The following article is taken from OnPoint whose writers highlighted this chapter from James Brady’s latest book.  It is well worth the read.Todd

“Why Marines Fight”

11-16-2007, 08:26 AM • by ON Point

Not everything I write has to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, or Pakistan; today’s feature article contains excerpts from James Brady (Parade Magazine, former Marine, and Bronze Star awardee in Korea ) newest book.U.S. Marines are known the world over as among the most dedicated and courageous soldiers ever to have engaged in battle. Author James Brady, who is regarded as a hero by many who have donned the uniform, explains what makes Marines so tough in “Why Marines Fight.” Here are excerpts:Chapter 1Hear them, listen to the voices: These are the Marines, the hard men who fight our wars, unscripted and always honest.Except, of course, when we lie.Half a dozen wars ago, in France, on June 2 of 1918, Marine gunnery sergeant Dan Daly stepped out in front of the 4th Brigade of Marines, mustered for another bloody frontal assault on the massed machine guns of the Germans that had been murderously sweeping the wheat fields at Belleau Wood. Death awaited. And the men, understandably, seemed reluctant to resume the attack. But old gunnies like Daly aren’t notable for coddling the troops, for issuing polite invitations, and Dan was having none of it. Nor was he much for inflated oratory or patriotic flourish. Instead, in what some remember as a profane, contemptuous snarl, and loudly, Gunnery Sergeant Daly demanded of his hesitant Marines: “Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?”Is that why we fight? Because we’re cussed at and shamed into it? Was that what motivated the men of the 4th Brigade in 1918 who went into the deadly wheat field? Do today’s Marines who take out combat patrols in Anbar Province and hunt the Taliban somewhere west of the Khyber have the same motivations as Dan Daly’s men? Or the Marines who once waded the bloody lagoon for General Howland M. “Howlin’ Mad” Smith at Tarawa, scaled Mount Suribachi, defied the Japanese at Wake Island, fought the Chinese in the snows of North Korea, and fought and died on the Perfume River at Hue and in a thousand other bloody places?The Marines in this book answer those questions; each in his own way attempts to say why we are drawn to the guns.Dan Daly had his methods: Curse the sons of bitches and lead them into the field. The men were impressed, by the man if not by his shouting, knowing Daly as a legend, with two Medals of Honor already. But was Daly’s leadership and their own training all it took for Marines to get up and run at the machine guns of Belleau Wood? It became a question I kept asking.General Jim Jones, tall and tough, a former commandant and more recently NATO commander, has a mantra: “Sergeants run the Marine Corps,” he told me once on a rainswept drive from Quantico to the Pentagon. Jones wasn’t just blowing smoke, keeping up noncom morale when he said that. He was attempting to tell me what he believed differentiates the Marine Corps from other military arms. Without its seemingly inexhaustible supply of good, tough sergeants, the Marine Corps would be nothing more than a smaller version of the army. Most Marines, officers or enlisted, would agree. They’ve had their own Dan Dalys. We all have.I found mine, thirty-three years after Daly, in a North Korean winter on a snowy ridgeline, the senior NCOs of Dog Company, a couple of blue-collar Marine lifers, hard men from the South Pacific and up through the ranks, one hard-earned noncommissioned stripe after another, who tutored me about war, not off their college diplomas but out of their own vast experience of service and combat, and incidentally about life, women, and other fascinating matters. These were the professionals; I was the amateur learning from them, not in any classroom but in a quite deadly field.Stoneking, the platoon sergeant, was a big, rawboned Oklahoman maybe twenty-eight or twenty-nine, who drove a bootlegger’s truck back home and was married to an attractive brunette WAVE who sent him erotic photos of herself. He had been a Marine eight or nine years, had fought the Japanese, and was in the bad Korea fighting. The men knew that if it came to that, he would (against the rules) strip his blouse and fight another enlisted man who was giving him angst. Stoneking was a cold, distant man with little regard for me or for most people (I don’t believe he really gave a shit about anyone), although for forty-six consecutive nights that winter he and I slept head to toe in our sleeping bags in a stinking, six-by-eight-foot bunker with a log-and-sandbagged roof so low it had to be crawled into and out of. That miserable hole was where we lived like animals and where from Stoneking I began to learn what it was to be and to lead Marines. Once when I’d been in a shooting and crawled back late that night into our bunker to tell about it, Stoneking wasn’t much impressed. “So you got yourself into a firefight,” he remarked, and rolled against the dirt wall to get back to sleep. “Yeah,” I said deflated, and got into my own sleeping bag.A pivotal event in my young life meant nothing to a hard case like Stoney.The right guide, our platoon’s ranking number three, was the more affable Sergeant Wooten.We weren’t supposed to keep diaries (in case we were captured or the damned things were found on our bodies) but I wanted one day to work on newspapers and write about people and things, so, to keep a record and get around the diary rule, I wrote long letters home to family and girlfriends for them to save. The mail back then wasn’t censored. Wooten might occasionally have composed a postcard, and little more, but he enjoyed watching me scribble away, marveled at my industry. “You are a cack-ter, suh.” Cack-ter being his pronunciation of “character,” in Wooten’s mind a compliment. He was leagues less surly than Stoney, so I occasionally lured him into deep, Socratic conversation.