Methinks some folks here seem to be taken aback over the reaction I and others display here over the never endin' stream of negative posts 'bout our American military, 'specially when we think they're not completely honest in the way they portray our people. Found this little item 'bout "The Gunfight on Takur Ghar" that might get across better'n I've apparently done what our problem is with the bad news deluge, eh? Please check it out and let us know if it helps you get it better.

Hey Doc, let me see if I can find something that may help answer your question. This was in the talking heads shows this morning and has gotten quite a bit of buzz on the internet (when I find it).

Lara Logan smacked down the "negative Iraq War Coverage" charges
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/03/26.html#a7669

She's outraged over these chargers...

I'll have the video up a little later. The media was assailed all week by the administration trying to pass the meme that the press is too negative. Instantly, the right wing pundits picked up the theme. Howard Kurtz, who told Wolf Blitzer that the coverage on Iraq is too negative also received an earful from Lara Logan.

Video-WMP Video-QT (David Edwards for the vid)

(Transcript via CNN's Reliable Sources)

KURTZ: But critics would say, well, no wonder people back home think things are falling apart because we get this steady drumbeat of negativity from the correspondents there.

LOGAN: Well, who says things aren't falling apart in Iraq? I mean, what you didn't see on your screens this week was all the unidentified bodies that have been turning up, all the allegations here of militias that are really controlling the security forces.

What about all the American soldiers that died this week that you didn't see on our screens? I mean, we've reported on reconstruction stories over and over again…I mean, I really resent the fact that people say that we're not reflecting the true picture here. That's totally unfair and it's really unfounded.

...Our own editors back in New York are asking us the same things. They read the same comments. You know, are there positive stories? Can't you find them? You don't think that I haven't been to the U.S. military and the State Department and the embassy and asked them over and over again, let's see the good stories, show us some of the good things that are going on? Oh, sorry, we can't take to you that school project, because if you put that on TV, they're going to be attacked about, the teachers are going to be killed, the children might be victims of attack.

Oh, sorry, we can't show this reconstruction project because then that's going to expose it to sabotage. And the last time we had journalists down here, the plant was attacked. I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country….So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

She also kicks Laura Ingraham's "hotel balconey" remark around too.

Update: Atrios: "It's ridiculous that anyone in our media is entertaining the notion seriously the charge that they're underreporting all the great stuff that's happening in Iraq. As someone who experienced the civil, Peter Daou understands that while life goes on in the midst of such things the news it not in fact that "life goes on" - it's that 30 people were beheaded....read on"

Judgin' by what you posted here methinks you've completely missed the point. Although methinks the news medias' full court press to defend itself is amusin', and to a limited degree not without merit, that ain't what I posted about, eh?

Check out the item I provided the link for. Methinks you might 'specially wanna pay attention to the very first paragraph where it says "As a career Marine officer, it is truly sad and discouraging to be bombarded constantly with news media stories (real and imagined) that emphasize the worst judgment and conduct of a minute percentage of the overall number of our troops deployed in support of combat operations in our global war on terrorism.", eh? That's exactly the way I frequently feel here on this forum, where 'twould seem some folks expend a great amount of energy to seek out and post anything negative 'bout the military and its people, seemingly tryin' to paint 'em all with a wide brush or define an erroneous stereotype, then take umbrage when some of us call into question any of the so called facts.

There's more there in that piece, but I'm gonna let y'all figure it out, or ignore it. So far though I've been surprised at the lack of interest in this topic and dismayed that you chose to go into somethin' 'bout apples when I posted 'bout oranges.

There may be forces in the administrations public relations (they place a lot of importance on public relations) who see news about positive things happening in Iraq as a double edged sword.

For every person that is heartened by a story about a school building in Iraq there are probably 10 that would respond appropriately "hey what about my school?". People in the inner city are reusing old textbooks. People who like to think they own their own homes in the working class or middle class suburbs do not want to hear about millions spent building Iraqi schools while municipalities are raising their property taxes to pay for schools.

When there were a few stories about the vaccination of Iraqi children it came inconveniently (from a public relations standpoint) at the same time elder Americans couldn't get flu shots.

The juxtaposition of thousands of hurricane-displaced Americans with build projects in Iraq would have been infuriating imagery.

The American populace would have been more receptive to good stories out of Iraq two and a half years ago. Think how excited people were to hear about Jessica Lynch or how inspired we were to hear of Pat Tillman's sacrifice.

Now it is like salt in a wound to people wondering: Why we are still there? Why have their neighbors been laid off?, Why is their health insurance unaffordable or nonexistent? How could they lie to us and how did we let this happen?

One of my mother's friends lost a grandson in Iraq this year and I can guarantee that he would not want to hear reports of good news.

Good news usually doesnt make the front page anyway.

Bush is doing his regular traveling war support road show --- and if they wanted to really get into good Iraq war news they have the pulpit.

