Project Valour-IT.

Nope. Not asking for money. Just showing you what we do with it.

Today SGT X crossed my path again. Two years ago when he was wounded I didn't know about Soldiers' Angels, I didn't know a thing about combat casualties, and even though SGT X had wounded hands it hadn't yet occurred to me that he wouldn't have adaptive computer technology at his disposal. But today I knew what it meant when I read the details of a request for a Valour-IT laptop:

1- 2ND/3RD DEGREE BURNS TO HANDS/FACE
2- LOSS OF HEARING
3- KNEE SURGERY TO REPAIR LIGAMENTS
4- BACK INJURIES(HERNIATED DISCS, PROTRUSIONS)
5- TBI FROM BLAST OF VBIED
6- PTSD

I knew the name the moment I saw it. Two years on, and he's still recovering. And in those last two years I've been busy. And now maybe I know how to help him. I only wish we'd started sooner.

Small world, huh?

Update: Before posting this last night, I wrote to my Valour-IT colleagues and told them I know SGT X and he's a great guy. Based on that (and his injuries), he was instantly approved. He happened to be at Brooke for a therapy apointment this very morning (12/15/06) and was able to meet Valour-IT's representative and pick up the laptop 15 minutes after he was called. Twelve hours from request to receipt (no, that's not normal). Pretty cool, huh?

Read the rest here, at the home of the Heart of Project Valour-IT, Fuzzybear Lioness.

Democrats: Iraq is not a Quagmire

Yahoo:

Former Defense Secretary William Perry, a member of the Iraq Study Group, said Saturday that Iraq could turn into a "quagmire" if the Bush administration fails to change strategy.

Perry, who led the Pentagon under President Clinton, delivered the Democratic Party's weekly radio address.

Referring to the Vietnam War, Perry said: "The term 'quagmire' recalls one of the saddest periods in American history, which we do not want to relive. But I believe that is likely to happen if we 'stay the course' in Iraq."

Soup's On!

Back when we were in Germany, Mrs G would often cook up a huge pot of soup to take to the wounded troops recovering in the Landstuhl neighborhood. Yes, they had chow hall food available, but it turned out they appreciated the home cooking from time to time too. (Once she singlehandedly did an Easter Dinner for 40 - but that's another story.)

It didn't hurt that the soup was awesome. Now her recipe has been included in Blogalicious - a collection of recipes contributed by bloggers. Now, obviously Mrs G doesn't need a cookbook (he said, by way of maintaining household harmony) so I'm going to buy this one for myself.

On a related note, the lady who actually runs the whole Soldier's Angels Germany show could use your kind thoughts and prayers right about now.

Exit Interview

Secretary Rumsfeld sounds worried in an interview (h/t LGF). Much of it sounds a lot like what he said to Smash last week--the secretary is consistent in his message from day to day--but these points are telling.

Look at the Johns Hopkins exercise with smallpox called Dark Winter. It was put in three airports in America. Something between 800,000 and 1 million people ‘died’ in some number of months, or a year, from a disease people are no longer vaccinated against. So there are things that can be done. There’s a tendency for a lot of people to be dismissive of this and to ridicule it.

Churchill’s phrase about the gathering storm - there was a storm gathering, but there were people in Europe who didn’t believe it and who didn’t take the periodic storm clouds and the squalls as a real threat. They thought they were transitory and, of course, paid an enormous penalty in treasure and life for their failure to understand the nature of that threat. I worry we are in a gathering storm and we do not, as a society, accept it. Many of the elites of our society, the key opinion leaders, are unwilling or unable to accept what an awful lot of people believe to be the case. The penalty for being wrong can be enormous.

CT: Biggest disappointment?

DR: It’s the inability to help the free people of the world to understand that this new century and the struggle we’re engaged in is real, is terribly dangerous to their safety, and regrettably, it is not going to be as easily seen in terms of pitched battles.