“It ain’t much of a war, Lieutenant,” Wooten would concede, having listened to me blather on, and then patiently explaining his own philosophy to a young replacement officer, “but it’s the only war we got.” He had other, maturely and placidly thought out commentaries on life and the fates, remarking with sly, rural witticisms on the nightly firefights and their bloody casualty rolls, “Sometimes you eat the bear / sometimes the bear eats you.” Or declaring as an unexpected salvo of enemy shells slammed into the ridgeline, scattering the men in dusty, ear-splitting, and too-often lethal chaos, sending us diving into holes amid incongruous laughter, “There ain’t been such excitement since the pigs ate my little brother.”You rarely heard a line like that back in Brooklyn.I ended up loving these men, as chill, as caustic, or as odd as they may first have seemed when I got to the war, an innocent who had never heard the bullets sing, had never fought, who yet, by the fluke of education and rank, was now anointed the commanding officer of hardened veterans of such eminence and stature. Maybe I could better explain about such men and why Marines fight and generally fight so well if only I were able to tell you fully and precisely about combat as my old-timers knew it, and how it really was. And how I would have to learn it.It’s difficult unless you’ve been there.War is a strange country, violent and often beautiful at the same time, with its own folklore and recorded history, its heroes and villains. It is as well a profession, strange and sad, poorly paid but highly specialized. Cruel, too. War is very cruel. And surprising, in that it can be incredibly thrilling and rewarding, though not for everyone. There is a sort of complicated ritual to it, a freemasonry, a violent priesthood. Only fighting men are qualified to exchange the secret fraternal handshake, the mythic nod and wink of understanding.Not all men are meant to fight in wars and fewer still do it well. Others, revolted by its horrors, its sorrows and pity, yet hold dear its memories, the camaraderie, its occasional joys. I have even heard men admit, without shame and rather proudly, “I love this shit,” speaking candidly about war and their strange passion for it. There are such Marines, plenty of them, men hooked on combat. They love it the way men love a woman in a relationship they suspect will end badly. Others are honest enough to admit they hate and fear it but go anyway. Their reasons may be strangely inspiring, or murky, puzzling.A few Marines can’t or won’t go to the battle, and they don’t last long, not in the infantry, not in the line outfits. They are transferred out to someplace less. They may still be fine men but they are no longer Marines.I never knew better, truer men than in the rifle company ranks in which I served, bold and resourceful Americans, beautiful men in a violent life. What each of them was and did later at home and at peace, having let slip the leash of discipline, I can’t always say. But in combat such men, even the rogues and rare scoundrels, were magnificent, hard men living in risky places. In this book, I write about some of them. Forget my commentary; hear the Marines, listen to their voices.The third platoon’s right guide, Sergeant Wooten, that salty career man, was a crafty rifleman who knew a little about demolitions. He once volunteered in North Korea to blow a Fox Company Marine’s body out of the ice of a frozen mountain stream; using too heavy a charge, he got the guy out, but in two pieces. When he came back to us at Dog Company he looked terrible, like a man after an all-night drunk. “You okay, Wooten?” “No, sir, I ain’t.After I got that boy out that way, I threw up on the spot.” A three-striper who had fought the damned Japanese for three years, all across the Pacific, Wooten took a drink. He’d been up and down the noncommissioned ranks, as high as gunnery sergeant and then broken back to buck sergeant, a lean, leathery, drawling rustic maybe fifteen years older than I was and lots wiser. Sometimes Wooten lost patience with those who were critical of the Korean War we were then fighting. He was pretty much enjoying himself and thought those people ought to shut the hell up and cut the bitching. As, giving me that flat-mouthed grin of his, Wooten declared with professional regret: “It’s the only war we got.”Excerpted from “Why Marines Fight” by James Brady © 2007 James Brady. All rights reserved. Excerpted with permission of St. Martin’s Press. 

In addition to the Emerald City writer, a leading UK military leader has come out against President Bush’s post-war plans for Iraq. No surprise here.