Here is what I think we get little good new and the bad news is very muted also. I really think that the administration would like all news about Iraq to go away good or bad. I am sure that they would prefer not to have to send Bush out on repeated public relations tours.

I did.

Facts are slippery when you consider the choices we have as sources. Fox News...other MSM voices...online blogs...and anonymous people we know who are involved in the actual fighting. (I'm not trying to slight those (like you) that served our country in the past, but I think we're talking about current sources of information, of course, I'm probably wrong again.) We have different views about what is a reliable source, and vastly different news from people that are either there now, or have come home (time and again). I'd think that the last clause I wrote above would be the same no matter what war one were to look at during the time it was being fought.

No, not oranges and apples, just looking at different parts of the larger beast: is it a rope, a broom, or an elephant?
Haven't read Brookie's post yet. But my understanding was that you were dismayed about the lack of good news being reported in the American press, and how that impression upon the homefront was also being relayed back to the troops. In that way, what I posted applies to your link.

Brookie, sorry to hear about the loss so close to home.

Great thoughts in the remainder of your post.

Thanks. My mother was his book-keeper for years.

I hope I was clear in my post. I got off on a rant. I'm not dismayed by the lack of good news reported. I think there are several reasons.

Fly, listen to any news about any subject.
The vast majority of it is going to be bad news.
That's the way it is and has been for as long as I can remember.
Doesn't make it right, but it is the way it is.
Good news does not sell. Bad news does.

Please do not confuse opposition to the war and/or the handling
of the war, with lack of support for the individual men and women
sent to fight the war.

Ummh - I'm not very good at this but let me give it a try.

I don't think the Marine officer is talking about good news coming out of Iraq - what I gleaned from the article was that the individual stories of heroism that surely must happen on a daily occurence don't rate coverage by the MSM. See the difference? Now perhaps in the larger scheme of things you may both be correct - I'm not going to argue that point.

Personally, I really do think that's a shame, not because I think that covering stories of heroism would change anyone's mind but because I think we owe to these these soldiers. Its really just that simple for me.

Remember how receptive we were re individual stories of heroism. Jessica Lynchs and Pat Tillman's turned out to be the most highly touted stories and they were twisted by the administration. People are very supportive of the troops. The lies of the administration is a set-up for under appreciation and people tuning out. The Marine should be furious at the administration for making up stories to manipulate the public.

Remember in the early days of the war I said in one of our old issue threads that he degree of selling that they did to get people to buy into this war (including outright lies) was a set up for the public to turn their backs on soldiers when they returned home. I think that was in "civilian control of the military" thread.

I see the difference, I just read his original link with my lenses instead of his I see a story every weekday about an American hero at the end of Lou Dobbs. Another good reason to watch his show. Maybe that, and the fact that what I posted has been burning up the blogs for the past week, skewed my impression of what he was referring to.

See, in my classes, I make a point to highlight all the great things that our military men and women have done for this country. The kids have a very clear idea where I stand about our military, and I leave it up to them if how they feel about how those people are being used (or abused) by the current CinC. You can't walk into our library without passing the faces of those that are serving in the warzones because the military families here in town know the passion I hold for them. Every student that is in the military stops by my room to say hello when they are home on leave because they know I honor and respect them.

I know Doc wasn't implying that anything in the above paragraph was false. But, despite the material I may post here, I am a positive messenger for those that serve, at a local level. And it is at this level that I feel the most impact can be done.

Noonan, I know you're a positive messenger, never had a doubt. I have a nephew in Special Ops who flies in and out of Iraq every few months and so for me personally the absence of "personal" stories leaves me, well, for want of a better term, wanting. I suppose because he can't talk about where he's been or what he's done.

Brookie - I guess I don't know what to say to you other than its pretty obvious to me when the administration is pushing a story and when it comes in the from of reporter, either embedded or working independently in the field who happens to be there to record the story. Hope I'm making myself clear. This bird is not easily fooled you know.

sometimes words are as powerful as pictures but if you want to see those use the link at the end. In fact you may find it an easier layout in the newspaper where it is illustrated with the photos. Copying so much text and trying to edit out the photo captions was an effort but it is such a blood chilling and heart wrenching account I wanted to put it on this topic. Take what you will from that. Then again maybe you have already read this.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sunday, Mar 26, 2006Echo Company

Posted on Fri, Aug. 06, 2004

Ambush in Ramadi
The enemy lay in wait for the proud young Marines of Echo Company
David Swanson/Philadelphia Inquirer


• Caught in the crossfire
By David Swanson and Joseph L. Galloway
Knight Ridder Newspapers

