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Saturday, March 31, 2007
An "Appeal for Courage"
http://blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=15364
I listened to the 1 hour talk show, and was absolutely amazed by her and her guests. One of them, LT Jason Nichols, USN, who is stationed in Iraq, and has organized an "Appeal for Courage" wherein active duty personnel have been signing a petition thinly veiled as an "Appeal For Redress" which is an authorized means of communicating concerns of active duty personnel to congress. Here is a link to the Appeal for Courage website:
http://appealforcourage.org/
Here is the appeal as it appears on the website:
It is a sad state of affairs when our servicemen and service women are placed in a position where they feel that they must resort to petitioning congress. God, do I love the young men and young women that are patriots.As an American currently serving my nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to fully support our mission in Iraq and halt any calls for retreat. I also respectfully urge my political leaders to actively oppose media efforts which embolden my enemy while demoralizing American support at home. The War in Iraq is a necessary and just effort to bring freedom to the Middle East and protect America from further attack.
ALL ACTIVE DUTY PERSONNEL ARE ENCOURAGED TO SIGN THE PETITION AVAILABLE ON THE APPEALFORCOURAGE.ORG WEBSITE.
~G
Labels: Appeal for Courage, Appeal For Redress, Blog Talk Radio, Congress, Kit Jarrell, LT Jason Nichols USN, Petition
Friday, March 30, 2007
An Honest Confession by an American Coward
In the past four years I have been interviewing my teammates on the 1966-67 basketball team at the Citadel for a book I'm writing. For the most part, this has been like buying back a part of my past that I had mislaid or shut out of my life. At first I thought I was writing about being young and frisky and able to run up and down a court all day long, but lately I realized I came to this book because I needed to come to grips with being middle-aged and having ripened into a gray-haired man you could not trust to handle the ball on a fast break.
When I visited my old teammate Al Kroboth's house in New Jersey, I spent the first hours quizzing him about his memories of games and practices and the screams of coaches that had echoed in field houses more than 30 years before. Al had been a splendid forward-center for the Citadel; at 6 feet 5 inches and carrying 220 pounds, he played with indefatigable energy and enthusiasm. For most of his senior year, he led the nation in field-goal percentage, with UCLA center Lew Alcindor hot on his trail. Al was a battler and a brawler and a scrapper from the day he first stepped in as a Green Weenie as a sophomore to the day he graduated. After we talked basketball, we came to a subject I dreaded to bring up with Al, but which lay between us and would not lie still.
"Al, you know I was a draft dodger and antiwar demonstrator."
"That's what I heard, Conroy," Al said. "I have nothing against what you did, but I did what I thought was right."
"Tell me about Vietnam, big Al. Tell me what happened to you," I said.
On his seventh mission as a navigator in an A-6 for Major Leonard Robertson, Al was getting ready to deliver their payload when the fighter-bomber was hit by enemy fire. Though Al has no memory of it, he punched out somewhere in the middle of the ill-fated dive and lost consciousness. He doesn't know if he was unconscious for six hours or six days, nor does he know what happened to Major Robertson (whose name is engraved on the Wall in Washington and on the MIA bracelet Al wears).
When Al awoke, he couldn't move. A Viet Cong soldier held an AK-47 to his head. His back and his neck were broken, and he had shattered his left scapula in the fall. When he was well enough to get to his feet (he still can't recall how much time had passed), two armed Viet Cong led Al from the jungles of South Vietnam to a prison in Hanoi. The journey took three months. Al Kroboth walked barefooted through the most impassable terrain in Vietnam, and he did it sometimes in the dead of night. He bathed when it rained, and he slept in bomb craters with his two Viet Cong captors. As they moved farther north, infections began to erupt on his body, and his legs were covered with leeches picked up while crossing the rice paddies.
At the very time of Al's walk, I had a small role in organizing the only antiwar demonstration ever held in Beaufort, South Carolina, the home of Parris Island and the Marine Corps Air Station. In a Marine Corps town at that time, it was difficult to come up with a quorum of people who had even minor disagreements about the Vietnam War. But my small group managed to attract a crowd of about 150 to Beaufort's waterfront. With my mother and my wife on either side of me, we listened to the featured speaker, Dr. Howard Levy, suggest to the very few young enlisted Marines present that if they get sent to Vietnam, here's how they can help end this war: Roll a grenade under your officer's bunk when he's asleep in his tent. It's called fragging and is becoming more and more popular with the ground troops who know this war is bullshit. I was enraged by the suggestion. At that very moment my father, a Marine officer, was asleep in Vietnam. But in 1972, at the age of 27, I thought I was serving America's interests by pointing out what massive flaws and miscalculations and corruptions had led her to conduct a ground war in Southeast Asia.
In the meantime, Al and his captors had finally arrived in the North, and the Viet Cong traded him to North Vietnamese soldiers for the final leg of the trip to Hanoi. Many times when they stopped to rest for the night, the local villagers tried to kill him. His captors wired his hands behind his back at night, so he trained himself to sleep in the center of huts when the villagers began sticking knives and bayonets into the thin walls.
Following the U.S. air raids, old women would come into the huts to excrete on him and yank out hunks of his hair. After the nightmare journey of his walk north, Al was relieved when his guards finally delivered him to the POW camp in Hanoi and the cell door locked behind him.
It was at the camp that Al began to die. He threw up every meal he ate and before long was misidentified as the oldest American soldier in the prison because his appearance was so gaunt and skeletal. But the extraordinary camaraderie among fellow prisoners that sprang up in all the POW camps caught fire in Al, and did so in time to save his life.
When I was demonstrating in America against Nixon and the Christmas bombings in Hanoi, Al and his fellow prisoners were holding hands under the full fury of those bombings, singing "God Bless America." It was those bombs that convinced Hanoi they would do well to release the American POWs, including my college teammate. When he told me about the C-141 landing in Hanoi to pick up the prisoners, Al said he felt no emotion, none at all, until he saw the giant American flag painted on the plane's tail. I stopped writing as Al wept over the memory of that flag on that plane, on that morning, during that time in the life of America.
It was that same long night, after listening to Al's story, that I began to make judgments about how I had conducted myself during the Vietnam War.