TC

Former Head of U.K. Army: U.S. Iraq Policy ‘Intellectually Bankrupt’

Saturday , September 01, 2007

The head of the British Army during the invasion of Iraq has condemned America’s postwar policy in the country as “intellectually bankrupt” and “very short-sighted”.

In an unprecedented attack, General Sir Mike Jackson, former Chief of the General Staff, said that insufficient troops were deployed to control the country after Saddam Hussein’s downfall, and he criticised the decision to disband the Iraqi Army and security forces.

Click here to read the story from the Times of London.

Sir Mike blamed Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defense Secretary, for much of the fiasco and said that his claims that American forces “don’t do nation-building” were “nonsensical”.

He criticised the Bush Administration for handing control of postwar Iraq to the Pentagon, and claimed that Mr Rumsfeld discarded detailed plans for post-conflict administration that had been drawn up by the State Department. “All the planning went to waste,” he said. Mr Rumsfeld, who he labelled “intellectually bankrupt”, was “one of the most responsible for the current situation in Iraq”.

Sir Mike added that Washington relied too much on military power rather than nation-building and diplomacy in fighting global terrorism.

His outspoken attack, made in his forthcoming autobiography Soldier and reported in The Daily Telegraph, highlights the tension between British commanders and the Pentagon in the run-up to war and its aftermath in 2003. It is likely further to inflame tensions between Britain and the US over the war.

ON Point has re-published a NY Times article that is worth repeating.

As discussed on this blog previously, the post-war occupation led by President Bush’s “pals” was a colossal failure. Dismissing low-level and mid-level Sunni Baathists, as a modern day attempt at de-Nazification, was stupid - plain stupid. Even the Allied armies post-VE Day did not de-Nazify to the level that President Bush’s civilian braniacs said was necessary.

The unfortunate reality is this: This administration’s neo-con thinkers, in their unrelenting globalism, have made more mistakes than are acceptable. The level of fantasy and myopic vision are unequaled in recent memory. America and its future are in the process of being sold to the highest bidder (China? Iran? Saudi Arabia?) and, despite the tough talk, this group of wannabes are little more than “girlie men.”

May God save us from President Bush’s “able” cabinet and appointees - including the rampant croynism that subverts the political process and allows buffoons into positions of power.

The Moderator

Iraq To Allow Ex-Baathists To Regain Jobs, but Sunni’s call deal too small; too late

New York Times
August 28, 2007
By Stephen Farrell

BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 - Hours after Iraq’s political leaders declared a deal to return former Baathists to government jobs, Iraq’s most senior Sunni Arab leader said Monday that it was too small an olive branch for Sunnis to rejoin the government.

The Sunni leader, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, welcomed the “great achievement” of a compromise to ease measures imposed by the American occupation authority in 2003 to stop Saddam Hussein loyalists from returning to senior posts. But Mr. Hashemi said nothing had changed regarding the Aug. 1 decision by his Iraqi Islamic Party and others, which make up the Iraqi Consensus Front, to quit the government.

The announcement on Sunday has been hailed as evidence of movement toward national reconciliation by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s widely criticized Shiite-led administration, which is under intense international pressure to address the concerns of Iraq’s disaffected Sunni minority.

The chief measures sought by Sunni leaders are laws to ensure fair distribution of oil revenues and tougher steps to curb Shiite militias closely linked to parties within Mr. Maliki’s governing coalition.

Another suicide bombing was reported Monday, when a man blew himself up in a mosque in Falluja, west of Baghdad, Reuters reported. Ten people were reported dead and 11 wounded.

The de-Baathification breakthrough was announced jointly on Sunday by Mr. Maliki; Mr. Hashemi; Adel Abdul-Mehdi, a Shiite who is Mr. Hashemi’s fellow vice president; and the country’s two most senior Kurdish leaders, President Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government in Iraq. They also reached agreement on holding provincial elections and the release of prisoners being held without charge.

President Bush called the Iraqi leaders from Air Force One as he flew from his ranch in Crawford, Tex., to a fund-raiser in New Mexico. In a brief statement at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, he welcomed the agreement that included steps that are among the benchmarks outlined by Congress to measure political progress.

The White House has been eager to demonstrate improvement, especially on the political front, in advance of the progress report the administration must submit to Congress by Sept. 15.

“While yesterday’s agreement is an important step, I reminded them, and they understand, much more needs to be done,” Mr. Bush said of his telephone conversations.

Mr. Hashemi, whose party is a key member of the Iraqi Consensus Front, the largest Sunni bloc, confirmed that Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish party leaders have reached consensus on the “major issues” surrounding the return of former Baathists to government jobs, although the proposed legislation has still to be sent to Parliament for discussion and approval.

