TROOPS HOME BY CHRISMUKKAH

A Soldier's Father

2005-03-12T14:44:00.000-08:00

In The New York Observer, the incomparable Nicholas von Hoffman writes about being the parent of a soldier in Iraq:

"The burden of this war, which we hear spoken of so often, has been borne by my son and a few thousand other men and women. They have made all the sacrifices that bombastic politicians so lightly speak of; they have borne all the risks, paid all the costs, while others have gotten rich off them, have gotten elected and re-elected off them—and, if not that, had the pleasure of swaggering around with a bully-boy American flag in their lapels and a ribbon stamped "I Support the Troops" on the hoods of their $45,000 automobiles and their pickup trucks.

"The ribbons get me the most. Every time I saw one during the months that my son was in combat, his safety and his life in danger, I felt a shiver of anger. I wanted to wait in the parking lot for the owner of that big, fat, preposterous automobile and ask him: "Just how do you support the troops? How do you support my troop? Have you volunteered your blood to the Red Cross? Have you supported higher taxes to pay for the war? Have you volunteered for it yourself, encouraged your children to go? What have you done other than expropriate patriotic symbols that you have no special claim to display, to intimidate people who have had the social courage to question the death and maiming of so many of our people?"...

"My son was sent to fight a war which millions of his own countrymen had no particular interest in, whose aims fluctuated from month to month, and which the President could not explain without raising the suspicion that he was lying or—worse yet—that he was a confused, ill-informed hysteric with only fuzzy notions of why he was doing what he had already done.

"For the close relatives and friends of a soldier in combat, it can never be easy, because they can’t know their soldier’s true situation. You can’t decide whether to turn on the TV or not. In the end, many of us choose not to watch—not only because some of the pictures are painful to see, but because Iraq is the worst-reported war since the Great War of 1914-18, which has no equal for official lying and withholding of information. The governments then thought they had to keep the truth from their peoples because they were afraid what would happen if the actual number of deaths on the battlefield got out.

"In my son’s war, it is not yet possible to say how much of what was pumped out into the media was propaganda and lies, and how much was confusion, ineptitude, rock-headed stupidity, incompetence and ignorance masquerading as authoritative knowledge. This has been a war reported by terrified journalists rightly afraid to go out on the streets because they’re in danger of getting their throats slit; by journalists who are often inexperienced rookies sent into danger by editors short on scruples who will take any story—right, wrong or off-the-wall crazy—as long as they have a ratings pumper-upper.

"It will be a long time, if ever, before we raise a statue to my son’s war. The President who presided over it has yet to attend the funeral of one of my son’s fallen comrades, so the marble cenotaphs will be a long time coming..."

2005-02-28T06:15:00.000-08:00

From Camp Liberty, Baghdad:

This is how a death is announced:

In the midst of the hum and buzz of idle boredom in the DTAC, you hear a sudden sharp voice from the other side of the room. You look over and an NCO is pressing a telephone receiver tighter against his ear and saying, "Repeat that last transmission. What did you say?" Then, he waves his hand at another NCO standing nearby to give him a pen, whereupon he begins to furiously scribble on an index card. Two or three others cluster near him, heads are pressed inward in a tight circle, one head pops up and catches the eye of the battle captain sitting in his leather office chair at the front of the room. He rises from the chair-he'd been watching a NASCAR race on the TV perhaps-and hurries over to the growing knot of bowed and huddled heads. At this point, something like cold fear is starting to creep around your heart like icy vines. The information on the index card is read back into the phone for confirmation, then the battle captain grabs the card and strides to the front of the room, yelling, "ATTENTION IN THE DTAC! ATTENTION IN THE DTAC!" All sound and motion in the tent stops. Someone mutes the NASCAR race. The battle captain reads from the index card: "We have reports of one IED in the vicinity of Scania along the convoy route. One KIA. Battle-damage assessment still being made. That is all." He reads it as carefully and dispassionately as someone quoting stock market prices, then he turns and writes the information on a large sheet of paper taped to the wall at the front of the room where all significant activities-the loss of an M-16, the arrival/departure of a convoy, the publication of an OPORDER-are recorded. As we watch him write with the magic marker, the conversation-buzz of the room gradually returns to its former volume. Some of us drop our heads in sorrow, shaking them back and forth as if that will counteract the loss and bring that KIA back to life, or at least change his status to WIA. But the magic marker ink is permanent, seared there by the heat of an IED blast. There is nothing we can reverse. The battle captain returns to his leather chair. A couple of officers return to their crossword puzzle. Someone turns up the volume on the TV and the NASCAR race resumes.