RAMADI, Iraq - The Marines of Echo Company jumped from their trucks into Ramadi's narrow streets and alleys and ran toward the sound of the guns. They followed their commander, Capt. Kelly D. Royer, through palm trees and warrens of cinder-block buildings.
One of Echo's sniper teams had come under fire, and Royer's "quick reaction force" was going to reinforce the pinned-down Marines.
Before they'd gone far, headquarters at Combat Outpost, a Marine base in the Iraqi city of 500,000 on the Euphrates River, called on the radio. The snipers had repulsed the attackers, but now Echo Company's 1st Platoon, which had been sent out earlier to clear the main supply route through Ramadi, was taking fire and needed help.
Amid the dust and noise, Royer radioed 2nd Lt. John Wroblewski. While Royer's team moved on foot, "Lieutenant Ski," as his men called him, was leading a second Echo quick-reaction force in Humvees through the chaotic streets of Ramadi. Pick us up at the intersection at the marketplace, Royer told Wroblewski.
Wroblewski had told his men the day before to be alert. Something's not right, he said. In this neighborhood, the residents didn't wave and the children didn't flock to the Marines, the way they did in other parts of the city. They only stared.
Although neither Royer nor Wroblewski knew it, earlier that morning, April 6, Iraqi and foreign fighters had slipped through the marketplace, telling shopkeepers to close their stores and kiosks and warning: "Today, we are going to kill Americans."
If the Iraqi insurgency has a center of gravity, Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province and a bastion of Saddam Hussein's military and intelligence services, probably is it. The city sits astride the main road from Baghdad to Jordan, and the insurgents in Ramadi were far better organized and far better schooled in guerrilla warfare than the Marines originally realized.

Gunfire rattled to the east, where Royer's force had been moments earlier. Marines seemed to be under attack everywhere. Royer and his men started running to reinforce their comrades in the 1st Platoon.
Two Marines from the 1st Platoon, Pfc. Benjamin Carman, 20, of Jefferson, Iowa, and Lance Cpl. Marcus Cherry, 18, of Imperial, Calif., already were dead.
Carman's high school coach said he was "one of the hardest-working football players I've ever had."
There are five large tires in a field near Jefferson-Scranton High School. Four of them are for tractors; the fifth and largest is for a combine. It's 5 feet tall, and it weighs 80 pounds. As part of their daily workout, the football players had to flip each tire 10 times.
Medium-sized Ben Carman ran straight to the big tire every day, and he didn't flip it 10 times. He flipped it 12.
Like Ben, Marcus Cherry had wanted to be a Marine. But he had to practice that Marine Corps stare. He would stand in front of a mirror at home, jaw forward, eyes hard, and hold it as long as he could before his trademark grin gave him away.
In a letter home from boot camp, Marcus wrote: "I knew, Mom, the Marine Corps was the best decision for my life at the time I joined. It's a fast way to grow up, but I was made for it."
As Royer and his men hustled toward the 1st Platoon, Wroblewski rolled past with his convoy. Royer radioed Wroblewski again: Stop and pick us up.
"Roger, Six," Wroblewski responded, using the military term for "commanding officer."
Royer and his men heard Wroblewski's Humvees and trucks slow as they approached the marketplace.
Then Royer's Marines heard the staccato sound of AK-47 rifle fire, the deeper growl of a machine gun and the thuds of rocket-propelled grenades.

Like Cherry, Wroblewski was where he'd always wanted to be: leading Marines in combat. He'd even named his Alaskan malamute pup Semper, after the Marine Corps motto, "Semper fidelis" ("Always faithful").
Six feet two, with piercing blue eyes and a linebacker's build, Wroblewski, 25, was a natural leader, popular with his men and respected by other officers. Royer called him "one of my best."
The day before the firefight, "J.T." had talked about home as he led a 10-mile foot patrol through Ramadi. He talked about fishing, about the Marines, about his wife, Joanna.
He grew up in Morris County, in northern New Jersey, where he was a high school football and baseball standout, and he graduated from Rutgers before he joined the Marines in 2002.
Wroblewski had caught Joanna's eye at the County College of Morris in Randolph, N.J. "Wow, that guy's hot," she thought. He also was shy. "I had to ask him out," she said. They were married in July 2003.
He had been at home with Joanna in Oceanside, Calif., on Valentine's Day when he got his orders to Iraq. She was making waffles with strawberries for breakfast when the call came. He had to leave the next day.
His last phone conversation with her had been three days earlier. Instead of signing off as usual by saying, "I'll see you soon," he'd told her: "I'll always be with you."
On all sides of the intersection that marked the Ramadi marketplace, Iraqi fighters with AK-47's and rocket-propelled grenade launchers had taken positions on the roofs of the one-story buildings. A heavy .50-caliber Russian-made machine gun was on one corner rooftop, where the gunner could sweep the street. Other fighters were hidden behind trees just beyond the market stalls.
About 50 well-armed insurgents were waiting for Wroblewski and his Marines.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART 2 |
The first of 2nd Lt. John T. Wroblewski's three Humvees slowed as it entered the Ramadi marketplace where the insurgents were waiting.

