Tuesday, November 16, 2004


This is the face of our soldiers. This is the guy who goes into battle. He faces situations that you and I can't even imagine in our nightmares. This story about the marine shooting the insurgent in Fallujah is getting me in a mood again. So buckle up.

Are we surprised that it was a NBC reporter? Was it just day before yesterday that we saw in an e-mail to a soldier from a reporter covering the war from NBC how much disdain the reporter showed for the military?

We are talking about Iraqi insurgents who think nothing of strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up even their own people to try and get at our soldiers.

The most ironic and disgusting thing is that YOU KNOW that if this insurgent had killed this marine the very same media would have been decrying the death toll of our military in Fallujah.

I cannot explain to you my strong feelings about the military. Although my father was a sergeant in the army during the Korean war, he never served in Korea. He trained soldiers and it was long before he was married and had kids and I don't remember him ever talking about it much. I was a small child during Vietnam, so I don't remember anything personally about that war either. I don't have friends in this war, although I have gotten to know some of these fine soldiers over the internet through other friends. I have never owned a gun. I am the kind of person that nurses baby birds back to health rather than let them die. I hate violence of any kind. But I have also always had a profound sense of right and wrong. There is just something so noble to me about men and women willing to put on a uniform and fight and risk their lives so that I can drive around with my kids to a baseball game or a movie feeling safe and free.

Maybe I just have always known who to be grateful to. Maybe I understand history enough to know that war, although a terrible thing, produces freedom and keeps evil from overcoming this world.

When I look at the soldier above, I see all soldiers who leave those precious loved ones to fight for us, for you and me. I get a FIERCE grateful heart for them.

Could I leave that little boy shown above? Do I have the unselfish heart of nobility to leave him and fight for what I know to be right? I can't answer that question. I truly can't. But I thank God every day that that father and thousands like him have that unselfish noble heart and I am SICK of the MSM and some snotty reporter like Hockenberry sneering at these brave men and women and tearing down their sacrifice, every chance they get.

If you have not heard the whole story. This marine had just lost a buddy to a insurgent faking being injured and then killing the marine when the marine went to attend to him. (Because that is what marines do) The marine in the film who shot the insurgent, had also just recently been shot in the face, although not badly, thank God. This unit had been fighting for 8 days straight. So if this media of ours thinks they are going to twist things to make that young man look like some kind of cold blooded killer instead of protecting himself as he SHOULD have, then they can just know that there is a new media out here. We are not strong, we are not vast, but we ARE LOUD! And we will not allow the spin that the MSM wants so badly to put out there. There will be truth. There will be accountability. Our military does it's own investigations. It always has , and always will. Soldiers know what is expected and know the rules of engagement. But that is not the accountability I am talking about. Within the military, that is a given. I am talking about the media. You will not be able to run stories based on your version of the so called "truth." Not anymore. The whole story will be told and there isn't a damn thing you can do about.

So get used to it and start being the kind of journalist and newsmakers that have some kind of integrity again.

We will be watching.