Aimless

2005-02-24T13:39:00.000-08:00

My friend landed at Camp Liberty in Baghdad and got the phone card I sent him so he can call his wife. He wrote:

I'm still getting my feet under me here in Baghdad—and haven't been in to work yet (been getting caught up on rest today)—but it feels like I'm on the fringe of chaos, rather than at its heart. As long as I stay within the confines of the camp, I should be pretty safe. There are daily mortar rounds which land in camp, but the insurgents send them in our direction without bothering to aim, so if one does happen to kill someone (hasn't happened in quite a while), then it's just luck. Heard one land today while I was napping—shook the walls of my trailer—but after I've been here for a while, I'm told it will be nothing but regular background noise.

For most people in this country, news from Iraq on CNN is now only "regular background noise." Easy for us to feel that way. Well, we can always listen to the Republicans chant, "Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go."

On the Way to Baghdad

2005-02-16T08:08:00.000-08:00

I have a friend in Kuwait, as I've said, someone who helped me out in a job interview thing a while back, and I haven't told him about this PAC or my political views. I don't know how he feels about Iraqi policy, but I hope it's OK to excerpt a couple of the journal entries I got from him via another friend:

Feb. 2, 2005:
Hygiene is a huge problem here. The only times you get to wash your hands are when you go to chow. Apart from the shower trailers, the bank of sinks at the Dining Facility entrance is the only running water on camp. Even the sanitation there is obscene. We shuffle up to the stainless steel sinks, turn on the water (touching the germs of all who came before), grab the soap dispenser (which is just diluted dishwashing detergent in a water bottle with two holes cut in the cap—again, touching the grime of all who came before), lather up as best we can, then dry our hands off with toilet paper (no such thing as paper towels here—it’s all toilet paper). Apart from those three daily highlights, the only time soap hits my body is when I take a shower.

Yesterday, as Staff Sergeant D___________and I were driving to Doha, then to Virginia and New York for paper delivery, she started off by saying, “I should warn you, I’m not feeling very well. Got the crud.” At one point, I let her drive, then—since she was driving like a grandma in heavy traffic during a thunderstorm and I got impatient at her too-careful driving—I took over. Thus, touching the steering wheel after her germy hands had been gripping it. I didn’t even think about it until later last night when my throat got an unmistakable scratch on it and my head started pounding.

Yesterday’s headline on Yahoo.com read, “Iraqi president wants US troops to stay.” I didn’t have time to read the story, but I didn’t really have to in order to know the rhetoric contained therein. The calendar ahead of me slowly solidifies in concrete with each passing press conference."

Feb 3, 2005:
Overheard while I was standing in the breakfast chow line:

A couple of soldiers from 3rd Brigade were standing behind me, scuffing the dirt with their boots and talking in low voices.

“I hear we’re moving out either today or tomorrow,” one said.

“I know it’s getting close because we had our pep talk last night.”

“Yeah,” said the other, “we’ve already gotten a bunch of those pep talks. I’ll tell ya, the only pep talk I wanna hear right now is, ‘You’re going home.’”

“Yeah, that or, ‘Here’s your beer, soldier.’”

They both laughed and scuffed the dirt some more before falling silent.

Feb. 4, 2005:
Late tonight, Capt. L______ stopped by my trailer to tell me, “We had our first KIA today. A soldier in 1st Brigade. An IED. Don’t have any other details than that.”

We both fall silent. I stare at my boots. “Damn,” I say. “Damn, damn, damn.”

For just a splinter of a moment, that KIA casualty is a person. He doesn’t have a face, and I’m not even sure if he has a girlfriend, a wife or kids…but he is a person made of flesh and blood which, in my mind’s eye, is violently ripped apart by a blast suddenly erupting from the side of the road while he’s out on patrol. For a moment, I see him as a human being who has friends and family who will mourn his passing.