At the wheel was Lance Cpl. Kyle Crowley, 18, of San Ramon, Calif. With him in the unarmored green Humvee were radio operator Lance Cpl. Travis Layfield, 19, of Fremont, Calif.; Pfc. Christopher R. Cobb, 19, of Bradenton, Fla.; Lance Cpl. Anthony Roberts, 18, of Bear, Del.; Navy Petty Officer 3rd Class Fernando A. Mendez-Aceves, 27, of San Diego, a medic; Staff Sgt. Allan K. Walker, 28, of Lancaster, Calif., and Lance Cpl. Deshon E. Otey, 24, of Louisville, Ky. In the back, manning the machine gun, was Pfc. Ryan Jerabek, 18, of Oneida, Wis.
Most of them were following in their family's footsteps. Crowley's great-grandfather had been a World War II Marine. Layfield's maternal grandfather was a Seabee in World War II. Cobb's stepfather had served, and so had Roberts' dad. Mendez-Aceves had listened to his great-grandmother rocking him to sleep humming soldiers' marches. Men in Walker's family had served in virtually all of America's wars. Jerabek's father, Ken, had served in the Army during Vietnam.
Ryan Jerabek had pre-enlisted in the Marines with his friend Mike Andrews when he turned 17. "He had the sweetest smile," said Faye Girardi, one of his teachers at Pulaski High School, who thought Ryan was "too gentle" to become a Marine.
Ryan's sense of humor survived boot camp: He laughingly called his military-issue glasses "BC glasses" - birth control glasses - because they were so effective at keeping girls away.
When Travis Layfield was about 9, his family visited an air show at Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif. "He saw kids in uniform and he said, ‘I want to sign up,' " said his sister, Tiffany Bolton. "That's where it started."
Cobb's minister, John Marlow, an Army veteran, had taught 8-year-old Chris what it meant to be a soldier.
"We were talking and I said, "Chris, I was in the U.S. Army and I tried to be a good soldier," remembered Marlow, now 70. "Chris looked me in the eye and said, 'Well, I will be a good soldier.' "
Roberts had stood over his father's casket, a boy of 13 staring silently at the man he had adored. Tony went on to star in
karate, baseball, volunteer service for the elderly, even the summer reading program. He was handsome and, said his ROTC teacher, Maj. Daniel Alvarez, "he had the ladies after him all the time."
The driver of the Humvee, Kyle Crowley, had been something of a troubled kid who drove around San Ramon in the San Francisco Bay area in a 1980s Cadillac he'd inherited from his grandmother. He signed up in a pre-enlistment program when he turned 16, over the objections of his father, Mark, a sheet-metal worker who'd raised Kyle by himself from age 4.
Kyle slapped a Marine Corps sticker on the back of his car. He hung American and Marine Corps flags in his room, and he wore Marine T-shirts to school.
When Cobb came home from boot camp to Bradenton, Fla., he wore his uniform back to Bayshore High School, where his teachers remembered "a quiet kid in the back of the class."
"He was so proud," said Richard Jorgensen, who taught Chris' orchestra class. "He had just finished basic. He seemed more relaxed. I think the Marines gave him a sense of identity. A sense of pride that he didn't seem to have before."
Navy medic Fernando Mendez-Aceves had been a scrawny boy, but boot camp had changed him, too. His biceps grew so big that he had to wear oversize shirts. At the Naval Medical Center in San Diego they called him Rocky, the Muscle Man or Hulk. He volunteered for duty with the Marines in Iraq because he didn't want his combat training to go to waste.
They called Staff Sgt. Allan Walker, at 28 one of Echo Company's senior noncommissioned officers, the Beast. Six feet 2 and 230 pounds, he'd played high school football and flipped burgers in the Mojave Desert town of Palmdale, Calif.
But Walker "had all these little twists and turns," said Jim Root, his old football coach and friend. Walker was a high school jock who also hung with the drama kids, and a rebellious teenager who wore punk rock T-shirts and spiked hair but loved poetry.
"The Marine Corps was his intervention program," said his father, Kenneth Walker.
When the war came, Allan Walker, too, volunteered to go. "How can I teach a corporal how to take a hill if he's been there and I have never?" he asked his father. "How can I teach men to fight if I've never been to battle?"
As the green Humvee neared the T-intersection at the Ramadi marketplace, the insurgents hidden on the rooftops opened fire. Bullets plowed through the windshield and the metal doors. Crowley, the driver, was killed, and the truck canted sideways. Jerabek opened up with his machine gun, but he, too, was quickly cut down.
Deshon Otey leapt out of the Humvee and began firing from behind a low wall. The others stayed in the truck and were quickly gunned down.
"We all took cover," Otey said. "There was firing coming from all directions. They were shooting AK-47's, RPK machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades."
Mendez-Aceves, the Navy medic, was killed next to Walker, apparently working to save the sergeant's life.
Wroblewski was behind them in the second Humvee. He was hit in the face by a bullet that smashed through the radio handset he was holding.
As soon as Royer's reinforcements moved toward the firefight in the marketplace, they came under fire, too.
Running toward the cover of nearby houses, Royer yelled at his radio operator to keep up with him: "Suck it up, find it . . . find it, son, your Marines are being shot at!"
Royer's Iraqi translator, a man everyone called "007," was smiling as he ran, in tan sandals, a sleeveless jogging outfit and a navy blue T-shirt that said "Operation Iraqi Freedom" across the front. Wearing neither a helmet nor a protective vest, he was blithely fatalistic: "Inshallah," he said. God willing.
Royer and his men reached the relative safety of a house. Other Marines were already there, and so was an Iraqi family, huddled in the living room. Bullets smacked into the side of the house as Royer led his Marines up the stairs to the rooftop to begin returning fire.
Royer got on the radio and called for air support, but the helicopters were in action elsewhere, circling over firefights in the center of the city.
Royer sent a team to silence the insurgents' Russian-made machine gun on the corner rooftop but by the time the Marines got there, the Iraqi machine gunners had vanished, leaving only a pile of spent shell casings.
Five Iraqi men walked along the intersection. "Do they have weapons? Do they have weapons?" Royer yelled. Marines opened fire, and the men scattered out of sight. The Marines saw cars and vans approaching the area, then slowing down and turning back, picking up walking men. Were they retreating fighters? The Marines couldn't tell.