Mr. Hashemi forecast that the legislation would allow less senior members of the Baath Party to return to government jobs.

But he said the Iraqi Consensus Front would not rejoin the government until other key demands were met. These include amnesties for prisoners, revising the Baghdad security plan and curbing militias.

Mr. Hashemi did offer a compromise solution, saying that if some demands were immediately met, others could be postponed for one or two weeks, or left to committees to find solutions later. But others in his party cautioned that de-Baathification was a relatively minor issue compared with their other grievances.

“There are more serious issues, such as the security portfolio, reconciliation, militias, constitutional amendments, a ministerial reshuffle and defining terrorism, resistance and who is the enemy out there on the streets,” said Omar Abdul Sattar, a lawmaker.

“We live in a crisis,” he said. “Do you think the de-Baathification law and the provincial elections are accomplishments? This is a wedding without a bride.”

Published Tuesday, August 28, 2007 10:26 AM

Over the weekend, NPR reported on a family’s loss of a second son in Iraq. This is not the first time such a thing occurred in America’s ongoing struggle for freedom. From the Revolutionary War to the present, American families have sacrificed multiple sons on domestic and foreign battlefields. May we all take a moment to lift up this family before the Savior’s throne.

California Family Loses Second Son in Iraq War

by Terry Phillips

Weekend Edition Sunday, August 26, 2007 · A California family is suffering the loss of a second son in the Iraq war.

Twenty-one year-old Nathan Hubbard was killed in last week’s crash of a Blackhawk helicopter.

His brother Marine Lance Cpl. Jared Hubbard was killed by a roadside bomb in Ramadi in 2004. A third brother is still deployed in Iraq, but he is returning home now to be with his family.

One of the biggest farces in recent memory is the war no drugs, particularly the war on drugs in Muslim states and enclaves.

As recently as the mid to late nineties, our government was well aware of the connectedness of Muslim drug crops being used to finance radical Jihadists and their Islamofascist attacks throughout the Western world. Even before we sent the US Armed Forces into Kosovo to protect the Muslims against the so-called evil Serbs, the pipeline of dope was well established between Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the follow-on pipeline to the most radical Islamic states.

Today, the drug-financed Jihadist terror continues unabated in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as providing financing for Al Qaeda’s far-flung operations throughout the world. Thus, from the President on down, the American people are consistently lied to with the assistance of the DEA, the American military, and the main stream media (MSM) - including the New York Times whose article on the Taliban narco operation appears below.

Until our political structure is accountable to the people, its subordinate entities (e.g., the DEA, US military, State Department, etc.), and the MSM will continue to perpetuate the lies that Muslims (1) worship the same God as Christians, (2) live alcohol and drug-free lives, (3) are overwhelmingly “moderate,” and (4) the Jihadists rely on rich financiers (e.g. bin Laden) to support their worldwide network of terror. The truth is far different and our federal government knows it.

August 26, 2007

Taliban Raise Poppy Production to a Record Again

By DAVID ROHDE

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan, Aug. 25 — Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.

The report is likely to touch off renewed debate about the United States’ $600 million counternarcotics program in Afghanistan, which has been hampered by security challenges and endemic corruption within the Afghan government.

“I think it is safe to say that we should be looking for a new strategy,” said William B. Wood, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on the report’s overall findings. “And I think that we are finding one.”

Mr. Wood said the current American programs for eradication, interdiction and alternative livelihoods should be intensified, but he added that ground spraying poppy crops with herbicide remained “a possibility.” Afghan and British officials have opposed spraying, saying it would drive farmers into the arms of the Taliban.

While the report found that opium production dropped in northern Afghanistan, Western officials familiar with the assessment said, cultivation rose in the south, where Taliban insurgents urge farmers to grow poppies.

Although common farmers make comparatively little from the trade, opium is a major source of financing for the Taliban, who gain public support by protecting farmers’ fields from eradication, according to American officials. They also receive a cut of the trade from traffickers they protect.

In Taliban-controlled areas, traffickers have opened more labs that process raw opium into heroin, vastly increasing its value. The number of drug labs in Helmand rose to roughly 50 from 30 the year before, and about 16 metric tons of chemicals used in heroin production have been confiscated this year.

The Western officials said countrywide production had increased from 2006 to 2007, but they did not know the final United Nations figure. They estimated a countrywide increase of 10 to 30 percent.

The new survey showed positive signs as well, officials said.

The sharp drop in poppy production in the north is likely to make this year’s countrywide increase smaller than the growth in 2006. Last year, a 160 percent increase in Helmand’s opium crop fueled a 50 percent nationwide increase. Afghanistan produced a record 6,100 metric tons of opium poppies last year, 92 percent of the world’s supply.

