I know this is long people but I feel it is worth my time writing. I agree with everyone that the press has every right to publish facts but many have seemed to misinterpret my point. Was the press irresponsible in releasing it on 60 minutes????? 100% YES!!!!!! If they want to be FAIR like everyone says they are, then show ALL OF IT! OUR DEAD AND ABUSED ALONG W/ the enemies. These people being ridiculed were not cub scouts. They were enemy fighters captured trying to kill Americans. Perspective is KEY! So, yes,,I'm all for the release of everything,,,,,,BUT SHOW IT ALL!!! Not just the Iraqi's. Show the American and coalition dead. THAT'S FAIR! So, NOW WHAT? Do we remove this cancer or do we just "talk" about removing them? It's about time this country stops making excuses for an enemy which wants us all dead. We had young, low level enlisted men and women in charge of interrogating and torture? How that makes sense to anyone is insane. To the critics maybe, but their not quite objective are they? England was not stationed at the prison. She was visiting her boyfriend (the guy w/ the gloves) who just so happened to have knocked her up. She's pregnant now. How can she claim she was following orders if she was not even assigned to that prison? A little too early to tell,,,,, Anyway.............makes for interesting radio. Phil Hendry said something you might find interesting. He said: Imagine you lived a life w/ a poor diet. Later in life you learn you developed cancer due to years of a poor diet. Now, what do you do? (a) Say "damn it, I've got cancer & it's all my fault. I deserve death. I'm just going to let this cancer take it's course." ( Say "damn it, I've got cancer & I want to live. I will have this cancer removed and fight it because I will not let this cancer devour me." Same logic applies to UBL & Saddam. Did we play a big part in creating these monsters? Guilty! Did we supply UBL weapons to fight the Russians? Guilty! Did we supply Saddam w/ weapons to fight Iran? Guilty! OKAY, NOW WHAT? Do we just bitch and cry? Rip each other apart in the press? You going to deal w/ the problem or let it fester? After 9/11 we learned terrorist were everywhere. They were entrenched in our country using charities for funding, going to our schools, recruiting from our prisons, etc.... Not to mention them being on practically every continent on earth. Given what happened on 9/11, the extent of this terrorist network & the impact it had on our economy and way of life, WHAT NOW? We're taking the fight to them. The political psycho-babble everyone is spewing is just that, PSYCHO-BABBLE. If in the name of THE TRUTH, we are shown Iraqi prisoner abuse, then in fairness, America NEEDS to be shown the burnt bodies hanging from the bridge, the dead soldiers from Jessica Lynch's unit who's bodies were briefly shown w/ bullet holes in their head and their pants pulled down to their ankles, the new video of this guy being beheaded needs to be shown in it's entirety. Same for Daniel Pearl (WSJ reporter). That is, if it's THE TRUTH that we're after. I don't blame America. No nation has sacrificed more of it's citizens for the freedom of others around the world. All the critics seem stuck on a grassy knoll of theories, half-truths and all come to the same conclusion, IT'S ALL OUR FAULT,,,MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA.................................Those folks should try using perspective. That to me is pathetic people! We can "talk" about dealing w/ terrorist while they plot our destruction or we can take the scrap to them. The bigger picture is not pretty. It's a long war against an enemy who wants us ALL dead. That's the reality!!!!! How will history judge our generation? Wusses or Hero's? Sorry for the rant,,,,,,,,,that video yesterday just FUCKIN PISSED ME OFF! PS....I'm taking off tonight,,,,,,,destination: Costa Rica. I'll catch a few waves for everyone. Take Care. PURA VIDA! ___________________________________________________ Here is a reply e-mail sent to me by my Aunt who servered our Country proudly. I decided to write to her to help vent my frustrations. Her response definetlly helped me. "Hi Obby, Your dad forwarded your email to me and I am so glad he did. I totally agree with everything you had to say. Your dad and I served in the military very proudly and I know, I do not care for these sideline idiots griping and complaining. Your dad fought in Vietnam and came home to unpleasant homecomings. In fact all Vietnam Vets were treated so poorly. While I served overseas as well and I saw things that I wish never to repeat of our enemies actions. You are right, there was no outrage when our troops and civilians were killed and dragged through the streets. There was no outrage for any American that was kidnapped, tortured and/or killed by our enemy. How about all those men held for over a year in Iran? How about our POW's who suffered in the famous Hanoi Hilton? I could go on and one. I belong to a unit called the WAVES, women who served in the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard (mainly seagoing) although the Army is always accepted. I am going to forward a letter from one of these ladies to you to forward to your brother. Keep in mind this lady fought in