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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! July 4, 2006
41 TrackBacksYou don't hear it as much anymore but there used to be a lot of comparison of the U.S. in Iraq to when we were in Vietnam. I never thought that was a good comparison. But what I do think Read More In December of 1776, those men that were to be the foundation of our present day Nation found themselves at a terrible crossroads. The war against the British was not going well and General George Washington had but one victory to his name. Many ...... Read More If the NYT were around in 1776... The war against Islam in perspective... ... Read More If the NYT were around in 1776... Some things never change... Islam wishes only death to Christendom... Read More If the NYT were around in 1776... Some things never change... Islam wishes only death to Christendom... Read More Patriotism is about what we STAND FOR, it's not about what we ARE. It's about liberty and justice for all... even if it's never ever been that way. And unless and until people internalize that vision of liberty and justice for all, of freedom, of equal... Read More In 1776, the Colonies in America, told a tyrant, King George III of Engalnd, to "leave US alone". After a long war against the most powerful military of the day, The colonies received timely help from the King of France.A few years later, in 178 ...... Read More All I can say is it's a damn shame there are no photos accompanying this story. Read More "THIS IS AWESOME!!! There is a huge rock near a gravel pit on Hwy. 25 in rural Iowa. For generations, kids have painted slogans, names, and obscenities on this rock, changing its character many times. A few months back, the rock received it’s latest ... Read More On Independence Day we once again showed off why it is good to be us. Today in a spectacular event we launched the Space Shuttle, a reusable space vehicle, successfully. In their bid to try to intimidate us, North Korea decided to launch their Taepodon... Read More Anyway, here we're going to celebrate in a bit safer manner...Van Halen and American airpower in the form of Eagles. Make sure you crank up your speakers. Read More On Independence Day we once again showed off why it is good to be us. Today in a spectacular event we launched the Space Shuttle, a reusable space vehicle, successfully. In their bid to try to intimidate us, North Korea decided to launch their Taepodon... Read More To our men and women overseas and to all Red, White, and Blue American patriots here and overseas, God Bless the USA and have a Happy Fourth Of July! Read More It's not who you think.My fellow Americans: In 1776, on the Fourth day of July, the representatives of the several States in Congress assembled, declaring our independence, asserted that a decent respect for the opinion of mankind required that they Read More Today's winner is Doctor No, I mean Kim Jong-Il. Read More *Note this "really" will be my last post until I am home from surgery.* Mr. Stokely forwarded me an email that he sent to another blogger which said: "I respect free speech. I respect your right to free speech. I do not think that gives you or ... Read More Anti-war, official Democrat mourner Cindy Sheehan, with the encouragement of her new boyfriend, has determined to "fast for peace" and drink only water through the Summer (I hope someone reminded her that Summer ends around September 22nd). Ms She... Read More It's not who you think.My fellow Americans: In 1776, on the Fourth day of July, the representatives of the several States in Congress assembled, declaring our independence, asserted that a decent respect for the opinion of mankind required that they Read More Looks more like cold feet than perhaps any political statement on the war: Read More ...Within minutes of the announcement, posters on Democratic Underground and other left- of- center sites began questioning how an overweight 64 year old man under the incredible stress of facing a lifetime in prison could just “drop dead” of a heart a... Read More What a sad state of affairs. Joe Lieberman is one of the classiest guys in the Democratic party. I disagree with him on a lot of social issues but I respect his decision to do the right thing by his... Read More Harvard ROTC CommissioningThese two events are not connected. Directly. Causation? Maybe. Correlation. Certainly. Your Business Blogger was recently reminded that it is possible to get an army commission at Harvard. Lefty gentleman Jody Wheeler writes... Read More Seattle Post-Intelligencer Hunt For Bin Laden: Alec sidelined Wednesday, July 5, 2006 Hunt For Bin Laden: Alec sidelined P-I EDITORIAL BOARD The CIA was rightly criticized for failing to paint clearly enough the imminent threat the United States faced ... Read More Today's winner is