Then, in the next instant, he changes to a statistic—a cold, hard number which is entered into the annals of history. He is a chalk mark in the loss column. The first of many to come, unfortunately.

Do Not Misunderestimate Me Too Quickly

2005-02-13T11:48:00.000-08:00

In a New York Times Book Review review of a new work whose premise is that Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative was, at bottom, a plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons, Jacob Heilbrunn notes:

"Republican presidents should be grateful for the scorn of liberal elites. After they leave office, their reputations have nowhere to go but up. This tendency first became apparent when historians transformed Dwight Eisenhower from a doddering golfer into a political wizard. Then it picked up steam as Richard Nixon went from war criminal to the last great liberal Republican president. Now it's threatening to reach epic proportions as Ronald Reagan, famously dismissed by the Washington insider Clark Clifford as ''an amiable dunce,'' comes in for a reappraisal.

"Enter Paul Lettow. In ''Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,'' Lettow offers revisionist history with a vengeance. Lettow is a young scholar who has drawn extensively on newly declassified documents and interviews with numerous Reagan administration officials. He seeks to show that far from being Silly Putty in the hands of his advisers, Reagan was a thoughtful leader who manipulated them. Throughout, Lettow maintains that Reagan championed the Strategic Defense Initiative, or ballistic missile defense program, not to ensure American military superiority but -- to the consternation of administration hawks -- in the utopian conviction that it would eventually make nuclear weapons obsolete.

"The result is a provocative, informative and largely persuasive account."

Well, as someone who ran against Reagan, I don't know. But I do now that for about the last two and a half years few things more annoy me than the emails my friends keep forwarding which, in various supposedly humorous ways, support their smug belief that the current President of the United States is an illiterate, inarticulate moron.

George W. Bush is smart enough to play dumb, fake that drawl, stumble around sentences, make supposedly inane remarks. One would have to be a diabolical genius -- which I believe GWB is -- to have had his education and life experience and appear to be so ill-informed and inarticulate. He's a better actor than even the Gipper.

Heilbrun ends his review:

"Lettow's achievement is to show that both Reagan's detractors and votaries misread him. Just as it has been said that Marx was not a Marxist, so, it can be argued, Reagan was not a Reaganite. How long will it be before a young, ambitious historian announces a similar discovery about George W. Bush?"

My guess: 2013.

Second Anniversary

2005-02-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

I don't get out much and I don't like crowds. A week ago, I had a panic attack just driving 20 miles on I-95 to get to downtown Miami to see Bright Eyes at Gusman Auditorium. (Conor Oberst was so worth it. Neva Dinova rocks, too.)

But I'll be out in the crowd on Saturday, March 19, The Global Day of Protest on the Two-Year Anniversary of the Iraq War.

Flying Home

2005-02-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

Joe Guth has a letter titled "Flying Home" up at McSweeney's:

"Yesterday I was on my way home—stopped for a few hours in the Washington D.C. airport on the way from Munich to Portland, Oregon. There were two marines sitting nearby, decked out in their dress uniforms, all shiny black leather and handsome blue creases. They looked smart, like nice guys, calmly having a conversation. Later a younger guy with big arms bulging out of a gray USMC T-shirt and with the Marine logo stitched on his carryon bags comes bursting in to our aisle of seats and down. The Marines don't talk to each other, though they notice each other. I figure they must be traveling together and perhaps the brass doesn't mix with the young bucks. Later the two officers are escorted by the gate agent to the Jetway. The young Marine calls a friend on his cell and asks what that many stripes signify—seems they are master sergeants—and tells his friend with a giggle that he ended up right next to these two officers. His next call is to his parents and he tells them of his recent graduation—how he excelled in his classes and how his instructors were so proud of him and how they hadn't had anyone do that well on all the tests in many years.

"So, it occurs on me that the uniformed Marines are escorting dead soldiers back to Portland. That they went to the tarmac early to supervise the loading of the caskets. And, indeed, before we land the pilot comes on the intercom and haltingly tells us to stay seated so the Marines can get off the plane early and attend to their business ... of getting the coffins of these fallen heroes home. I was seated on the right side of the plane, just over the rear hatch and saw the 8 or 10 Marines waiting below to ceremoniously move the coffins. I saw, too, one soldier's parents, not young, perhaps 50, coming to the plane in all their shocked grief. Couldn't watch for too long. I saw the young Marine downstairs at baggage claim talking with his dad, who went out to go pull the car around while the bags were starting to come out on the carousel. The young Marine shouldered his two heavy duffel bags and moved like a big halfback through the crowd out to the street."

