Reminder

It's almost 6:00, tune in to Lou Dobbs (CNN).

Move with the troops

Marine reservist Owen West's (I hope you're familiar with the name) NY Times piece today is brillaint. I offer two brief excerpts, one:

Somehow Operation Iraqi Freedom, not a large war by America's historical standards, has blossomed into a crisis of expectations that threatens our ability to react to future threats with a fist instead of five fingers. Instead of rallying we are squabbling, even as the slow fuse burns.

...America's conscience is one of its greatest strengths. But self-flagellation, especially in the early stages of a war against an enemy whose worldview is uncompromising, is absolutely hazardous. Three years gone and Iraq's most famous soldiers are Jessica Lynch and Lynndie England, a victim and a criminal, respectively. Abu Ghraib remains the most famous battle of the war.

Soldiers are sick of apologizing for a sliver of malcontents who are not at all representative of the new breed. But they are also sick of being pitied. Our warriors are the hunters, not the hunted, and we should celebrate them as we did in the past, for while our tastes have changed, warfare — and the need to cultivate national guardians — has not.

Re: IED Claims CBS Camera Crew

via WaPo

U.S. military authorities did not identify the soldier and the translator who were killed. Six other soldiers were wounded

Memorial Day 2006 in Elgin, IL

Who was honored, in particular, at the ceremony at Bluff City Cemetery.

re: Don't Google, Just Ask

I hope that wasn't a deliberate omission on Google's part. They change their logo for the obscurest of the obscure events. To think that Google would snub Memorial Day on purpose is disheartening.

Don't Google, Just Ask

Glenn Reynolds suggests an alternative - at least for today.

CBS News Crew Update

A story with a little more info, including that one U.S. Soldier was also killed in the attack. Story also has a round up of other violence... and a video story on the news crew... Ms Dozier has apparently now been transferred after surgery to Balad...

Story and video HERE

Hitchens On Memorial Day

Christopher Hitchens has caused me to cringe on topics funereal. Here he makes an exception and writes on Memorial Day with a thoughtful, informative Wall Street Journal column.

Well worth a read.

He Shoulda Used The Latrine

Commenter at Smash's decides to take a political dump at a memorial post. Shameful.

CBN "700 Club" features Home of the Brave

CBN’s “700 Club” featured a seven minute TV segment today on HM3 Luis Fonseca Jr., and Home of the Brave: Honoring the Unsung Heroes in the War on Terror. I was so pleased with the job CBN did in presenting HM3 Fonseca's story and giving him the respect and admiration he is due. During the writing of Home of the Brave , Cap and I never ceased to be amazed by the humility these men and women displayed during interviews. That humility comes through in this TV segment.

To view the video segment, simply click HERE and then click “Watch it Now”

May all those who have served and their families have a blessed Memorial Day.

While we remember...

...the war goes on in Iraq.

And two CBS employees, cameraman Paul Douglas, 48, and soundman James Brolan, 42, were killed, and reporter Kimberly Dozier, 39, is in critical condition at a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad after undergoing surgery after an IED detonated near their vehicle while in a convoy with the 4th BCT of the 4th Infantry Divsion.

Our condolences to the families of the slain, and our best wishes for survival and recovery for Dozier.

The story is here. Give them credit for not reporting from their hotel, but getting out at the sharp end.

You can't die for a just cause if you didn't live for one

That from Robert Stokely. Today is a difficult day for the Stokely family. Robert was up early this morning, no doubt reflecting on the life and sacrifice of his son, SGT Michael Stokely. Robert sends his thoughts, and thanks, on this Memorial Day.

Remember

Honor the Fallen

An Evil Wish

Vietnam-era Marine deuddersun (he always spells his name in lower case) sends this warning about a MySpace page. It poses as a tribute to Marines, but is embedded with malware designed to wreck your system.

Be warned, and on guard.

The Theme of the Day is... Remember

At Castle Argghhh! we conclude our Memorial Day series with "Memorial Day 2006 - Taking Back the Holiday"

And in keeping with Smash's project, we remember a different 29 May. In 1944. In Italy. We Remember Captain William Wylie Galt.

For those expecting big crowds...

... this Memorial Day, please permit me to offer the use of my latrine.

Patriot Guard

Email from Tim Sumner:

Greyhawk:

Hard to believe this story appeared where it did and the ending of it was written the way it was:

"Who are you masked men?" asked an old-timer in the red garrison cap of the Marine Corps League.

"Patriot Guard Riders," Mr. Deale explained.

"Well, it's impressive," the old-timer said. "Very impressive."

Then the dead man's mother walked the line of riders and, with her son's flag tucked beneath her arm, shook each and every hand.

-- Tim

Google

Noted, quoted:

It's kind of sad. They change their homepage logo for all sorts of holidays and occasions. Just last week they paid tribute to Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday. But Memorial Day doesn't seem to rate anything at all.

Yo, pass me a beer.

Memorial Day words from Ben Stein

From "Remarks delivered on Saturday evening in Arlington, Virginia, at the Memorial Day weekend seminar and grief camp of TAPS -- the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. " Published at The American Spectator here:

...The sacrifice your loved ones made, the sacrifice you made, that your kids made, is what makes the whole American world safe from terror.