Other Marines entered the marketplace and began removing the bodies of the dead Americans from the green Humvee. Royer and his men joined them.
Remnants of cotton and paper trauma supplies littered the ground. The bed of the truck was littered with empty water bottles and exploded green packages of meals-ready-to-eat, mixed among brass shell casings. The rectangular top handle of an M-16 was sheared off in a pile of debris. Blood and water and diesel oil drained into the ground.
A Marine passed by slowly, carrying the body of a fallen brother on his shoulder. He gently placed the heavy, dark green bag in the back of a Humvee.
A pair of military-issue eyeglasses lay smashed on the ground by the lead Humvee, blood drying on the right lens. They were machine gunner Jerabek's birth control glasses.
"I talk with some of the other guys in the platoon about what happened, but it still hurts," Otey, the lone survivor in the green Humvee, said later. "Every time I walk into our living space I see the empty racks (bunks). Those were guys I used to talk to about my problems. Now I don't hear their voices anymore."
Otey, 24, was killed two months later on a rooftop in Ramadi with three other Echo Company Marines.
Taking the rooftops of nearby houses that April day, the Marines gained control of the intersection, and the sound of gunfire died down.
A sergeant from Combat Outpost arrived and said he'd seen Wroblewski and that Lt. Ski would be OK.
He was wrong. Wroblewski died while a helicopter was evacuating him. An enemy bullet had severed an artery, and the medics couldn't control the bleeding.
The bodies of four Iraqis lay in the street, one beside a red-and-white taxi. Royer stood over one of the dead men for a few seconds, then stepped over the body. The translator everyone called "007," trailing Royer, kicked the body hard and muttered, "Bastard."


The evening light was growing softer, cooler.
Pfc. Eric Ayon, 26, of Arleta, Calif., climbed behind the wheel of the green Humvee and tried the ignition. Nothing. A rocket-propelled grenade had pierced the engine compartment. Photographer David Swanson of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who was traveling with Echo Company, took pictures of Ayon sitting behind the Humvee's shattered windshield.
Ayon had wanted to join the military since the days when he ambushed his sister's Barbie doll with his G.I. Joe. He told everyone he was going to be a Marine. He told his co-workers at Mid-Valley Community Day School in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys, where he counseled gang-hardened teenagers.
And when he thought that his son Joshua, at 7, was old enough to grasp what it meant to be a Marine and why his father would have to go away now and then, he told him, too.
Afterward, Joshua told his friends, his teachers and anyone else who would listen: "My dad's a Marine."
Three days later, on April 9, Good Friday, Eric Ayon was killed at that same intersection. The word is that a homemade bomb - what the military calls an improvised explosive device - exploded. Ayon left the driver's seat for cover and was hit when a second IED blew up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Ambush in Ramadi | PART 3
More than 129 U.S. servicemen have died in Anbar province since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003.