In the darkness of the sleeping Kroboth household, lying in the third-floor guest bedroom, I began to assess my role as a citizen in the '60s, when my country called my name and I shot her the bird. Unlike the stupid boys who wrapped themselves in Viet Cong flags and burned the American one, I knew how to demonstrate against the war without flirting with treason or astonishingly bad taste. I had come directly from the warrior culture of this country and I knew how to act.
But in the 25 years that have passed since South Vietnam fell, I have immersed myself in the study of totalitarianism during the unspeakable century we just left behind. I have questioned survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, talked to Italians who told me tales of the Nazi occupation, French partisans who had counted German tanks in the forests of Normandy, and officers who survived the Bataan Death March. I quiz journalists returning from wars in Bosnia, the Sudan, the Congo, Angola, Indonesia, Guatemala, San Salvador, Chile, Northern Ireland, Algeria.
As I lay sleepless, I realized I'd done all this research to better understand my country. I now revere words like democracy, freedom, the right to vote, and the grandeur of the extraordinary vision of the founding fathers. Do I see America's flaws? Of course. But I now can honor her basic, incorruptible virtues, the ones that let me walk the streets screaming my ass off that my country had no idea what it was doing in South Vietnam. My country let me scream to my heart's content - the same country that produced both Al Kroboth and me.
Now, at this moment in New Jersey, I come to a conclusion about my actions as a young man when Vietnam was a dirty word to me. I wish I'd led a platoon of Marines in Vietnam. I would like to think I would have trained my troops well and that the Viet Cong would have had their hands full if they entered a firefight with us. From the day of my birth, I was programmed to enter the Marine Corps. I was the son of a Marine fighter pilot, and I had grown up on Marine bases where I had watched the men of the corps perform simulated war games in the forests of my childhood. That a novelist and poet bloomed darkly in the house of Santini strikes me as a remarkable irony. My mother and father had raised me to be an Al Kroboth, and during the Vietnam era they watched in horror as I metamorphosed into another breed of fanatic entirely. I understand now that I should have protested the war after my return from Vietnam, after I had done my duty for my country. I have come to a conclusion about my country that I knew then in my bones but lacked the courage to act on: America is good enough to die for even when she is wrong.
I looked for some conclusion, a summation of this trip to my teammate's house. I wanted to come to the single right thing, a true thing that I may not like but that I could live with. After hearing Al Kroboth's story of his walk across Vietnam and his brutal imprisonment in the North, I found myself passing harrowing, remorseless judgment on myself. I had not turned out to be the man I had once envisioned myself to be. I thought I would be the kind of man that America could point to and say, "There. That's the guy. That's the one who got it right. The whole package. The one I can depend on."
It had never once occurred to me that I would find myself in the position I did on that night in Al Kroboth's house in Roselle, New Jersey: an American coward spending the night with an American hero.
Labels: A-6, Al Kroboth, American Coward, antiwar demonstrator, Citadel, draft dodger, Major Leonard Robertson, MIA, New Jersey, Pat Conroy, POW, South Vietnam, USMC, Viet Cong
Vets look back, critique big Washington rally
By C.J. Raven
U.S. Veteran Dispatch
March 21, 2007
Here's the message Iraq troops can take from last weekend's patriotic rally in Washington: We've got your back.
"We were trashed when we came home after Vietnam. The 'Greatest Generation' didn't catch our backs," Mike Bradley, a Vietnam Navy veteran in Florida, said. "We took the brunt of the crap. Korean vets didn't help us. Nobody helped us. We were trashed in the press. We were looked upon as outcasts. That is what the press made us out to be -- just a bunch of drunken Vietnam vets."
Returning Vietnam veterans were spit upon, called baby-killers and reviled in ways American soldiers had never experienced before. These same veterans vow that Iraq vets never will face the same degradation.
No longer asleep
Thousands and thousands and thousands - maybe as many as 30,000 veterans and other supporters - came together near the Vietnam War Memorial to stand against a loud, ranting group of anti-war protesters who shouted obscenities and carried the flags of Iranian, Iraqi and Palestinian terrorists.
"Everywhere you went you saw veterans who came together to make a stand," Bradley said. "The thing that was amazing is that for years and years we, as veterans, had been asleep at the switch. We never got involved in anything like this, but we made this an extremely successful event."
Vietnam veterans are a unique group. For many of them, the war was traumatic - the stuff of which nightmares are made. The scorn and hatred they felt when they returned to America drove those memories deeper.
"Guys like me, up until eight, 10 years ago, had been in the closet [about Vietnam]," Bradley said. "They didn't want to talk about it, hear about it. I moved it out of my mind. Now, it all came back together for us as a brotherhood. We're at the point just now where we're starting to get over a lot of our ill feelings."
Jerry Milhollen served in the Navy in Vietnam. He agrees that Vietnam vets kept their experiences hidden.
A Fleetwood Mac encounter
"A lot of us never even admitted to having served until the '80s," Milhollen said. "I enlisted, did two tours. I came home and thought I was in a different country. They threw dog sh*t on us. It happened to quite a few of us. We were treated like second-class citizens. Now we tend to stick more together."
Mike Flick, a Marine veteran, was insulted by one of the most popular music groups of the time. He was on R&R in Hawaii in 1967, wearing a civilian T-shirt and a pair of civilian slacks, when he walked into a hotel elevator. Behind him was the famous Fleetwood Mac band. Popular singer Stevie Nix looked at Flick and said, "Baby-killer!"
"It must have been the haircut" that gave him away, Flick said.
But it was his final homecoming that caused him to leave his country. Anti-war protesters splashed him with chicken blood when he arrived in San Francisco.
"I made my decision then that I wasn't going to be an American any more," he said. "I took the migrant program and moved to Australia."
It would be years before he returned to the U.S.A. Today, he lives in Oklahoma.
Get yourself a handful
The rallying call for these veterans was the protesters' threat to damage the Wall. They have friends and relatives whose names are engraved in the black granite. It is sacred territory for many of them.
"All us guys will get up off the couch and come after you if you threaten that Wall," Bradley said. "I've got a lot of friends on that Wall that I can remember sitting and drinking a beer with. We laughed together. I can close my eyes and still see them. When you get anywhere near that Wall, start any crap, even say the 'Wall,' and you've got yourself a handful."
The anti-war, anti-American protesters made official denials of their unofficial threat to desecrate the monument, but police officials confiscated at least half-dozen cans of spray paint and, according to one report, a bottle of muriatric acid.
