have the stomach for it.
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May 16, 2005
A Comment on the "Religion of Peace"
When I hat-tipped
Austin Bay's article yesterday as the inspiration for my Michael Isikoff/Lyndie England comparison, I did so after writing a comment that later I deleted before publication.
That comment was in response to comments such as these that Austin compiled from Muslim comments around the web:
“If the report proved true, it would become important that an apology be
issued and addressed to Muslims all over the world to avoid increasing the
hatred between nations and followers of religious faiths as well,” the Shoura
said in a statement.
The Shoura said it considered the incident an attack on Muslims all
over the world. “The council considers it as an attack on the feelings of
Muslims and their sanctityÂ… and a violation of international law and human
customs,” said the statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency…
*****
In Afghanistan, a group of clerics threatened to call for a holy war
against the United States in three days unless it handed over military
interrogators who are reported to have desecrated the Qur'an.
*****
“The American soldiers are known for disrespect to other religions. They do
not take care of the sanctity of other religions,” Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the
Pakistani chief of a coalition of radical Islamic groups, said Sunday.
So Muslim leaders are worried about religious tolerance and disrespect?
Quite frankly, let them go to hell.
Islam is responsible for some of the largest human slaughters in human history, precisely for reasons of religious intolerance. Islam is the only religion that has proudly named a mountain range after one of their more serious crimes against humanity, and is responsible for more religious-based genocide that any other single religion that has ever existed on Planet Earth, genocide that continues to this very second in conflicts around this planet.
Perhaps I might have a bit more sympathy for a religion that didn't codify lying as a religious duty and often boasts about a 1,400 year track record of murdering those that had different ideas. Islam may be a lot of things and it may have some peaceful adherents, but if there is one thing Islam that can be said with absolute authority about Islam, it is that Islam is not now, nor has it ever been, a "religion of peace."
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April 04, 2005
To Hell and Back... Again
Perhaps the most memorable scene in Audie Murphy's autobiographical
To Hell and Back was when Murphy jumped up onto the back of a burning tank destroyer to single-handedly beat back a German assault using the .50-caliber M-2 machine gun mounted on top, earning the Congressional Medal of Honor, this nation's highest military award for valor.
Two years ago today, in Baghdad, Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith, 2nd Platoon, Bravo Company, 11th Engineer Battalion, 3rd Infantry Division, would almost exactly mirror Murphy's achievement. The parallels are staggering, the heroism and love of their fellow soldiers unquestioned.
Sgt. Smith was leading three dozen soldiers when they came under attack by an estimated 100 of the elite Iraqi Republican Guard armed with RPGs, machine guns, and mortars.
From Sgt. Smith's official Medal of Honor citation:
While an engineer squad began to clear debris in the courtyard, one of the guards saw 10-15 enemy soldiers with small arms, 60mm mortars, and rocket-propelled grenades (RPG). These were the lead elements of an organized company-sized force making a deliberate attack on the flank of Task Force 2-7. Sgt. 1st Class Smith came to the position and identified 25-50 more soldiers moving into prepared fighting positions. Sgt. 1st Class Smith instructed a squad leader to get a nearby Bradley Fighting Vehicle for support. While waiting for the Bradley, Sgt. 1st Class Smith had members of 2nd platoon retrieve AT-4 weapons and form a skirmish line outside the gate. By this time, the number of enemy identified rose to 100 soldiers, now a confirmed company-sized attack. Three of B Company's M113A3 armored personnel carriers (APC) oriented .50-cal. machineguns toward the opening in the wall and the surrounding guard towers, now occupied by enemy soldiers.
Sgt. 1st Class Smith's actions to organize a defense against the deliberate attack were not only effective, but inspired the B Company, 11th Engineer Battalion Soldiers. He then began to lead by example. As the Bradley arrived on site and moved through the hole in the wall toward the gate, Sgt. 1st Class Smith ran to the gate wall and threw a fragmentation grenade at the enemy. He then took two Soldiers forward to join the guards and directed their engagement of the enemy with small arms. The enemy continued to fire rifles, RPGs, and 60mm mortars at the Soldiers on the street and within the courtyard. Enemy soldiers began moving along the buildings on the north side of the clearing to get into position to climb into the towers. Sgt. 1st Class Smith called for an APC to move forward to provide additional fire support. Sgt. 1st Class Smith then fired an AT-4 at the enemy while directing his fire team assembled near the front line of the engagement area.
Running low on ammunition and having taken RPG hits, the Bradley withdrew to reload. The lead APC in the area received a direct hit from a mortar, wounding the three occupants. The enemy attack was at its strongest point and every action counted. Not only were the wounded Soldiers threatened but also more than 100 Soldiers from B Company, the Task Force Aid Station, and the Mortar Platoon were at risk.
Sgt. 1st Class Smith ordered one of his Soldiers to back the damaged APC back into the courtyard after the wounded men had been evacuated. Knowing the APC 's .50-Cal. machinegun was the largest weapon between the enemy and the friendly position, Sgt. 1st Class Smith immediately assumed the track commander's position behind the weapon, and told a soldier who accompanied him to "feed me ammunition whenever you hear the gun get quiet." Sgt. 1st Class Smith fired on the advancing enemy from the unprotected position atop the APC and expended at least three boxes of ammunition before being mortally wounded by enemy fire. The enemy attack was defeated. Sgt. 1st Class Smith's actions saved the lives of at least 100 Soldiers, caused the failure of a deliberate enemy attack hours after 1st Brigade seized the Baghdad Airport, and resulted in an estimated 20-50 enemy soldiers killed. His actions inspired his platoon, his Company, the 11th Engineer Battalion and Task Force 2-7 Infantry.
Sgt. Smith and Second Lieutenant
Audie L. Murphy both mounted heavily-damaged, lightly armored vehicles to man exposed .50-caliber machine guns. They did so to repel enemy assaults that threatened to overrun their positions at great personal risk and with tremendous valor to save the lives of their soldiers.
Sgt. Smith's Congressional Medal of Honor was just the third Medal of Honor awarded since the Vietnam war, and the first of the Iraqi War.
Not just American Heros
In Al Amarah, Iraq on May 1, and June 11 , 2004, Private Johnson Beharry, driver of a Warrior IFV ( infantry fighting vehicle similar to the U.S. Bradley) in the British Army, won Great Britain's highest award for valor, the Victoria Cross. It was the first Victoria Cross awarded since the Falklands conflict, and the first awarded to a living recipient since 1965.
Note: Unfortunately, not everyone respects Congressional Medal of Honor recipients.
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November 24, 2004
Washington's Thanksgiving Proclaimation
Thanks to PBS for their site Discovering George Washington for providing the text of this speech.
Proclaimation of National Thanksgiving
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor, and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me "to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness."
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks, for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation, for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war, for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.
And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions, to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually, to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed, to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shown kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord. To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.
Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.
Go: Washington
Let's hope the atheists and agnostics among us among us don't get too upset that this is indeed a religious holiday, a national day of thanks to a higher power.
From Confederate Yankee and Family: Y'all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, and God Bless.
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