Kuwaiti Kuisine

2005-02-09T05:52:00.000-08:00

I got an email from a friend, David, who's in Kuwait. I had asked him about the food there, since another guy I knew who was stationed in Kuwait said it was the worst food he'd ever had in his life. David agreed, saying the food was "lousy and redundant." The coffee there is also horrible, and he asked me to send him chocolate-covered espresso beans.

But Jonathan had told me the food got a lot better when they went up to Baghdad, and I reported that to David. That at least might give him one thing to long forward to on the long ride up there -- although David wondered if he'd be picking splinters of mortar rounds out of his mashed potatoes.

David said he wanted salty snacks but said not to send Pringles potato chips, since they tend to arrive broken and crushed.

Jonathan came back a few months ago, and I am glad to report he arrived back to the U.S. unbroken and uncrushed. If only the same could be said of everyone who's served in Iraq.

Torturers at the Top

2005-02-08T08:42:00.000-08:00

In today's New York Times, Michiko Kakutani reviews The Torture Papers.

After a litany of horrors that makes clear that the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were the result of actions at the very top of the Bush administration, Kakutani notes what has become of the evildoers:

"What happened to higher-up architects and consultants on administration policy? Mr. Rumsfeld revealed last week that he twice offered to resign over the Abu Ghraib scandal and was twice turned down by President Bush. Mr. Bybee, who defined torture as pain equivalent to "organ failure," was nominated by Mr. Bush to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and took his seat there in 2003. Michael Chertoff, who in his capacity as head of the Justice Department's criminal division advised the C.I.A. on the legality of coercive interrogation methods, was selected by President Bush to be the new secretary of homeland security. William J. Haynes II, the Department of Defense's chief legal officer, who helped oversee Pentagon studies on the interrogation of detainees, was twice nominated by President Bush to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. And Mr. Gonzales, who used the words "obsolete" and "quaint" in reference to the Geneva Conventions, was confirmed last week as attorney general, the nation's top legal post."

At least he's not yet Chief Justice of the United States.

"Till the Job Is Done"

2005-02-01T13:39:00.000-08:00

The first caller today on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" said we need to have our troops in Iraq "until the job is done...twenty or twenty-five years."

Great. That will allow the infants whose fathers died in Iraq before they were born to be sent over there to die, too.

What is "the job" anyway? It ain't finding WMD. It ain't disposing of the dictator Saddam -- we've crossed that off our "to do" list.

The caller never defined "the job."

He did say he had no children to draft, however. Well, I don't either. Of course, before listening to NPR at 2 pm, I was watching ABC-TV: "All My Children." And now that Bianca's got her baby back, I don't want to be watching AMC 25 years from now to see some military officer coming to a middle-aged Bianca's door with the bad news from Baghdad 2025.

Actually, when I started watching AMC in 1970, the lead character, played by Rosemary Prinz, was an antiwar activist, much to the dismay of her conservative mother-in-law, played by the late Ruth Warrick. (In real life, the wonderful Miss Warrick, who died a couple of weeks ago, was quite an activist herself. I met her when she was traveling with the Clintons and Gores during the '92 presidential campaign.)

Back then, two young male characters enlisted to fight in Vietnam. Only one came back.

How long did it take for the job in Vietnam to be done?

Timetables: Not Just For Metra to Waukegan Anymore

2005-02-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

Upyernoz at Rubber Hose makes the case for timetables:

"unless there is a pre-publicized timetable for leaving, whenever the u.s. leaves, anti-american forces (whether the present insurgency or their successors) will claim that they caused the u.s. to leave and claim victory....

"almost everyone believes that u.s. forces will leave iraq someday. but if they leave without a clear pre-existing timetable, we are setting up the insurgency for the same P.R. coup that hezbollah got out of the israeli withdrawal from lebanon."