Veterans had good reason to believe the threats. The protesters were some of the same ones who spray-painted the Capitol steps in January.
So, vets formed a defensive perimeter. They held their ground in mud, in wind-chill temperatures that dipped into the teens, through moments of freezing rain and early spring snow, to guard against protesters who came with the same old propaganda they used in the '60s. This time, vets fought back.
Rolling Thunder rolls
"We had some confrontations," said Vietnam Special Forces veteran Ted Sampley, publisher of U.S. Veteran Dispatch and a Rolling Thunder founder. "Members of both groups began crossing the street with their signs. Some were either trying to walk through, or trying to taunt them. It's the first time the leftist run into this type of resistance. Some of our guys got physically involved. A large number of Rolling Thunder were crossing Henry Bacon Drive and entering the side [of the street] with the moonbats. There were scuffles. The Park police very quickly moved in and, in a professional way, separated the two sides without slapping anybody or arresting anybody."
Police arrested a few people later in the day, but none was a veteran.
"The hippies were just shocked that so many of us showed up," Millholen said. "All of us being ex-military, we were trained to kill. When they saw the numbers, they were shocked. That may have been why Jane Fonda didn't show up."
Then he laughed and added, "I don't know if that's really why, but it makes for a good news story."
Protesters were met by a phalanx of angry veterans waving American flags. The "moonbats" carried foreign flags, effigies of George Bush, U.S. flags held upside down or defaced with markings. They covered their faces with masks and bandanas. (Flick wonders how many of the girls who bared their midriffs in the freezing wind are suffering with colds or pneumonia today.)
"The moonbats were making a lot of noise and dancing," Sampley said. "They were outshining us. They looked a lot more interesting to the press than a bunch of vets standing across the street and singing "God Bless America." It was not until we crossed the street that we got any attention from the press."
High praise for police
Sampley is effusive in his praise for Park police and he has experience to back him up. The former Green Beret says he has been arrested many times during non-violent civil disobedience demonstrations for POW/MIA action in Washington. Veterans were "trying to push the envelope," he said, for no reason other than to cause an incident and capture the attention of the press. He believes that's what non-violence demonstration is all about.
"Every American should step back and be proud that our police force acted in a nonbiased and professional way, and handled it in a way that it didn't turn into a major riot," he said. "They did it by being as fair to one side as to the other. In my 15 years of experience with the Park Service police, I've found that they deal with it on a daily basis and they have learned to deal with it professionally."
One of the Gathering of Eagles leaders appointed marshals to control the veterans. Flick volunteered, but soon changed his mind.
"When I realized were going to have to rush around in orange shirts, scolding, correcting, managing our own people -- I didn't go up there to do that," he said.
Flick had no reservations or hesitation about confronting the protesters, and wasn't worried about the consequences.
"Many people had bail money with them, and a lawyer on standby in Oklahoma," Flick said. "We expected a full-blown blowout. The security people were panic-stricken by that. We had enough people that we could have used forces to be far more severe, to be effective. We were limited in our actions. You're all excited and energized to do something and nothing happens."
Opportunities missed
Despite the best efforts of Rolling Thunder and its supporters, most news outlets zeroed in on the protesters, and mostly ignored the veterans. Flick has spent the last few days thinking about how the mainstream media snubbed his group.
"We got played down by the media," he said. "They called us pro-war protesters. Nobody in their right mind is pro-war. Pro-national defense, pro for fighting the war on terror. But pro-war? Come on!"
Flick, a former newspaper reporter, advertising executive and political operative, was part of the Gathering of Eagles group. Looking back, he sees many things GOE should have done differently. He regrets the lack of planning and marketing.
"They should have had a team put together and been contacting the media, getting follow-up stories," he said. "We knew two weeks before [the rally] we'd have a monstrous turnout. If we knew that, why didn't we make a greater use of the forces we had there? We had every opportunity to have two and three times the number of people we had. We could have been at the Pentagon giving (the protesters) a lashing when they came off their imbecilic rant. The Rolling Thunder fellows turned out in mass. They made this thing a huge success. They gave us the numbers we needed to put this over the top."
Abandoned by the press
Veterans' are angered by the media's failure to present their side of the protest - but they aren't surprised. They believe most of the press is liberal in their thinking.
"Everything is slanted in their direction," Bradley said. "The only thing that guys like me are asking for is fair coverage. When you look back at World War Two and [German Gen. Heinrich] Himmler who said when we own the press we will own their minds, he was preaching that a propaganda campaign through newspapers could win the German people and they did it. That is the shame of all this."
Millholen sees the same attitude in the press that he saw when he came back from Vietnam.
"If anything, it's worse," he said. "I just know what I saw when I got out. We didn't lose Vietnam. The press lost it for us. Once politicians get into it, it's over."
But regardless of the problems, the men are glad they went. They experienced a solidarity they'd seldom, if ever, felt before, many said. They finally had the chance to face the people who showed them such contempt when they returned from Vietnam.
"They took us for granted," Bradley said. "They thought we were just a bunch of old guys, not too concerned about them, but they got their butts handed to them."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This might be a little stale, but the message is important and unmistakable, the Vietnam Vets and Vets from other conflicts have had enough of the rhetoric that the left leaning press is publishing daily, as well as the television and cable news organizations. The VN Vets have stoically withstood the slings and arrows of the peaceniks of the 60's and 70's. But, when the "moonbats" start trying to do the same thing to their children and grand children, they drew a line in the sand (read mall). While each and every one of the vets that I know (including yours truly) would give our very dieing breath to preserve the free speech of the moonbats, we are not going to sit by while it happens again. We will not tolerate the disgraceful conduct of the moonbats when they would interrupt a fallen soldiers funeral. The Patriot Guard Riders (PGR) are taking care of that.
I am reminded of the famous scene from the 1976 movie "Network" where the character Howard Beale played by actor Peter Finch screams the words "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take anymore!" I for one am heartened by the discipline, determination and numbers of Vets that are answering the call. I am confident that we have only seen the "tip of the iceberg", and "You ain't seen nothin' yet!"
