Wednesday Hero Blogroll

1st. Lt. Thomas M. Marti
27 years old from Ward, Arkansas
C Troop, 1st Squadron, 40th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team (Airborne), 25th Infantry Division
October 14, 2007


An Eagle Scout, Thomas M. Martin took on cleaning up an old red train caboose as a service project. "He remodeled it to make it where people could go inside. If you saw it before and looked in it after he was through - it was daylight and dark", said his former principal, Robert Martin, who is no relation. "Tom was involved in Key Club, German Club and band, making All-Region Band his sophomore year", said Robert Martin. "He was a wonderful young man. Those that knew him knew he was funny and outgoing."

Lt. Martin died in Al Busayifi, Iraq of wounds sustained from small-arms fire when insurgents attacked his unit during combat operations. He enlisted in the Army in 1998 after graduating high school and served in Korea before accepting an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating in 2005.

"He was very polite and respectful. I can't think of him ever overreacting; he had a wonderful, good-natured personality", said Pat Hagge, a family friend. "It's a terrible tragedy; he was a great young man."

Lt. Thomas Martin is survived by his parents, Edmund and Candis.

These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived

This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

More Injustice from the "justice dept"

Many of you are familiar with the injustice of the incarceration of 2 of our Border Patrol agents. Ramos and Compean. Their appeal was rejected.

This from grassfire:

After months and months of delays, today the 5th Circuit rejectedthe most important aspects of the appeal by imprisoned borderpatrol agents Ramos and Compean.

That means the court has sided with Johnny Sutton -- and Ramos and Compean now face at least 10 years in prison for attempting to apprehend an convicted illegal alien drug smuggler!

We have posted a link to the court's ruling in which the judges conclude that the trial "was conducted fairly and without reversible error" -- even though the court admitted to "exclusion of evidence"(i.e. suppression of evidence) regarding the drug smuggler!

The Scumbag that testified against our Border agents.

Go here to read it for yourself (all 45 pages):
http://www.grassfire.net/r.asp?U=9692&CID=142&RID=15253391

Get involved. This is a travesty of justice. What kind of world is it when our law enforcement officals are incarcerated for doing their job on the word of an illegal drug smuggler...

Die with your boots on.

...

Propoganda?

OK.

I have some left leaning friends.

Yep. I sure do. And they're good people.

They are intelligent and well read and researched people.

Through them I've come to know, in the virtual sense, a fellow liberal friend of theirs.

They have a website and a forum. I frequent it mainly because I enjoy the discourse and they are my friends.

This particular individual and many of the the others that frequent their site are constantly harping about how the military industrial corporate machine controls the media...how GW and his administration control the media...most of the time I just chuckle.

I am now going to issue the challenge here that Senor Obama...the Democratic Presidential hopeful who seems to think he's already POTUS, has more control over the media than the evil conservative corporate machine.

His record breaking performance in Oregon according to WaPo. Oh and let's see what KGW.com had to say. Well, that farce has been exposed. The fact that he used a free rock concert to stage his appearance had nothing to do with the record numbers I'm sure...

Now his infamous German speech has been exposed as well. Of course, for the folks who don't scour the internet for the real news, they'll never know of course because Obama is leading the top news agencies around like the pied piper. Lets see what the NYT had to say. While we're at it..let's see what WaPo had to say. How about CNN. While his republican rival...you know the all powerful controllers of the media gets a couple of reporters to cover his campaign...interesting.

You know. If I knew there was a free concert going on with free brats and free beer...not to mention free pizza...I would definitely be there...free beer...mmmm.

....

Wednesday Hero Blogroll

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This Weeks Hero Was Suggested By Toni
1st LT. Frank B. Walkup, IV
23 years old from Woodbury, Tennessee
2nd Battalion, 35th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division
June 16, 2007

Toni already has a great post up on her site, so I'll just link to it.
These brave men and women sacrifice so much in their lives so that others may enjoy the freedoms we get to enjoy everyday. For that, I am proud to call them Hero.
We Should Not Only Mourn These Men And Women Who Died, We Should Also Thank God That Such People Lived
This post is part of the Wednesday Hero Blogroll. For more information about Wednesday Hero, or if you would like to post it on your site, you can go here.