Here in Helmand, the breadth of the poppy trade is staggering. A sparsely populated desert province twice the size of Maryland, Helmand produces more narcotics than any country on earth, including Myanmar, Morocco and Colombia. Rampant poverty, corruption among local officials, a Taliban resurgence and spreading lawlessness have turned the province into a narcotics juggernaut.

Poppy prices that are 10 times higher than those for wheat have so warped the local economy that some farmhands refused to take jobs harvesting legal crops this year, local farmers said. And farmers dismiss the threat of eradication, arguing that so many local officials are involved in the poppy trade that a significant clearing of crops will never be done.

American and British officials say they have a long-term strategy to curb poppy production. About 7,000 British troops and Afghan security forces are gradually extending the government’s authority in some areas, they said. The British government is spending $60 million to promote legal crops in the province, and the United States Agency for International Development is mounting a $160 million alternative livelihoods program across southern Afghanistan, most of it in Helmand.

Loren Stoddard, director of the aid agency’s agriculture program in Afghanistan, cited American-financed agricultural fairs, the introduction of high-paying legal crops and the planned construction of a new industrial park and airport as evidence that alternatives were being created.

Mr. Stoddard, who helped Wal-Mart move into Central America in his previous posting, predicted that poppy production had become so prolific that the opium market was flooded and prices were starting to drop. “It seems likely they’ll have a rough year this year,” he said, referring to the poppy farmers. “Labor prices are up and poppy prices are down. I think they’re going to be looking for new things.”

On Wednesday, Mr. Stoddard and Rory Donohoe, the director of the American development agency’s Alternative Livelihoods program in southern Afghanistan, attended the first “Helmand Agricultural Festival.” The $300,000 American-financed gathering in Lashkar Gah was an odd cross between a Midwestern county fair and a Central Asian bazaar, devised to show Afghans an alternative to poppies.

Under a scorching sun, thousands of Afghan men meandered among booths describing fish farms, the dairy business and drip-irrigation systems. A generator, cow and goat were raffled off. Wizened elders sat on carpets and sipped green tea. Some wealthy farmers seemed interested. Others seemed keen to attend what they saw as a picnic.

When Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Donohoe arrived, they walked through the festival surrounded by a three-man British and Australian security team armed with assault rifles. “Who won the cow? Who won the cow?” shouted Mr. Stoddard, 38, a burly former food broker from Provo, Utah. “Was it a girl or a guy?”

After Afghans began dancing to traditional drum and flute music, Mr. Donohoe, 29, from San Francisco, briefly joined them.

Some Afghans praised the fair’s alternatives crops. Others said only the rich could afford them. Haji Abdul Gafar, 28, a wealthy landowner, expressed interest in some of the new ideas.

Saber Gul, a 40-year-old laborer, said he was too poor to take advantage. “For those who have livestock and land, they can,” he said. “For us, the poor people, there is nothing.”

Local officials said all the development programs would fail without improved security.

Assadullah Wafa, Helmand’s governor, said four of Helmand’s 13 districts were under Taliban control. Other officials put the number at six.

Mr. Wafa, who eradicated far fewer acres than the governor of neighboring Kandahar Province, promised to improve eradication in Helmand next year. He also called for Western countries to decrease the demand for heroin.

“The world is focusing on the production side, not the buying side,” he said.

The day after the agricultural fair, Mr. Stoddard and Mr. Donohoe gave a tour of a $3 million American project to clear a former Soviet airbase on the outskirts of town and turn it into an industrial park and civilian airport.

Standing near rusting Soviet fuel tanks, the two men described how pomegranates, a delicacy in Helmand for centuries, would be flown out to growing markets in India and Dubai. Animal feed would be produced from a local mill, marble cut and polished for construction.

“Once we get this air cargo thing going,” Mr. Stoddard said, “it will open up the whole south.”

That afternoon, they showed off a pilot program for growing chili peppers on contract for a company in Dubai. “These kinds of partnerships with private companies are what we want here,” said Mr. Donohoe, who has a Master’s in Business Administration from Georgetown University. “We’ll let the market drive it.”

As the Americans toured the farm, they were guarded by eight Afghans and three British and Australian guards. The farm itself had received guards after local villagers began sneaking in at night and stealing produce. Twenty-four hours a day, 24 Afghan men with assault rifles staff six guard posts that ring the farm, safeguarding chili peppers and other produce.

“Some people would say that security is so bad that you can’t do anything,” Mr. Donohoe said. “But we do it.”

Mr. Wafa, though, called the American reconstruction effort too small and “low quality.”