~G
Labels: 17 March 2007, Baby Killer, C.J. Raven, Fleetwood Mac, Jerry Milhollen, Mike Flick, moonbats, Rolling Thunder, U.S. Veterans Dispatch, VIetnam Memorial
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
McCaffrey: Military ‘in peril’
By Sean D. Naylor - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Mar 28, 2007 9:32:18 EDT
The Iraq war has left the U.S. military "in a position of strategic peril," retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey has warned in the wake of a recent trip to Iraq."The majority of the Iraqi population [Sunni and Shia] support armed attacks on American forces" while "U.S. domestic support for the war in Iraq has evaporated and will not return," McCaffrey writes in a memo to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy, where he is an adjunct professor of international affairs.
He says the United States and its allies must focus on a strategy aimed at a political consensus among the three main Iraqi population groups: Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs and Kurds."We can still achieve our objective" of a stable Iraq, he writes in a memo to colleagues at the U.S. Military Academy, where he is an adjunct professor of international affairs, but "[w]e have very little time left."Failure in Iraq will have dire consequences, according to McCaffrey.
"A disaster in Iraq will in all likelihood result in a widened regional struggle which will endanger America's strategic interests in the Mideast for a generation," he writes. "We will also produce another generation of soldiers who lack confidence in their American politicians, the media, and their own senior military leadership."McCaffrey paints a largely gloomy picture of the situation in Iraq, which he says "is ripped by a low grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3,000 citizens murdered per month.
""The population is in despair," he writes. "Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate."McCaffrey, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran who retired in 1996 as head of U.S. Southern Command and then served as President Bill Clinton's drug czar, wrote the eight-page memo based on a March 9-16 trip to Iraq and Kuwait. The memo lists over 65 U.S. and allied officials that McCaffrey talked to during his trip.
They include Gen. David Petraeus, the new commander of Multi-National Forces – Iraq, and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, who commands Multi-National Corps – Iraq, as well as virtually every other senior U.S. or allied military figure there.His view that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war is at odds with that expressed by incoming U.S. Central Command chief Adm. William Fallon, who told CNN March 27 that he didn't think Iraq was in a civil war.
Three million Iraqis, including many of the country's educated elite, have fled the country, McCaffrey notes.In the land they left behind, the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "has little credibility among the Shia populations from which it emerged," writes McCaffrey. "It is despised by the Sunni as a Persian surrogate. It is believed untrustworthy and incompetent by the Kurds."There is no function of government that operates effectively across the nation – not health care, not justice, not education, not transportation, not labor and commerce, not electricity, not oil production.
There is no province in the country in which the government has dominance .... No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi – without heavily armed protection."The Iraqi security forces are in poor shape, according to McCaffrey. "The police force is feared as a Shia militia in uniform which is responsible for thousands of extra-judicial killings," he writes. "The Iraqi Army is too small [and] very badly equipped."
The army "is also unduly dominated by the Shia, and in many battalions lacks discipline," writes McCaffrey, adding that the high rates of desertion and absence without leave "frequently leave Iraqi army battalions at 50 percent strength or less."In contrast, the number of insurgent and sectarian militia forces likely exceeds 100,000, McCaffrey writes.
"These non-government armed bands are in some ways more capable of independent operations than the regularly constituted" Iraq security forces, he adds.McCaffrey notes that although the U.S. and its allies have arrested 120,000 insurgents (including 27,000 still in custody) and killed "some huge number of enemy combatants" that he estimates at "perhaps" over 20,000, "the armed insurgents, militias, and al-Qaida in Iraq without fail apparently regenerate both leadership cadres and foot soldiers.
Their sophistication, numbers, and lethality go up – not down – as they incur these staggering battle losses."The retired four-star then warns of a looming disaster for the U.S. military if current trends are not reversed."Stateside U.S. Army and Marine Corps readiness ratings are starting to unravel," he writes. "Ground combat equipment is shot in both the active and reserve components. Army active and reserve component recruiting has now encountered serious quality and number problems .... Our promotion rates for officers and NCOs have skyrocketed to replace departing leaders.
There is no longer a national or a theater U.S. Army strategic reserve."Noting that the Army "will be forced to call up as many as nine National Guard combat brigades for an involuntary second combat tour this coming year," he adds that [m]any believe that this second round of involuntary call-ups will topple the weakened National Guard structure – which is so central to U.S. domestic security."However, the situation in Iraq is not irretrievable, according to McCaffrey.
"Since the arrival of Gen. David Petraeus in command of Multi-National Force – Iraq – the situation on the ground has clearly and measurably improved," he writes.The Maliki government has "given the green light" for U.S. and Iraqi special operations forces to "prune out" elements of Shia politician Moqtada al-Sadr's militia, the Mahdi army, McCaffrey says.
As a result, U.S. and Iraqi forces have "harvested" over 600 "rogue leaders" from the Mahdi army, while "Sadr himself has fled to Iran and many of his key leaders have escaped to the safety of the Shia south. "His fighting cadres were ordered to go to ground, hide their weapons, take down their check points, stop the terrible ethnic cleansing and terror tactics against the Sunni population, and ignore (not cooperate with) US and ISF forces."The new U.S. and Iraqi strategy of establishing joint security stations across Baghdad is working, according to McCaffrey. "The Iraqi people are encouraged – life is almost immediately springing back in many parts of the city," he writes.
"The murder rate has plummeted. IED [improvised explosive device] attacks on U.S. forces during their formerly vulnerable daily transits from huge U.S. bases on the periphery of Baghdad are down – since these forces are now permanently based in their operational area."In addition, the Iraq government has "finally committed credible numbers of integrated police and army units to the battle of Baghdad," McCaffrey says.
Those forces are also "showing increased willingness to aggressively operate against insurgent/militia forces."In Anbar province, "[t]here is a real and growing groundswell of Sunni tribal opposition to the Al Qaeda in Iraq terror formations," he writes. "This counter-Al Qaeda movementÂ?was fostered by brilliant U.S. Marine leadership." The result is an ongoing fight between the western Sunni tribes and Al Qaeda in Iraq. "This is a crucial struggle and it is going our way – for now," McCaffrey says.