We Must Talk in Every Telephone, Get Eaten Off the Web

2005-01-30T14:37:00.000-08:00

I have been doing my own stuff all day, like going to pick up the two new Bright Eyes CD's, but I've just been listening to NPR's "All Things Considered" coverage of the Iraqi election, and here's my terminally naive reaction. It's heartening that so many people would go to vote despite the very real threats of violence -- some of which did materialize today. I'm willing to admit that even bad policies can bring some good results, and today looks pretty good right now.

The insurgency will not end, but perhaps there's going to be some kind of government that is not dictatorial and not seen as a puppet of the occupation. The view that Iraqis and other countries are not able to deal with democracy seems racist to me, but I also don't know if someone like Allawi is anything more than Saddam Lite. We'll see.

More and more people, including those who supported U.S. military action, are realizing that we have to leave sometime. Most of the Iraqis want us to leave. Our soldiers want to leave. This moment seems like a good one for the administration to start drawing down troops. We shouldn't wait for the new government to ask us to leave.

I know this isn't very articulate or sophisticated, and I'm sure that if any person besides myself read this, they could easily make me look ridiculous for this post. Hey, I'm one of those people who would make fun of my bumbling if I weren't the one writing it. But right now I'm too tired of both the war in Iraq and the political war at home. I don't care if Bush or whoever gets credit for bringing soldiers back from Iraq. I just want them home.

Vietnam Parallels, Chapter 435

2005-01-29T07:57:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has yet another article discussing the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. Money quotes:

"There are, of course, a handful of people in central policy positions now who played important roles in the Vietnam era, and presumably the applicable lessons are not lost on them.

"In 1973, John D. Negroponte, now Mr. Bush's ambassador to Baghdad, was Henry A. Kissinger's special assistant on Vietnam. Mr. Negroponte protested that the peace agreement that allowed North Vietnamese forces to remain in the South after the American withdrawal would leave the situation "basically unresolved," Mr. Karnow recounts in his book. But Mr. Kissinger was unmoved, asking: "What do you want us to do? Stay there forever?"

"In Iraq this week, the top American commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., offered a similar view. "We cannot stay here forever in the numbers that we are here now; I firmly believe that," he told reporters. "The Iraqis have to take ownership of this."

"While Mr. Bush has taken pains not to spell out any timetable for the withdrawal of American troops, American military commanders have said that after the elections on Sunday, their principal mission will become the training of Iraqi forces. The prevailing view among even conservatives who supported the war from the start is that such a handover must begin."

Seymour Hersh Interview

2005-01-28T19:01:00.000-08:00

From a Seymour Hersh interview at Democracy Now:

"We're nowhere. The press is nowhere. The congress is nowhere. The military is nowhere. Every four-star General I know is saying, “Who is going to tell them we have no clothes?” Nobody is going to do it. Everybody is afraid to tell Rumsfeld anything. That's just the way it is. It's a system built on fear. It's not lack of integrity, it's more profound than that. Because there is individual integrity. It's a system that's completely been taken over -- by cultists.

"Anyway, what's going to happen, I think, as the casualties mount and these stories get around, and the mothers see the cost and the fathers see the cost, as the kids come home. And the wounded ones come back, and there's wards that you will never hear about. That's wards -- you know about the terrible catastrophic injuries, but you don't know about the vegetables. There's ward after ward of vegetables because the brain injuries are so enormous.

"As you maybe read last week, there was a new study in one of the medical journals that the number of survivors are greater with catastrophic injuries because of their better medical treatment and the better armor they have. So you get more extreme injuries to extremities. We're going to learn more and I think you're going to see, it's going to -- it's -- I'm trying to be optimistic.

"We're going to see a bottom swelling from inside the ranks. You're beginning to see it. What happened with the soldiers asking those questions, you may see more of that. I'm not suggesting we're going to have mutinies, but I'm going to suggest you're going to see more dissatisfaction being expressed. Maybe that will do it."