“There is a proverb in Afghanistan,” he said. “By one flower we cannot mark spring.”

Lately a number of articles critical of the war in Iraq have been posted on this blog. In order to present the other side of the argument, the following short piece originally appeared in the Patriot Post.

The Moderator

Democrats change position on Iraq

A sure sign that the Treason Lobby is fresh out of ideas is their resort to that last bastion of hope, “glass-half-empty” politics. In this case, now that the Demos’ “quagmire” whining has been squelched by General Petraeus’ recent counterinsurgency victories in Iraq, the Left is beside itself as to how to cast these overwhelming triumphs into abject failures. Enter “half-full-glass” politics. Specifically, because military gains—no matter how remarkable—have not resulted in peace, love and harmony among Iraqi’s various political blocs, smooth-brains on the Left are confident they have worthy a rationale-du-jour for “bringing the troops home” (AKA, surrendering in Iraq). The theory is that since there has been no “political reconciliation” (to use The Washington Post’s term) among Iraqi factions, these concrete successes mean little, if anything.

Notwithstanding its inability to survive a giggle test, this argument is nonetheless gaining popularity among second-echelon Democrats, who feel obligated to undermine U.S. efforts in Iraq. While Democrat presidential candidates stumble over each other to be first in the “I’m-toughest-on-terror” line—a line each candidate must toe, if he/she ever wants the label “President” to precede his/her name—the real yeoman’s work of Planet Democrat’s inhabitants centers on dismantling efforts to further freedom and democracy in Iraq, through whatever means possible. The Seditionists have tied their hopes for power in 2008 to U.S. failure in the Middle East, independent of the consequences. Let’s just hope America—as well as the rest of the world—isn’t forced to face those consequences.

Many “patriotic” Americans do not see the reality of war. Death is sanitized and the wounded are hidden from public view. In addition to the physical scars, the mental and emotional scars can far out live the horror resulting from the body’s wounds. In fact, the traumatic stress nearly all combat veterans must eventually deal with creates lasting wounds to the soul - the mind, will, and emotions. Often these scars of the soul are so debilitating, a veteran never returns from a war.

In today’s New York Times, there is an article in the Art Review section that portrays the very REAL face of war. Our prayers go out to these veterans, their families, and for the country that found it necessary that these young men and women sacrifice so much at such a young age.

The Moderator

August 22, 2007

Art Review | Nina Berman

Words Unspoken Are Rendered on War’s Faces

By HOLLAND COTTER

One of the more shocking photographs to emerge from the current Iraq war was taken last year in a rural farm town in the American Midwest. It’s a studio portrait by the New York photographer Nina Berman of a young Illinois couple on their wedding day.

The bride, Renee Kline, 21, is dressed in a traditional white gown and holds a bouquet of scarlet flowers. The groom, Ty Ziegel, 24, a former Marine sergeant, wears his dress uniform, decorated with combat medals, including a Purple Heart. Her expression is unsmiling, maybe grave. His, as he looks toward her, is hard to read: his dead-white face is all but featureless, with no nose and no chin, as blank as a pullover mask.

Two years earlier, while in Iraq as a Marine Corps reservist, Mr. Ziegel had been trapped in a burning truck after a suicide bomber’s attack. The heat melted the flesh from his face. At Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas he underwent 19 rounds of surgery. His shattered skull was replaced by a plastic dome, and a face was constructed more or less from scratch with salvaged tissue, holes left where his ears and nose had been.

Ms. Berman took this picture, which is in the solo show at Jen Bekman Gallery, on assignment for People magazine. It was meant to accompany an article that documented Mr. Ziegel’s recovery, culminating in his marriage to his childhood sweetheart. But the published portrait was a convivial shot of the whole wedding party. Maybe the image of the couple alone was judged to be too stark, the emotional interchange too ambiguous. Maybe they looked, separately and together, too alone.

“Marine Wedding,” the portrait’s title, was not Ms. Berman’s first encounter with wounded Iraq war veterans. She photographed several others beginning in 2003, and 20 of her portraits were published as a book, “Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq” (Trolley Books, 2004), with an introduction by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a member of the editorial board of The New York Times. These pictures, accompanied by printed interviews with the sitters, have been traveling the country, and 10 are now at Bekman.

None are as startling as “Marine Wedding,” even when the disability recorded is more extensive. Former Spc. Luis Calderon, 22, of Puerto Rico, had his spinal cord severed when a concrete wall he was ordered to pull down — it was painted with a mural of Saddam Hussein — fell on him. He is now a quadriplegic, though this is not immediately evident from his portrait. Nor can we see from the photograph of Spc. Sam Ross, 20, of Pennsylvania, that he lost a leg in a bomb blast, which also caused permanent brain damage.