Ultimately, only a political deal will end the bloodshed and secure a satisfactory outcome for the United States in Iraq, according to McCaffrey."The primary war winning strategy for the United States in the coming 12 months must be for Ambassador Ryan [Crocker] and General Petraeus to focus their considerable personal leadership skills on getting the top 100 Shia and Sunni leaders to walk back from the edge of all-out civil war, he writes. "Reconciliation is the way out. There will be no imposed military solution with the current non-sustainable U.S. force levels. Military power cannot alone defeat an insurgency – the political and economic struggle for power is the actual field of battle.
Labels: Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Baghdad, Basra, Gen. David Petraeus, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Kirkuk, Kurds, Mosul, Najaf, Ramadi, Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Tikrit
Points on the Antiwar Protest
The Washington Post
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Three March 23 letters about the recent march on the Pentagon protest and counter-protest raised points that need to be addressed.
Regarding the letter from Matt Mendelsohn of Arlington: The Gathering of Eagles did not hire security to protect the monuments. We hired security to protect our rally and equipment. The Park Service, with the voluntary aid of thousands of veterans, protected the monuments.
Regarding the letter from Mark Burton of Damascus: Mr. Burton quoted Mahatma Gandhi, yet Gandhi would not have marched, as Mr. Burton did, with a group such as the Answer Coalition, which reveres the communist mass murderer Che Guevera and has unconditionally endorsed the terrorists in Iraq.
Regarding the letter from Victoria Saker Woeste of West Lafayette, Ind.: The racism and ageism expressed makes me doubt her accusation. She provided no evidence that horse manure was flung at protesters by counter-protesters. However, The Post has posted a video report that shows a peace protester spitting on a Gathering of Eagles participant.
Given that the Answer Coalition, the organizer of the antiwar protest, has endorsed the killing of American soldiers by the so-called Iraqi resistance, holds rallies to support terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and supports the communist North Korean government, the restraint shown by the 30,000 veterans and other patriotic Americans who by my estimate took part at the Gathering of Eagles was remarkable.
KRISTINN TAYLOR
Spokesman and D.C. Coordinator for the Gathering of Eagles
Co-Leader, D.C. Chapter of FreeRepublic.com
Labels: ANSWER, Gathering of Eagles, KRISTINN TAYLOR, Letter to the Editor, Mark Burton, Matt Mendelsohn, The Washington Post, Victoria Woeste
Standoff Over Britons Held in Iran Escalates
LONDON, March 28 Britain's dispute with Iran over 15 captured sailors and marines escalated sharply today when Britain froze all "bilateral business" with Tehran and Iran displayed some British prisoners on state television an act condemned by the Foreign Office here as "completely unacceptable."
One of the captured sailors, Faye Turney, 26, the only woman among them, was shown wearing a black head-scarf and saying "obviously we trespassed into their waters." She also praised her captors as "very friendly, very hospitable and very thoughtful, nice people. They explained to us why we had been arrested."
Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, attending a meeting in Saudi Arabia, had indicated earlier that Ms. Turney could be released soon. "There was no hurt or harm," Ms. Turney said in the television footage. "They were very, very compassionate."
Iranian authorities also made public what they said was a letter written Thursday by Ms. Turney to her family saying: "We were out in the boats when we were arrested by Iranian forces as we had apparently gone into Iranian waters. I wish we hadn't because then I would be home with you all right now. I'm so sorry we did because I know we wouldn't be here now if we hadn't. I want you all to know that I am well and safe.
"I am being well looked after, I am fed three meals a day and I'm in constant supply of fluids," the letter said. Her words were addressed in part to her three-year-old daughter Molly and husband Adam.
The circumstances in which she recorded her words and wrote the letter were not clear. Some of the captured Britons were shown in a room eating a meal with her, but it was also not clear the extent to which the tape had been edited. In one section she was wearing a black and white checkered head-dress and in another a black head scarf.
After the video tape was broadcast, Margaret Beckett, the British Foreign Secretary, said that she was concerned about "any indication of pressure on, or coercion of, our personnel."
British officials have been denied access to the captured sailors and their whereabouts were not disclosed. Britain renewed its demand on Thursday for the release of its sailors.
Ms. Turney's remarks contradicted insistence in London that the British sailors had been in Iraqi waters where they patrol under Iraqi and United Nations auspices to interdict smugglers and protect oil installations.
Earlier Prime Minister Tony Blair told parliament that the British sailors, captured on March 23, were acting legally and in Iraqi waters.
"It is now time to ratchet up international and diplomatic pressure in order to make sure that the Iranian government understands their total isolation on this issue," he told parliament.
The Royal Navy also took the highly unusual step of making public charts, photographs and previously secret navigational coordinates purportedly proving that the British sailors were 1.7 nautical miles - roughly 1.95 miles on land - inside Iraqi waters when they were apprehended at gun-point and forced into Iranian waters.
The toughened British posture heightened the sense of crisis that has sent oil prices soaring.
The Royal Navy's disclosures opened a coordinated diplomatic barrage by some of the most senior British officials, including Mr. Blair and Mrs. Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, who told parliament that Britain would "be imposing a freeze on all other official bilateral business with Iran until the situation is resolved."
"The Iranian authorities have so far failed to meet any of our demands or responded to our desire to resolve this issue quickly and quietly, through behind the scenes diplomacy," Mrs. Beckett said, explaining Britain's decision to go public and offer some kind of retaliation, if only symbolic.
The government had been under political pressure at home to show itself as more muscular after being accused in newspaper editorials of being timid toward Iran. At the same time, though, many analysts said Mr. Blair had embarked on a risky strategy that could backfire if Iran responded to pressure by digging in its heels and refusing to free its captives.
The decision by Iranian television to show footage of the 15 captives rekindled memories of a similar episode in 2004 when eight other British captives were paraded blindfolded on Iranian television.
Britain has little direct official bilateral business with Iran beyond sporting and cultural ties and some humanitarian assistance to refugees and earthquake victims, according to an assessment on the Foreign Office website (http://www.fco.gov.uk/).
Prince Charles, the heir to the throne, visited Iran in 2004 to show concern after the Bam earthquake.
Britain's more significant diplomatic and political business with Iran is conducted as part of a troika of European nations along with France and Germany pressing Iran to limit its nuclear ambitions.
While the impact of the prohibition on official business was, therefore, unclear, it seemed to reflect the first formal reprisal by Britain in response to the seizure of its personnel, designed to show, in Mrs. Beckett's words to parliament, "the seriousness with which we regard these events."