U.S. soldiers and Marines have stopped patrolling large swaths of Anbar. After losing dozens of men to a "voiceless, faceless mass of people" with no clear leadership or political aim other than killing Americans, the U.S. military had to re-evaluate the situation in and around Ramadi, said Maj. Thomas Neemeyer, the head intelligence officer for the 1st Brigade of the Army's 1st Infantry Division, the main military force in the area.
"They cannot militarily overwhelm us, but we cannot deliver a knockout blow, either," he said.
Joanna Lynn Wroblewski said farewell to her husband, 2nd Lt. John T. Wroblewski, in a letter she read at his funeral. It began:
"Hey babe,
"I saw you today. We were taking one of our usual strolls with the dog and the sun was shining all around you. You looked at me again the way you always did with that handsome cool smile. That look that told me how much you love me, and how everything was going to be OK. 'We're OK,' that was what we kept saying the day you left for Iraq. You were always right. My brave warrior."
Fernando Mendez-Aceves' mother, Sandra, got a letter from his platoon leader after Doc Mendez was killed: "He never complained at all, even if he went on missions that lasted day and night. . . . I could tell he was a good man, and whoever raised him did a good job."
In the family's small apartment, a candle burns on a memorial. Fernando watches over them from half a dozen photographs. There's a bottle of Corona beer, a deck of playing cards, a last letter from a girlfriend, unopened, and a plain blue sack with a box that contains Fernando's ashes.
"Fernando believed that all things happen for a reason, and that it is not our place to question God's plan," his mother said.
His younger brother, Kenneth, 15, wears Doc's old oversize T-shirt and baseball cap when he runs and lifts weights. "I'm so proud of him," Kenneth said.
Staff Sgt. Allan Walker's mother, Nancy, got in her son's little red Chevy pickup and drove from her home in Lancaster, Calif., in the Antelope Valley 60 miles north of Los Angeles, to Texas and Iowa and Minnesota, visiting mothers and fathers of Echo Company Marines she'd contacted by mail and e-mail since Allan's death.
She's angry. She hates the war in Iraq, and disagreed with it from the start. She's fiercely proud of her son and has no trouble speaking out against the war and President Bush because, she says, doing so honors the values her son fought and died for.
Her ex-husband, Kenneth Walker, who supports the war, has begun a journey inward to a respite from his pain: the Hindu teachings he's embraced for decades.
"There is no such thing as death," he said one afternoon at his home in Palmdale, where Allan had played football and flipped burgers. "So if you really believe that, I mean really believe that in your gut, then it makes the death of someone you care about and love easier to deal with."
Kyle Crowley and his dad had parted ways before he left for boot camp. He spent some nights at friends' homes, others in his old Cadillac, but he found refuge at his girlfriend Trisha Johnson's home. Her parents, Steve and Gail Johnson, welcomed Kyle. "He told us: ‘I want to go fight to protect families like yours,' " Steve said.
"He wanted family most of all, and the Marines are like family," Gail said.

After work, Nelson Carman reflects at the gravesite of his son, Lance Cpl. Benjamin Carman.

Nelson Carman goes by himself to his son Ben's grave in Jefferson, Iowa. He tries not to grieve in front of his family. He finds comfort there, where tiny American flags have sprouted and someone has stuck a fishing pole in the ground. Some days, he finds a glass of brandy and a cigar butt.
Ben's favorite spot was an overlook on the Carman farm, on a bluff 60 feet above the river. Eagles soar there, and deer roam. Ben and his siblings and friends camped there summer and fall, fished the river, hunted the woods and looked for arrowheads. It's sacred ground for all of them now.
Ben's mother, Marie, said: "What he could have been. . . . You just don't know."
A month after Ryan Jerabek was killed, a package arrived at the Jerabek home. It was a late Christmas present that Ryan, who was fascinated with his Irish ancestry, had ordered from Ireland before he left for Iraq. Inside the box was a curved white shield with the family crest painted on the face, and a silver and gold sword for Ryan's younger brother Nick.
His mother, Rita, said simply: "He was a gift."
Sometimes the Ayon family goes out to the driveway and gets in the silver Toyota Solara that Eric Ayon had said would belong to his baby sister, Jazmine, if anything happened to him in Iraq. They sit in his car, start the engine and roll down the windows, but they don't go anywhere.
They remain suspended somewhere between a past in which Eric cracks jokes, dances goofily and lectures Jazmine on the virtue-less nature of boys and the April day when two somber Marines arrived at the door to tell them that Eric was dead, blown up by a homemade bomb.
Eric's sister Cynthia, 23, tells herself that he's just away on vacation. His father, Henry, tries not to talk about it. His mother, Maria, visits his grave every day. As she bustles around the house she talks aloud to Eric, who peers out from a life-size photo over the mantle.
Before he left for Iraq, Eric had said goodbye to one of the kids he'd counseled, 17-year-old Ashley Mendez, whose tangles with gangs and drugs had landed her in juvenile hall repeatedly since she was 12.
"He was a really good friend," Ashley said. "I thought he was going to come back. But he never did."
Two weeks after they buried Chris Cobb, his mother received his last letter home: "I am coming home alive and in one piece," he wrote. "I promise you that mom."
His cousin Kaylee Morris, 18, said she screamed when she heard of his death. "Why would God take such a young person from us?" she asked.