WWII, and in her 80's. These are tough women. Keep the faith, both of you and remember that truth and justice, honesty and bravery, will prevail. Here is the letter I mentioned in my email. It is a email. More people need to read this. Aunt Sandy Disabled Veteran USCGR _________________________________________ The military today is an all or nothing proposition -- you're either in it, and fully in it, or you don't belong. Training is -- and isn't integrated. Basic training is still by gender. Infantry and combat arms training is all men. Women train in separate platoons for basic training -- but they take the SAME training their male counterparts in the next platoon take, and some of it is together. Once out of basic training, most advanced and skill-specific training (less infantry, armor and that sort of thing) is integrated. It is critical to success that men and women who will be assigned together train together. In the military today there are just soldiers, sailors, airmen, etc. The days when a woman could sit back in her uniform of skirt, jacket, heels, and be clean and cool while the battle raged elsewhere is long gone. The military (all of the military) cannot afford to have soldiers who can't be placed in harms way. Reserve forces are being used a great deal in Iraq and Afghanistan. Reserve and Guard forces are made up of wonderful men and women. But they do not have the training, either the intensity or the day-in and day-out training that the regular forces have. Is it fair to call on them to take a full load? Personally, I don't think so. They need a very considerable "prep" period before they can be deployed. Do they get this work-up? I don't know. That's one of the questions to be answered. What are the options? Do we need a larger force? Should only men deploy? Should we tell women that they can't serve? Reinstitute the male-only draft? Women have worked long and hard to have almost equal opportunity in the military, proving time and time again that they could do the job -- any job -- and that they were willing to do so. You ladies set the standard -- the young women today typically don't have a clue what you went through, and most don't have any idea that it wasn't always this way, but turning the clock back is somewhere between impossible and very hard. The events in the prison are regrettable, the perpetrators must be held to account, and the policy makers who instituted this regime must be held to account. What really happened? How did it come about? Who's to blame? These are among the questions that need to be answered -- sooner rather than later. How did things get so off track? Where was the command presence? You will know that mistreatment of prisoners is as ancient as warfare -- the Japanese brutally murdered, starved, and tortured millions of Chinese, tens of thousands of Americans, and many other ethnic groups in their rampage from the 1930s through 1945. According to their code anyone who surrendered rather than commit suicide suffered dishonor. As the war drew to an end, they were systematically murdering, completely in cold blood, American POWs. The daring raid by the 6th Rangers on Luzon was a successful last ditch effort to rescue hundreds of pathetically and seriously ill Americans who were within days of being killed. The Vietnamese -- both north and south -- kept each others prisoners under brutal, inhuman conditions. What is so terrible about this is that we went into Saddam's prison, where torture was the rule of the day, and used these very methods on our prisoners. There is a fine line between "encouraging" a prisoner to cooperate and brutalizing him. We do need to be clear on one thing: prisoners don't talk when you welcome them to the prison, and give them every convenience. The Iraqis (or whoever is fighting us) have not been humanitarian to prisoners that they've taken -- witness the dancing in the street on the corpses of American contractors. It is profoundly sad that this is, even at best, an uneven fight. We mostly play by rules; the other side has no rules and simply sees this as weakness. Many want the President Bush to apologize -- I'm not among them. These incidents are regrettable, and action should be taken, but I don't think the president should apologize. Another point of view. The Arabs think we're a bunch of sissies anyway. This reinforces that -- and unfortunately guarantees them an even readier base of recruits. That is really sad. The fixation in our press on anything unpleasant, bad, derogatory, etc. means that our view of events is badly skewed. Believe it or not, this is not typical behavior. In the next few days you're going to hear a lot of people pop up and say we did this all the time in [fill in the blank]. If you take most of what you read and discard it, you'll be down to the kernel of truth. The overwhelming majority of our troops are doing a good job. It will, however, take many years to repair the 30 years of damage done by Saddam. It won't be done in a year or even ten years. If you watched the hearings you heard Senator Lieberman, not noted for being a Bush supporter, tell Secretary Rumsfled that we needed to keep this in perspective. I agree. Stop fixating -- get to the bottom of it, and let's move on! Pat J. WAVES