"This is not going as far as breaking off diplomatic relations," said Lord Norman Lamont, the head of the British-Iranian Chamber of Commerce, "but it is upping the ante." In parliament, the government's actions received support from a broad consensus across party lines.
The publication of the British data followed a warning by Mr. Blair on Thursday that the dispute would enter a "different phase" if the sailors were not released. In parliament on Wednesday the Prime Minister called the seizure of the British personnel "completely unacceptable, wrong and illegal" and renewed calls for their immediate return.
Vice Admiral Charles Style told a news briefing that British authorities "unambiguously contest" Iranian assertions that the sailors were in Iranian waters. He also accused Iranian forces of ambushing the British naval personnel seven Royal Marines and eight sailors. Vice Admiral Style did not offer to answer questions.
He said that, in secret diplomatic contacts, Iran had produced two conflicting sets of coordinates to bolster its case, the first placing the British soldiers in Iraqi waters where, Britain says, they were on a routine anti-smuggling patrol authorized by the United Nations and the Iraqi government.
An Iranian statement said Tehran had "sufficient evidence" to prove that the British sailors had penetrated 0.5 kilometers roughly 500 yards into Iranian waters.
Vice Admiral Style said the British boarding party in two inflatable boats had boarded an Indian-flagged naval vessel on March 23 after observing it unloading cars. He said the boarding took place at these coordinates: 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North, 04 degrees 43.08 minutes east. That placed it 1.7 nautical miles inside Iraqi waters, he said.
In diplomatic contacts last week, he added, Iran had provided Britain with an initial set of coordinates for the position of the boats that placed the incident in Iraqi waters.
"We pointed this out to them on Sunday in diplomatic contacts," Vice Admiral Style said. "After we did this they then provided a second set of coordinates that places the incident in Iranian waters" over two nautical miles away from where they were said to be by Britain, he said.
"It is hard to understand a legitimate reason for this change of coordinates," he said. The Navy said the sailors in two boats had formed a boarding party from H.M.S. Cornwall, a frigate patrolling in Iraqi waters.
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It appears that the Iranian's are going to keep pushing to start a shooting war with the US & the Brits. If they don't stop this nonsense and keep pushing and does start a war, we will be forced to finish it.
I saw a great statement on the Patriot Files Forum that proposed that the Brits sink an Iranian Naval Warship each day until the 15 sailors and Marines are returned to British Authorities. I have a better idea, sink two a day!
It appears that Pres. Ahmadinejad is hiding behind a claim that the sailors were taken by a rogue element. Even if that is true, it is he and his governments job to correct the situation. Whether the Iranian Navy did the dirty deed or not is not relevant. I think that they truly believe that they can get away with it. Maybe, but only if they are returned unharmed, VERY SOON!
~G
Labels: British Navy, Foreign Secretary Beckett, HMS Cornwall, Iran, Iranian, Marines, Mottaki, Royal Navy, Sailors, Tony Blair, Turney
: 8:21 PM Charlie
: 6:30 AM << Home
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Gathering of Eagles, Washington, D.C. March 17, 2007
This past Saturday, the anti-war groups Code Pink and ANSWER co-sponsored a protest rally in the form of a march from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to the Pentagon in an attempt to discourage and destabilize the Bush Administration's public support in order to end the War in Iraq. Calling for the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, and led by one of our most infamous anti-war activists Cindy Sheehan, the crowd loudly advocated the cut-and-run approach to end the war. The march drew a sizeable chunk of airtime on all major news networks, and brought the issue of immediate withdrawal once again to the front pages of America's newspapers. Undoubtedly, Americans have seen the media's coverage of the anti-war protesters in Washington, and most will think that what they saw on CNN or Fox was all there was to be witnessed in Washington that day. However on the same day, on the same National Mall, another group of demonstrators congregated in support of another cause. The Move America Forward Organization, in conjunction with the Gathering of Eagles and Rolling Thunder groups, comprised mainly of veterans, organized themselves into a counter-protest that rivalled the anti-war movement in every aspect. These patriots, conveniently excluded from the media's coverage of the St. Patrick's Day protests, convened in support of one sole mission in Washington that day, and that mission was to show their unwavering and unconditional support to the men and women of the United States Military.
The counter-protesters lined the sidewalks of Constitution Avenue, covered the grounds to the west of the Washington Monument and guarded the Vietnam Memorial wall from potentially destructive anti-war demonstrators (who had spray-painted the steps of the Capitol the week before) in a successful attempt at keeping the disruptive crowds from disturbing families visiting the sites dedicated to the memory of those who have honourably served their country. The number of counter-protesters, by the Park Service's estimates, actually outnumbered those of the anti-war crowd, and the Service estimated that about 30,000 counter-protesters were in attendance during the height of the rallies. One local news network even estimated that the pro-troop crowd outnumbered the antiwar crowd 3 to 1. This estimate is astounding, considering the fact that the anti-war groups had been planning the event for almost a year, publicly promising that 100,000 liberal supporters would show up, while the counter-protesters coordinated their own event in less than two months. Judging by the unexpectedly high turnout of anti-anti-war protesters on St. Patrick's Day, this nation's attitude is far from that of a defeated and hopeless losing team. In fact, according to several Vietnam Veterans with the Gathering of Eagles, Cindy Sheehan couldn't even be heard within her own camp during her keynote speech due to the overwhelmingly loud booing emanating from the thousands-strong Rolling Thunder and Gathering of Eagles veterans. Aside from the realization that this country does not overwhelmingly side itself with the likes of Sheehan, Fonda, Pelosi and Clinton, the scene in Washington last Saturday provided a revealing glimpse into the attitudes and personalities of those on both sides of this issue.
Looking at the 'camp sites' of each group, the protesters and counter-protesters, gives a metaphoric description of the true character of each group. On the anti-war side, protesters waved yellow banners calling for immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq, the impeachment of President Bush, and the firing of anyone associated with the war. Protesters waved the flags of Lebanon and Palestine, screamed about America's unjust occupation of the Middle East, and proclaimed to the nation that the war was unfair and the cause unworthy. No banners could be seen in support of our troops. No signs suggested that they had any faith in the American Government. Some even handed out fliers claiming that the Federal Government had engineered 9/11 to benefit Defence Contractors. The only American flags to be seen on the anti-war side were flown upside down, spray-painted with peace signs or slanderous accusations or thrown to the ground to be stepped on by the self-proclaimed 'just and righteous' activists. Some activists even went so far as to burn the flag in a shameful act of anger.