Are We Surprised...?

Leave it to Fox news to publish what the NYT refused to.

Kudos to Fox on that. I find it preposterous that what used to be the most prominent newspaper refused to publish an Op-Ed piece countering the Op-Ed piece of another presidential hopeful.

This reeks of favoritism and not of unbiased journalism. Well, it's their paper, they can do what they want with it. Just one more reason not to patronize them any more.

McCain's response to Obama's Op-Ed piece is reprinted below. Some of us respect the free and fair coverage idea...just not the NYT.

Link to Fox here.

The McCain Op-Ed The New York Times Wouldn’t Publish

By Sen. John McCain

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80 percent to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.
Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”
Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.
Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City — actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.
The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.
To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.
Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.
No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.
But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”
The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.
I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war — only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Die with your boots on....


...

...A little peace corps...WTF?

CJ over at A Soldier's Perspective, went and made contact with a group of anti-war peaceniks.
A trio of old ladies with some really big signs and alotta false information and premises about our military and the war...well any war in general.

I commend CJ for his efforts and I agree with him...

“Are you pro-war or pro-peace?” was the first question that came out of the mouth of one of the war protesters as I explained that I was there to talk to them about their presence on a major intersection here in Huntsville, AL. I explained that I’m a Soldier, I hate war and love peace. But, I also recognize that peace comes at a price. It went downhill from there.

The whole story and the Podcasts can be heard here.

You really have to listen to the audio interviews...
The utter ignorance of these poor misguided souls is shocking...you really have to listen to understand.

All I could say is "wow".

...

The Sky Is Not Falling...

173rd Airborne.. "Sky Soldiers"

There has been alot of media attention on the recent attack by Taliban insurgents on our troops in Afghanistan... I'm sure you've read about the soldiers of 173rd Airborne who fought off a massive assault losing 9 good troops and several more wounded.

What is interesting to note, is that the position this Infantry platoon was occupying was a temporary recon OP (Observation Post).

This was not a coalition base, not a FOB or a COP but a temporary postition. They were not overrun, they fought hard and defended their position. There is no telling what the toll was on the enemy, but I would have to hazard a guess and say it had to have been significant. This particular infantry unit is nearing the end of it's tour and has conducted around 9,000 patrols...they are tough as nails veterans and they still won the day.

Funny how the media misconstrues the facts to present what appeared to be a defeat. I am offended on so many levels by this.

H/T: Laughing Wolf over at BlackFive.

The money quote is this:

"If there’s no combat outpost to abandon, there’s no position to abandon," he said. "It’s a bunch of vehicles like we do on patrol anywhere and we hold up for a night and pick up any tactical positions that we have with vehicle patrol bases.
"We do that routinely.... We’re always doing that when go out and stay in an area for longer then a few hours, and that’s what it is. So there is nothing to abandon. There was no structures, there was no COP or FOB or anything like that to even abandon. So, from the get-go, that is just [expletive], and it’s not right."
He also didn’t like the media’s characterization that his men were "overrun."
"As far as I know, and I know a lot, it was not overrun in any shape, manner or form," an emotional Preysler said. "It was close combat to be sure — hand grenade range. The enemy never got into the main position. As a matter of fact, it was, I think, the bravery of our soldiers reinforcing the hard-pressed observation post, or OP, that turned the tide to defeat the enemy attack."

The original article is over at Stars & Stripes.

Way to go Troops!

And a GREAT BIG FLIPPIN' BIRD to the MSM at this....

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Happy July 4th...

a day early.

I just spent the last half hour composing a great July 4th tribute complete with all the cool images...and my freakin POS computer just lost it...

So have a good one. Enjoy your freedom and eat, drink, be merry and watch the fireworks and the parades.

Many good people died for the independence most take for granted. We celebrate them on other days. I think they would be happy if we just took a couple days this weekend and did a little "grounding", "unwinding," etc.

So enjoy!