Almost all the veterans in Ms. Berman’s pictures look isolated, even if someone else is present. And a sense of loneliness comes through in their brief interviews. Mr. Ross, separated from his family, lives by himself in a trailer. Mr. Calderon, who waited months for veterans’ benefits, says he feels abandoned by the military; because he was not wounded in combat, he has not been awarded a Purple Heart.

Spc. Robert Acosta, 20, a Californian who lost a hand in a grenade attack, says he is psychologically unable to resume his former social life: “I don’t like dealing with the questions. Like, ‘Was it hot?’ ‘Did you shoot anybody?’ They want me to glorify the war and say it was so cool.”

Mr. Acosta’s interview has the only overt anti-war sentiment in the Bekman show, and there are few words of bitterness or recrimination. Mr. Ross calls combat in Iraq the best time of his life. Randall Clunen of Ohio remembers the excitement of search missions in Iraqi homes as a peak experience. Sgt. Joseph Mosner, at 35 the oldest in this group, was 19 when he enlisted. “There was no good jobs,” he said, “so I figured this would have been a good thing.” He still thinks so, despite his severe facial scarring from a bomb explosion.

Sgt. Jeremy Feldbusch, left brain-damaged and blind by an artillery attack, once had plans for medical school. but says: “I don’t have any regrets. I had some fun over there. I don’t want to talk about the military anymore.” He claims, as do others, that he has no political opinions.

Ms. Berman adds no direct editorial comment to the presentation. She has said in interviews that she started photographing disabled veterans soon after the war began mainly because she didn’t see anyone else doing so. In what may be the most intensively photographed war in history, the visual documentation has been selective. The fate of the injured veterans was not a public issue until news reports about substandard treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

This background provides the context for Ms. Berman’s photographs, which are themselves tip-of-the-iceberg images. No matter what the viewer’s political position, the images add up to a complex and desolating anti-war statement. Mr. Acosta makes that statement outright: “Yeah, I got a Purple Heart. I don’t care. I don’t need anything to prove I was there. I know I was there. I got a constant reminder. I mean like all the reasons we went to war, it just seems like they’re not legit enough for people to lose their lives for and for me to lose my hand and use of my legs and for my buddies to lose their limbs.”

And “Marine Wedding” speaks, as powerfully as a picture can, for itself.

“Nina Berman: Purple Hearts” continues through Aug. 30 at Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street, between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street; (212) 219-0166, jenbekman.com.

Seems hyper-patriarch and ecclesiastical tyrant Doug Phillips is at it again. Besides what appears to be a direct cause of one of Mr. and Mrs. Epstein’s children being barred from a Wheeler Wedding, Phillips and his fellow cultists shamefully treated two guests attempting to visit Boerne Christian Assembly (the term “Christian” is used quite loosely in this case). Talk about an ego on steroids!

Meanwhile, over at Worldview Weekend, the folks there have posted a video that tells us Why American Churches are In Trouble.

In Florida, Dr. R.C. Sproul finally fired Tim Dick. Unfortunately, it’s probably a little to late to resuscitate Ligonier Ministries.

The writers for US Cav feature a story on their blog that originally appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer titled Finish the Job in Iraq.

There is a new enemy of the American Constitutional Republic, and it is the taxpayer-supported Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Even though Bill Moyers and his anti-Christian tripe has been present for years, now PBS turns its guns on moderate adherents to Islam. The following is taken from CNS News        The Moderator

PBS Accused of Same Tactics Radical Muslims Use Against Moderates
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
April 25, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Public Broadcasting Service officials who have refused to air a documentary on moderate Muslims are using the same tools of suppression and censorship Islamists employ to stymie debate, a documentary-maker charged Tuesday.

“Islam vs. Islamists: Voices from the Muslim Center,” a 52-minute, taxpayer-funded documentary, was originally slated to be screened as part of an 11-part PBS series called “America at a Crossroads,” examining post-9/11 challenges facing the nation.

The series began airing for the first time last week on WETA, the Washington, D.C., PBS affiliate, but “Islam vs. Islamists” has been dropped from the lineup.

Hollywood veteran Martyn Burke of ABG films co-produced the film with Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, and Gaffney’s CSP colleague Alex Alexiev, who specializes in Islamic extremism.

The film, which cost more than $600,000 to produce, focuses on conflicts that have erupted within the Muslim community in the U.S., Canada, Denmark and France.