A few days after Chris' funeral, Kaylee got back a package that she'd sent to Chris with a four-page letter and a bundle of beef jerky. "I just saw it there on my doorstep and started crying," she said. "It's the little things like that that make it hard."
On April 3, Marcus Cherry and his older brother, Andre, both Marines, had met at division base camp in Iraq and had a final few hours together.
After Marcus was killed three days later, Andre escorted his casket home.
Marcus and Andre were running backs for the Imperial High Tigers in Imperial, Calif. Marcus was No. 34. The school has retired his jersey. Next season, the players will wear the initials "M.C." on their helmets.
Diane Layfield remembers a slow dance with her son Travis under the stars at a Brooks & Dunn concert last year. She remembers thinking how lucky she was that her son would dance with her in public. She spends her free time filling boxes in her Fremont, Calif., home with photos, letters, articles, anything she can find that has a connection to her "Travi."
Travis' dad, John Layfield, 47, a forklift operator, has restored Travis' most prized possession, a sky-blue 1962 Ford Galaxy, to keep his memory alive.
He carries Travis' last letter home with him. It arrived the day they buried Travis.
Neither of the Layfields has ever voted. Both now question what their country is doing in Iraq. John says "babies" are dying in Iraq, and he thinks about running for president just to get Bush out of office.
Some mornings, Diane wakes up thinking how her lovely son will never marry or give her grandbabies. And how there will never be another mother-son dance under the stars.
In April, when there was a knock at the door at her home in Middletown, Del., Emma Roberts peeked out the window and got a glimpse of a Marine officer's hat. "I tried to run away. I ran into the family room, and they rang again."
Tony Roberts, at 17, had needed his mother's consent to enlist. "I definitely feel responsible," Emma Roberts said. "But he was just so enthused with becoming a Marine."
After Tony died, his family found a poem he'd written about his father's death years earlier:
"I thought my father was invincible
I didn't think he could or would die
All I can do is cry
One thing I really hate
Is I never got to say goodbye."

Contact David Swanson at dswanson@phillynews.com or Joe Galloway at jgalloway@krwashington.com
---------------

lenal


http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/spec...any/9337047.htm

No good news? Maybe y'all just aren't looking in the right places.

Methinks most here've still missed my point, but that's probably my fault. Might be I just ain't said it too good, eh?

'Tain't got nothin' to do with the lack of stories 'bout schools bein' built, though a story or two 'bout how our troops've put themselves in harms way to keep innocent civilians would've been nice (and when a few were posted were attacked as military propaganda). That's entirely different.

Maybe 'tis a result of whose lenses you're lookin' through, and the perspective that puts on it. My perspective's probably tainted by my experiences in the late 60s and early 70s when 'twould seem 'twas popular in certain circles to depict all American military folks as baby killers. There probably were an extremely small number that were guilty of atrocities in Vietnam. I knew I wasn't one, and didn't think I even knew any, but still got tagged with that label more'n once. That weren't the worst of it either.

Here on this site I've seen notes by some that've seemed to make blanket accusations against our military folks in Iraq and Afghanistan based on what a few, probably very few, may've done. Some folks here've seemed to express views that our military don't warrant the same presumption of innocence or constitutionally guaranteed freedoms we seem to want for everyone else.

We've seen folks pushin' stories by sources that make all kinds of wild allegations based on, at best, third hand info, stuff like widespread use of prohibited weaponry and massacres of unarmed civilians. We've seen pictures posted here claimin' to back up these allegations, only to find on further research they were actually taken in another place at another time and the result of actions by someone other than our military folks, eh?

Maybe for me the kicker were the discussions here 'bout how our returnin' war dead and their families didn't deserve the privacy and respect they were bein' shown, 'cause that made it more difficult for some to use them and their images to push a point of view. We even had one poster state our KIAs should just be dumped in trenches in Iraq, covered over and forgotten, and then refused to explain his proposal when asked to do so.

Hopefully this better explains how I, and I know one other here feels. Did I botch it again?

And if the journalist started writing positve stories it would not sell newspapers.

Also the anti-war movement would not lnow how to deal with anything positive, you know, they got to keep everyone thinking being sent to Iraq is the same as a death sentence and those who survive come home as pathological misfits.

Noonan,
I think this was a wonderful interview of Lora Logan. She makes a lot of good points. I especially like where she says that what you're not seeing on the news is photographs of all the dead Iraqis and wounded soldiers and heaven forbid deceased US soldiers. They're trying to make the news as good as they can. But they can no longer travel accross the country because the security situation in Iraq is so poor they have to have heavily armoured military escorts to go anywhere. It's difficult to report on school openings and water plants when you can't travel to these facilities without getting killed.

She also explains some of the thought that goes into which news stories to report on a daily basis. 100 Iraqi's executed within a couple of days seems like reportable news to me. Number of US soldiers killed by IED's seems like reportable news as well. I don't think that's being negative. I think it's just reporting the news of an incredibly dangerous country on the verge of, if not having already slipped into, a civil war.

With all due respect my life has been shaped by 6 photos and I mean nothing by this except these are the 6 photos in my mind that I instantly remember from the press (photos being in the paper or on T.V.)