On the other side of the lawn were the pro-troop counter-protesters. To be seen and heard in their camp were patriotic songs and speeches delivered by military men and women and their families. Signs and posters called for unconditional support of the military. Participants held fundraisers to collect donations for troops dispatched overseas. Others posted banners reminding us of the horrific crimes our enemies have committed against us and against others in the past. Veterans told of their own service in Vietnam and a few of them spoke about their time in the Second World War. VFW representatives were in attendance to support today's troops and to fundraise as well. The crowd, mostly comprised of veterans, waved over 15,000 American flags, with a few state flags and military flags speckling the sea of red, white, and blue. No yellow banners decked the railing of the stage on the pro-troop side. No foreign flags or desecrated American flags flew over the crowd, and each and every veteran made sure that those on the other side of the lawn heard every thing they had to say, and saw everything they had to show. Veterans took shifts in lining the sidewalks surrounding the Vietnam Wall and other memorials to prevent potential defacing of the monuments or disruption of family visitors. The Vets remained calm and peaceful, with the exception of yelling a few jokes at some of the more comical hippie-like folks, who soon became known throughout the pro-troop camp as moonbats. Try googling that term of endearment; I bet you'll learn something.
At the end of the rallies, after the counter-protesters had packed up their flags and banners to send overseas to our troops in Iraq, and the anti-war group had crossed the bridge toward the Pentagon, the lawn still told a story about those who had occupied it during the demonstrations. On the anti-war side, trash and stomped banners and flags littered the ground in front of President Lincoln's sacred monument, all left for the D.C. Park Service to clean up. On the opposing side's half of the lawn not a banner or flag or any trash at all was left lying in the shadow of that tall spire honouring our first Commander-in-Chief, George Washington. The respectful attitudes of those supporting our troops stand in clear contrast to those who so feverishly oppose the war and the Bush Administration.
All in all, the St. Patrick's Day activities in Washington revealed a few important details that, although minor in appearance, could make the difference in how the country moves forward in the next several years. From the distinct differences in character visible between the pro-troop crowd and the anti-war crowd to the media's unwillingness to show the nation both sides of the day's events, it is evident that Americans are not getting the whole story. The notion that some in this nation intentionally degrade those who defend this country during a time of war disturbs most Americans, and most Americans disagree with the insulting manner of the anti-war activists…if only the media would acknowledge that. So what the country needs now, in the minds of those patriots present in Washington on Saturday, is a restoration of our national integrity, and an end to the derogatory smearing aimed at our Government and our Military; and we should all remember that regardless of our political or social views, we should never speak a word that has the potential to dishearten those who dedicate themselves entirely to our country.
Justin Till
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Justin Till, MHS Senior, attended the rallies in Washington on March 17th, and delivered a Proclamation to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison on behalf of the MHS Student Council, declaring their full and unwavering support of America's Armed Forces.
~g
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A young man from Texas ( He is a remarkable 18 year old senior) observations of what happened in Washington, D.C. on March 17, 2007...God bless our young men and women...thank you Justin.........
Harry Riley, COL, USA, Ret
Gathering of Eagles Web Site: http://gatheringofeagles.org/
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If America does not confront the Islamic fascist butchers, who will
Labels: ANSWER, Anti-War groups, Code Pink, Col Harry Riley, Gathering of Eagles, Justin Till, March 17 2003, Pro Troops
Friday, March 23, 2007
Defending the Wall on 03-17-07
The man with the yellow on his back is screaming at the vets, while waving his large banner.
Well, it's over now, the assembly areas for the Gathering of Eagles is an empty hillside of churned mud, the antiwar protest field is less muddy but just as empty. It was a long day, but a good one.
It started for me Friday night, when I went to visit one of the principal motels for the GOE movement, a Holiday Inn in Ballston, just outside DC. A friend and I walked in the door and were struck immediately with the sight of a couple dozen men in various kinds of clothing and insignia that marked them as
The first major meeting was a discussion held by a vet who is also a retired cop, with crowd control experience, and who had been in liaison with the Park Police. He explained how carefully they were preparing to keep things safe, that they were our best friends, and that we needed to cooperate with them to the max. And that above all, we were not to let ourselves be goaded into any sort of violence, even if seriously provoked, since that was exactly what the radicals would like. People were to be designated as marshals, with special identifying shirts, and it would be their job to buffer the rest of us from attacks, and to demonstrate the discipline we have as lawful counterdemonstrators. He reminded everyone that there would be both very sincere and nonviolent demonstrators whom we should not confront, and even regular tourists to whom we should be as courteous and helpful as possible.
The message came through loud and clear, and was accepted fairly well by everyone. (Even those angrier among us who would have welcomed a chance to let an abusive radical find out firsthand what the consequences can be of provoking those who have served the country they love.) It was said again and again by people that after all, we fought for their right to free speech and political expression, whether we like what they say or not. After all, it is who we are.
The next morning we got on the DC Metro at one of the outlying stations, on the first train of the day, and no sooner did we enter the car than we saw half the people on it were veterans. The sharing in conversation was great, and we were all building enthusiasm for the day to come.
When we got off the Metro, we were several blocks from the Memorial, and as we exited the station, there was another group of vets assembling on the corner. We started together down to the assembly point, and on the way, joined with three other groups of vets and supporters. This was before
At the assembly point they were already building a large
By then the police presence was obvious, numerous officers standing around, motorcycles and police cars parked nearby, and booths had been set up at one end of The Wall for metal detectors, and one-way traffic past The Wall was required so everyone had to get checked before getting near it. There were also officers at a couple of places along the walk, and many vets making their way along as well, so I felt reassured that the chances of any vandalism had become vanishingly small.
My partner and I then made our first pass through moonbat territory, but hardly anyone was there. They were setting up enormous 12 foot speakers , and various displays of different protest groups, but clearly the main mass of their people had not begun to arrive. We did note large stockpiles of very nicely preprinted signs, condemning the war and call for impeachment of the President, ready to be handed out. Clearly these people are well funded and very well organized.