New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine. Read More . . .this video involves blowing up a lot of stuff. . . It's from a sapper platoon in Iraq. And if you pay attention, at about 1:19 into the video you'll see one of those disappearing minarets . . . Read More The UK Telegraph reports that Al Jazeera broadcast a videotape of the July 7 suicide bombings in London, in which one of the perpetrators made more death threats Read More I'm giving out two knucklehead awards today Today's first winner is the United States Golf Association aka the USGA. Read More Our second winner is Washington Post writer Henry Allen. He gets the award for the following. Read More Here's an article from AP. Military bases in the United States are having trouble paying their bills. Is the world upside down or what? TFM blames two culprits- Congress and the Military Bureacracy. Someone needs to get their act together, taking car... Read More The President offers his press conference in Chicago today to try to force a reluctant liberal media to broadcast facts, not their usual editorialized propaganda, about the good news on the domestic front and about the progress, despite and becau ...... Read More ...“I’m not going to kid myself. We’re in for some roll- up- the- sleeves, Redford- and- Hoffman- style journalism,” said Keller, explaining that he had tasked a group of six handpicked reporters to sit at their desks and wait “as vigorously as possibl... Read More Today's winner is William Allen Cunningham. Mr. Cunningham gets today's award for poisoning the soup he fed to his two children in order to sue the manufacturer. Read More Today's winner is Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Palm Beach and its Executive Director Tom Bila. Read More I am a liberal who supported the decision to invade Iraq (the why will be a future blog). And I supported the idea that once we were in there, it became our responsibility to make it successful. Not just that Read More You don't hear it as much anymore but there used to be a lot of comparison of the U.S. in Iraq to when we were in Vietnam. I never thought that was a good comparison. But what I do think Read More So what is the solution in Iraq? Put aside the lies that took us there - we're there. What do we do now? There are the mil-bloggers that almost unanimously see success. Slow and difficult success, but success nonetheless. And Read More Today's winner is Manuel Lopez Obrador. Read More Allahpundit at Hot Air reports that a 4-story building in New York City's Upper East Side collapsed after a gas explosion. Read More The Pope in Spain faced an uphill struggle: 80% of Spaniards consider themselves Catholic, while only 42% believe in God! ...Stem cell bill headed for a veto? ...French sore losers? ...Dumb Ox News & OTT Read More 10 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
Happy 4th to all Americans. I leave for the power projection platform tommorrow. Last night Household 6 and I went to Ruth's Chris Steak House. Read about our experience http://badgersforward.blogspot.com/2006/07/ruths-chris-steak-house-thank-you.html
American Gladiators, worth watching for sure.
http://objflicks.com/GladiatorAmericanStyle.htm
Papa Ray
Happy Independence Day to all!
Sorry for the trackback blooper...
D. Ox
Happy INdependence Day! Thank you for all you do and for your wonderful and very special blog. Thank you too for serving our country.
I tried to trackback but it is not showing up.
For those who are fighting for are continuance of Freedom, THANK YOU for your sacrifice.
For those of you whose loved one is away this holiday fighting for our Freedom, THANK YOU for your sacrifices as well.
I am wishing you all a Happy Independence Day.
A Proud American, who doesn't take the freedoms we have for granted.
Looks like we showed the Koreans a few things about flight today!
Space Shuttle: 1, T-2 Missile: 0; Another Great Reason To Be American!
http://opinionator.blogs.com/the_opinionator/2006/07/space_shuttle_1.html
Happy Independence Day all!
For those who are interested Iraq's newest "Most Wanted" list sheds some light on interesting links between Saddam Hussein's regime and Islamic terrorists, both before and after the start of the current war.
I have the details documented with full sourcing here http://markeichenlaub.blogspot.com/2006/07/more-on-iraqs-new-most-wanted-list.html
what is up with this...
Israeli Ground Forces Launch New Attacks in Northern Gaza
I wonder what kind of freedom and sacrifice this is. Especially after reading in this post's comments how such a thing never happens in Iraq.
Well, Conscience, since you seem to think all members of the military are somehow representative of the actions of a few, perhaps you should take some responsibility for the violence on YOUR street?
Crawl out of the whiskey bottle, asswipe.