The producers held a private screening in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, joined by three of the “anti-Islamist Muslims” featured in the film — Danish parliamentarian Naser Khader, Islamic Forum for Democracy President M. Zuhdi Jasser, and French-Algerian journalist Mohammed Sifaoui. Also attending on behalf of the Islamic Supreme Council of America was Hedieh Miramahdi.

Burke told the audience that PBS and WETA advisors and producers had objected to the participation of conservatives Gaffney and Alexiev. A “bitter fight” ensued over the content of the film, and the PBS/WETA criticisms became increasingly “hysterical,” he said.

“PBS is doing what the Islamists are doing,” Burke charged. “They are silencing these people [Muslim moderates].”

The producers said PBS replaced their film with another one, “The Muslim Americans,” which Gaffney called “a triumph for the Islamists,” saying it promoted a perspective in line with that of America’s enemies. For his part, Alexiev claimed that the replacement film paints a “fawning portrait” of U.S. organizations with extremist ties.

Alexiev also noted a conflict of interest: He said the replacement film was produced by Robert MacNeil, who also hosts the “Crossroads” series.

MacNeil was therefore allowed to produce his own film and at the same time was “the key guy who decided what gets cut,” he claimed.

PBS spokesman Joe Deplasco told Cybercast News Service the Burke-Gaffney-Alexiev film was unfinished and could not be shown. He said he was aware of their arguments, but declined to comment on them, referring further queries on the subject to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) - a private body funded by the federal government to promote public broadcasting through PBS.

CPB officials did not return calls Tuesday.

Asked about “The Muslims in America,” Deplasco said the decision to include it in the series was made for sound reasons. As the “Crossroads” project went forward, he said, the PBS-WETA producers felt that there “something missing” about everyday Muslim life. Consequently, they decided to use “The Muslim Americans.”

Deplasco said films that did not make the cut for the series may still be considered for airing later as “stand alone” pieces.

But the “Islam vs. Islamists” filmmakers contend that their product is complete and in no need of further editing.

“We are at the end of the road with PBS,” Gaffney said. “They have rejected the film we have made; they are insisting on structural and textual changes that would essentially eviscerate the message.”

The next step, Gaffney explained, was to ask the CPB to relinquish distribution rights to the film so it can be viewed by the American people “in another medium.”

In a letter to the CPB board last March, Burke, Gaffney and Alexiev said criticism of their film was based on a serious, perhaps willful misinterpretation of its message and its method.

Roger Aronoff, a media analyst with Accuracy with Media, told Cybercast News Service Tuesday that while he has not seen the film that PBS refuses to air as part of the series, his organization has had “issues with PBS over the years.”

The broadcaster, he said, has “a long record of airing primarily left-leaning documentaries.”

“The fact that they aired other documentaries as part of the ‘America at a Crossroads’ series that arguably represent a conservative point of view gives them some plausible deniability when they say that [neither] Gaffney’s viewpoint nor his association with an advocacy group is why they shelved his film,” Aronoff said. “But Gaffney’s film, according to reports, represents an important point of view that needs to be heard.”

“It is for just these types of situations that we have long advocated that tax dollars and politically biased programming do not mix,” he added. “Do we really want political appointees deciding what views deserve airing, and which do not? No. Let’s let the marketplace decide.”

Afghanistan’s Taliban continues its butchery against its own. This time they murdered an Afghan journalist.

Despite the Bush Administration’s mismanagement of the War on Terror, failure of Bremer and his folks in Iraq, and Cheney’s neo-cons dismissing all criticism, it is important to realize not all cultures are equal.

Destruction of religious shrines (in violation of the world’s agreements on the issue of protecting each other’s religious sites), beheading of an innocent driver during the initial kidnapping of the Afghan reporter, punishing women for being raped, etc., is standard practice for this pack of savages masquerading as a “culture.”

Unfortunately, the politically correct crowd cannot find fault with this group of thugs, even though the PC slaves can agree with those right of center on the “God hates fags” pastor masquerading as a Christian. This duplicitous mindset is even distasteful to Joe Sixpack.

Again, regardless of any failures on America’s part to adequately or correctly address the post-war catastrophe in Iraq the United States, the world’s only superpower, cannot blithely go about our country’s business in a world of PC delusion. There really are evil men in the world and wishing that all “men are basically good” doesn’t make them so.

The Moderator

Taleban ‘Kill Afghan Journalist’

The Taleban in Afghanistan say they have killed an Afghan reporter abducted last month with an Italian journalist.

The group said it had killed Ajmal Naqshbandi as the government had refused to meet their demands to release senior figures from prison.

The Italian reporter, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, was released after five Taleban members were freed in exchange.

The two reporters and their driver, who was earlier beheaded, were captured on 6 March in Helmand province.

From the BBC