1 ) The little beautiful little girl, running down the street naked after being Napalmed and her clothes disintergrated in the streets

2 )The military man shooting the prisoner point blank in the head and the photo taken where you can see the bullet
That photo has given me nightmares for is it 40 years now

3 )The young student on her knees with her hands up sobbing after the National Guary shot and killed a student at Kent State

4 )Lyndon B. Johnson looking beaten and shattered telling the nation he is not running and will not accept a draft for the Democratic nomination of President

5 )Richard Nixon looken beaten and shattered telling the nation he is resigning

6)CRAIG WATERS, that wonderful person, the press liason of the Florida Supreme court, coming out and announcing that the Florida Supreme Court has mandated that the recound MUST GO ON, and it must be IMMEDIATE

Without any of those, the nation would not be here today

These images are us

(cue up Paul Anka's Memories ©Paul Anka)

Well since that's all that get's posted in this forum I'f assume no one knows where to find the good news. Here is another source, if you would like I can give you a bunch more. Might improve your outlook on life to read a little good news.

things stay the same though

From 1983 (right in the heart of the Ronald Reagan fiasco)
Charlie Black, Rory Bourke and Tommy Rocco wrote this song and it was #1
Anne Murray sang it

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS ©
I rolled out this morning
Kids had the mornin' news show on
Bryant Gumbel was talkin' 'bout the fighting in Lebanon
Some senator was squawkin' 'bout the bad economy
It's gonna get worse you see, we need a change in policy

There's a local paper rolled up in a rubber band
One more sad story's one more than I can stand
Just once how I'd like to see the headline say
"Not much to print today, can't find nothin' bad to say", because

Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
Nobody OD'ed, nobody burned a single buildin' down
Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today

I'll come home this evenin'
I'll bet that the news will be the same
Somebody takes a hostage, somebody steals a plane
How I wanna hear the anchor man talk about a county fair
And how we cleaned up the air, how everybody learned to care
Whoa, tell me

Nobody was assassinated in the whole Third World today
And in the streets of Ireland, all the children had to do was play
And everybody loves everybody in the good old USA
We sure could use a little good news today

Nobody robbed a liquor store on the lower part of town
Nobody OD'ed, nobody burned a single buildin' down
FADE
Nobody fired a shot in anger, nobody had to die in vain
We sure could use a little good news today


and MERLE HAGGARD wrote and recorded in 1982 (there are those spitty Ronald Reagan/GHWB41 years)...

ARE THE GOOD TIMES REALLY OVER FOR GOOD © Merle Haggard 1982

I wish a buck was still silver and it was back when the country was strong.
Back before Elvis and before the Vietnam war came along.
Before the Beatles and yesterday when a man could still work and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now and are the good times really over for good ?

Are we rollin' downhill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the flag or the liberty bell?
I wish a Ford or a Chevy would still last ten years like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now and are the good times really over for good?

I wish Coke was still cola and a joint was a bad place to be.
It was back before Nixon lied to us all on TV.
Before Microwave ovens when a girl could still cook, and still would.
Is the best of the free life behind us now and are the good times really over for good ?

Are we rollin' downhill like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the flag or the liberty bell?
I wish a Ford or a Chevy would still last ten years like they should.
Is the best of the free life behind us now and are the good times really over for good?

Stop rollin' downhill like a snowball headed for hell.
Standup for the flag, and let's all ring the liberty bell.
Let's make a Ford and a Chevy that'll still last ten years like they should...
The best of the free life is still yet to come and the good times ain't really



isn't it something how bad people really were in the 1980s admin. of Ronald Reagan and Bush41? Shows you the spin. The times then sucked too, just
it was morning in America. No, mourning in America is more like it.

Need good news?
http://www.stripes.com/
http://www.army.mil/
http://www.navy.mil/
http://www.af.mil/
http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/pol/terror/
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2006/63693.htm
http://www.pacom.mil/piupdates/index.shtml
http://www.uscg.mil/USCG.shtm
http://www.cia.gov/terrorism/index.html
http://www.defenselink.mil/ra/
http://www.centcom.mil/default.htm
http://www.ngb.army.mil/
http://www.esgr.mil/
http://www.arng.army.mil/
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home7.jsp
http://www.ang.af.mil/
http://www.todaysmilitary.com/app/tm/
http://www.cap.gov/
http://www.americasupportsyou.mil/americas...syou/index.aspx
http://www.defendamerica.mil/WhyIServe.html
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2006/20060317_4525.html
http://www.defendamerica.mil/specials/RedWhiteBlue.html
http://pentagonchannel.feedroom.com/iframeset.jsp?ord=938163
http://www.transcom.mil/pa/news/news.cfm
http://enr.ecnext.com/free-scripts/comsite...cle=20050718c-1
http://www.iraqimedianet.net/tv/
http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/dont_ever_forget/
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/ind...86993198810.xml
http://www.strategypage.com/respect/articl...tary_200476.asp
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cf...bjectid=3563247
http://unix.dfn.org/good_news_iraq.shtml

If you will read any of the above you will feel much better and not have such a negative outlook on life.

moving to other thread

my posts above I thought I was on Peggy's "What's going on here thread"

They are very similiar.
Did not mean then to intrude here in the military site.
If they could move 19, over to the other thread that would be fine, but it might be too late.I moved 23 myself. 21 is only lyrics.