Your loved ones' lives had what we all want: meaning. The knowledge you were doing something big for others. That is EVERYTHING in life.

Wall Street does not have it. Hollywood does not have it. They're just in it for the fame and the money.

Your loved ones were in it for unselfishness, for kindness, for love of one's fellow man. There is no higher meaning on this earth.

The media try to rob your husbands' and wives' and kids' lives of meaning saying this war is not about anything.

They're wrong and they say what they say because they don't see the truth. They print a story on the front page about Marines killing civilians in a town in Iraq and if they did, it was wrong. But the big media never report a MARINE throwing himself on a bomb to protect an Iraqi child, or a Marine giving his life to rid a town of murderers or a Marine or an Army man or woman or a Navy Seal or a Coast Guardsman offering up his life so that Iraqi human beings can have the same freedoms and rights we take for granted here in America.

The media are like grave robbers, robbing you of the certain knowledge that your spouses gave their lives for something deeply worthwhile: human dignity.

Your loved ones' lives and deaths had as much meaning at the lives and deaths of every American who died for freedom from Valley Forge to the Battle of the Bulge to Cho-Sin Reservoir to the Cu Chi tunnels to the Balkans to Kabul, Afghanistan, to Falluja, Iraq.

And if the media doesn't know it, every other American does. This is a very difficult fight, but the ordinary American knows what your loved ones have done and respects them.

Re: Lou Dobbs

When it comes to the war on terror, Dobbs is on our side. Take a look at the topic lines in these transcripts and you'll see what I mean. Where others highlight the number of deaths, Dobbs headlines "U.S. Forces in Fierce Fighting With Taliban in Afghanistan".

And his weekly "Heroes" segments shouldn't be missed - they're an exception to the national media blackout on such stories. I put a couple examples from this month in the extended section.

Thank you, Victor. Some of us remember.

Victor Davis Hanson talks about the War in Iraq this Memorial Day:

There may be a lot to regret about the past policy of the United States in the Middle East, but the removal of Saddam Hussein and the effort to birth democracy in his place is surely not one of them. And we should remember that this Memorial Day.

A geography more uninviting for our soldiers than Iraq cannot be imagined — 7,000 miles away, surrounded by Baathist Syria, Wahhabist Saudi Arabia, and theocratic Iran. The harsh landscape rivals the worst of past battlefields — blazing temperatures, wind, and dust. The host culture that our soldiers faced was Orwellian — a society terrorized by a mass murderer for 30 years, who ruled by alternately promising Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish collaborationists that cooperation meant only that fewer of their own would die.

The timing was equally awful — in an era of easy anti-Americanism in Europe, and endemic ingratitude in the Muslim world that asks nothing of itself, everything of us, and blissfully forgets the thousands of Muslims saved by Americans in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Somalia, and the billions more lavished on Jordanians, Palestinians, and Egyptians.

And here at home? There are few Ernie Pyles in Iraq to record the heroism of our soldiers; no John Fords to film their valor — but legions to write ad nauseam of Abu Ghraib, and to make up stories of flushed Korans and Americans terrorizing Iraqi women and children.

Yet here we are with an elected government in place, an Iraqi security force growing, and an autocratic Middle East dealing with the aftershocks of the democratic concussion unleashed by American soldiers in Iraq.

Reading about Gettysburg, Okinawa, Choisun, Hue, and Mogadishu is often to wonder how such soldiers did what they did. Yet never has America asked its youth to fight under such a cultural, political, and tactical paradox as in Iraq, as bizarre a mission as it is lethal. And never has the American military — especially the U.S. Army and Marines — in this, the supposedly most cynical and affluent age of our nation, performed so well.

We should remember the achievement this Memorial Day of those in the field who alone crushed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, stayed on to offer a new alternative other than autocracy and theocracy, and kept a targeted United States safe from attack for over four years.

Thank you, Victor. Some of us remember.

Memorial Day, Fran O'Brien's and Lou Dobbs

Be sure to catch the Lou Dobbs show (CNN) tonight at 6:00 p.m. EST. Dobbs will air a segment about the Friday night dinners for our wounded troops. The segment will feature some footage from the Glenn Beck show that aired a couple of weeks ago, but will also include some recent updates.

Tune in.

An MSM Experiment

Attention all enterprising milbloggers:

CNN's "victims or villains only” portrayal of our military notwithstanding, CNN has now graciously invited us, the unwashed peasantry, to submit photos, videos, and stories about our men and women in-country. How cool would it be to flood the CNN inbox with milblogger stories and photos, all of which would provide a markedly more positive and uplifting view of those who serve?

Let the revolution begin...

ILARIO PANTANO on John Murtha

In today's Washington Post, Ilario Pantano takes on John Murtha.

In the United States, we have a civil and military court system that relies on an investigatory and judicial process to make determinations based on evidence. The system is not served by such grand pronouncements of horror and guilt without the accuser even having read the investigative report.

Mr. Murtha's position is particularly suspect when he is quoted by news services as saying that the strain of deployment "has caused them [the Marines] to crack in situations like this." Not only is he certain of the Marines' guilt but he claims to know the cause, which he conveniently attributes to a policy he opposes.