We roamed some more, to the
In the following hours the crowds grew, and eventually the main line between the protestors and the vets was drawn, right at a point on one side of the Lincoln Memorial, where a street divides the memorial area from the field where the antiwar people had set up the HQ (loudspeakers and all). Vets lined up on the memorial side, displaying many American flags, POW/MIA flags, and some banners as well. On the other side were many of the printed antiwar signs, but also a mixture of many others, some homemade, some also nicely printed, like the several I saw of Che Guevara, There was a PLO flag, a few "Truth for 9/11" signs (you know, the CIA/Mossad/Martians flew the planes into the towers), a poster calling for Christians to be Christian and renounce war, and some really nice vintage signs, like that oldie-but-goodie "Make Love, Not War".
The yelling across the street (police were on the median telling people to on their own sides, the vet side had marshals in orange shirts as well) got loud and nasty, and some of the protestors would come across the street to provoke the vets. I watched and photographed one guy deliberately carry his large homemade protest sign in a walk across the entire length of the vet side, inches away from them, taunting them, clearly looking to have someone throw a punch or grab his sign, but the marshals were telling everyone to stay cool, and the protestor finally reached the end of the line and had to cross back over to his side. Several more protestors moved over towards the vet side, yelling and screaming, only a few vets moved into the street to yell back, and finally the police pushed the protestors back to their side and told them to stay there. I never saw any of the vets give any trouble at all to the police, and it became clear later that this was noticed.
Eventually the police called in reinforcements, eleven mounted officers formed a line at the end of the corridor between the two groups, and riot police put barriers all the way down the whole front of the antiwar side. But the barriers were shorter on the vet side, and every officer on the ground between the two curbs was facing the antiwar side, It was not hard to see who they thought were the real troublemakers.
The chants of USA-USA-USA at times could be heard from the vets, but much of the time the giant speakers on the other side drowned out everything. I was occasionally walking through that side (had a pullover windbreaker on over my jacket so they didn't see my VN ribbon or USMC emblem), and it actually hurt my ears to walk past those speakers. People wanted to give me the Socialist newspaper ($1 donation), and other antigovernment publications, but I stayed busy taking pictures of the lifesize red doll of a devil with Bush's head on the shoulders, and the assorted radical cause banners displayed in several places. There were Quakers there, Moslem activists, old VVAW guys, a motley collection of people and causes only united by their being in opposition to our government. Some of them reasonably sincere and courteous, but many harshly aggressive.
Meanwhile, there was more sense of having gone through a time machine back to 1970, as the loudspeakers played the old songs, like "War- - What Is It Good For", and people actually had "Hell No, I Won't Go" buttons on. Original issue buttons, not reproductions, on people who must have dusted them off from their souvenir drawer to wear them again.
At one point a VVAW guy came up to me and wanted to talk, he recognized me as a vet and wanted to see where I was coming from. We had barely started to speak when a TV crew came over to drag him off for an interview. When he came back I asked him how they came to him rather than anyone else, and he mentioned they had interviewed him at other protests and knew him. He also said they were foreign press, so I asked from where.
Hmm, I decided to try something, so I ran after them found them and said to the lady interviewer "Sind Sie Deutsch?" She, surprised, said yes. So I said "Moechten Sie mit einander altem Soldat sprechen?" (Would you like to speak with another old soldier?) I figured, how could she say no, how often would she ever get a chance to interview an American vet who would speak German to her? They'd love that in
But she said that they 'd just talked to one of us, and I said, yeah, but I am from a different point of view. She then quickly said "Oh, we have all the interviews we need, I must hurry now", and she turned and walked away fast.
I say again- what media bias? In my trips through protest areas, I saw at least 6-8 interviewers with TV cameras talking to people. I was told only two made it to the GOE area, Fox being one of them. Perhaps there's some meaning there.
The late morning went on, the crowds got thicker, the GOE hillside filled up and the many feet turned the soft ground into a monster mud pit in places. There were some good presentations, good music, and that feeling of unity and warmth that made up for the cold breeze. (Well, almost!)
Guard groups of vets formed at the two entrances to the GOE site, and no one with an antiwar banner was allowed in. There were minor scuffles when some protest types tried to push in, usually their signs were trashed and they found themselves facing a solid wall of bodies that would not let them pass. And they went away, yelling nasty things. I saw one young woman slide past the first rank of guards, then start screaming at everyone, get barred from further travel inward by a line of men, and when she kept up her yelling, the police came in, she abused them, and wound up on the ground outside the gate. (A lot of smiling and chuckling at that point.) But no vet touched her.
When parade time approached, a procession of protestors came by the GOE area, between ranks of vets on either side, and it was again flashback time, Yes, I kid you not, they sang "Give Peace A Chance". A bunch of them were the Code Pink ladies, in seriously ridiculous pink outfits, and old enough that I realized they were probably singing that song because they'd sung it before, back about 1970 or so, and were reliving the glory days of the old protests.
In the end, their parade went off towards the Pentagon, and most vets relaxed and the day wore down, and by
My best guess was that there were roughly equal numbers on both sides, maybe 4-5000 each. No one came near a monument with a spray can, no vet was ever rebuked by the police, and the antiwar people were clearly taken back to find themselves for once not in command of the situation, not able to dominate the whole event, and with a strong and unyielding presence of people who disagree with them while not trying to prevent them from exercising their rights. This was not a win for them, though they will certainly try to claim it as one.
This was a win for all of us who honor the Memorial, who don't' agree that antiwar extremism should prevail, who do believe in giving as much support as possible to our people in harm's way on our behalf. I am enormously grateful to all those who worked hard to set this up, and get it organized and coordinated. I am so damn happy and proud to have stood again in the ranks of those who love and defend this country that it's hard to express it properly. It was a great, great day.
To all those who participated in any way, I can only say I was honored to be there with you, thanks a thousand times, and Welcome Home., Brother. Now and always.
Del
Labels: 03-17-07, defending the wall, Del, GOE, Gulf War, Legion Riders, Media Bias, Nam Knights, Park Police, Patriot Guard, Rolling Thunder, US War Vets, Vets
An Eagles View of 17 March 07
An Open Letter to the Canada Free Press
Labels: Airborne, Chaplain, Gathering of Eagles, GOE, Infantry, MOPH, Purple Heart, Rev. Ernie Tucker, Smiling Hawk, Veterans Administration, Vietnam