American Conservative Magazine Article: "Walking Wounded"

2005-01-28T17:16:00.000-08:00

Fred Reed writes in The American Conservative's January 31 issue about what awaits the many wounded soldiers who have returned from Iraq:

"The war in Iraq is fought by volunteers, which means people that no one in power cares about. No one in the mysteriously named “elite” gives a damn about some kid from a town in Tennessee that has one gas station and a beer hall with a stuffed buck’s head. Such a kid is a redneck at best, pretty much from another planet, and certainly not someone you would let your daughter date. If conscription came back, and college students with rich parents learned to live in fear of The Envelope, riots would blossom as before. Now Yale can rest easy. Thank God for throwaway people.

"The nearly perfect separation between the military and the rest of the country, or at least the influential in the country, is wonderful for the war effort. It prevents concern. How many people with a college degree even know a soldier? Yes, some, and I will get e-mail from them, but they are a minority. How many Americans have been on a military base? Or, to be truly absurd, how many men in combat arms went to, say, Harvard? Ah, but they have other priorities.

"In 15 years in Washington, I knew many, many reporters and intellectuals and educated people. Almost none had worn boots. So it is. Those who count do not have to go, and do not know anyone who has gone, and don’t interest themselves. There is a price for this, though not one Washington cares about. Across America, in places where you might not expect it—in Legion halls and VFW posts, among those who carry membership cards from the Disabled American Veterans—there are men who hate. They don’t hate America. They hate those who sent them. Talk to the wounded from Iraq in five years."

There are no "throwaway people" in this country. As a draft dodger during Vietnam and someone who basically has never had any contact with the military, I want to make sure that that kid from Nowheresville, Tennessee, whom I have nothing in common with except citizenship, comes back whole -- and soon.

Support Builds for Troop Withdrawal

2005-01-28T13:44:00.002-08:00

NPR's "Morning Edition" had a story today on increasing calls by Representatives and Senators to pull our troops out of Iraq.

On Tuesday, Rep. Martin Meehan (D-MA) laid out a plan to bring all but about 30,000 U.S. troops home from Iraq over the next 12 to 18 months in a move to "splinter" the insurgency and hasten peace.

On Wednesday, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and 23 other Democratic congresspeople called on President Bush to begin immediate withdrawal. Woolsey, who in her 2004 campaign said she was worried about a U.S. pullout leading to civil war, now says, "Our very presence in Iraq is the cause of much of the violence. We have a moral responsibility to leave in order to stem the violence."

Yesterday, Sen. Ted Kennedy detailed a plan that called for the immediate pullout of about 10% of American military forces "to send a signal about our intention," followed by a clearly outlined exit strategy.

Hopefully, these Democrats, all of whom have earned the support of Troops Home By Chrismukkah, will be joined by many more politicians, including Republicans.

What "Troops Home By Chrismukkah" Is About

2005-01-27T18:46:00.000-08:00

Frank Rich has an excellent article in the Sunday New York Times about our military men and women in Iraq. In it, he points out that unlike Vietnam, no Americans are disparaging our troops as "baby killers." (And even then, I protested the war alongside friends who fought in Southeast Asia.) "This time, paradoxically enough," Rich notes, "it is often those who claim to love the troops the most - and who have the political power to help alleviate their sacrifice - who turn out to be the troops' false friends."

However, I'm tired of arguing about whether we were right or wrong to invade/liberate/occupy/enter Iraq. Those of us who, like Lindsay tonight on "The O.C.," still have Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers on our beat-up compact cars, need to make common cause with the Bush supporters who do have a genuine concern for our military in Iraq.

I don't know how the election will go this Sunday. But either way, it seems as if we need to bring our men and women home by Chrismukkah. If President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretaries Rice and Powell and their friends were right, then this election will turn out to be the harbinger of democracy for the Iraqi people, and we should leave them to their destiny, with some international help and supervision, to run their own affairs in a way they couldn't under Saddam Hussein.

But if those of us who predict violence, chaos and civil war are correct, American troops cannot stay in Iraq indefinitely. As a young John Kerry said when he was with Vietnam Veterans Against the War, how do we ask a man or woman to be the last person to die for a mistake?

During the Vietnam War, Republican Senator George Aiken of Vermont often said we should just declare victory and leave. No one can take away from the Bush administration that it has indeed toppled a tyrannical dictator from power.

Those of us who ridiculed President Bush for his flyboy stunt on the aircraft carrier back in May 2003 can still agree that as far as Iraq goes, we can agree that "Mission Accomplished" applies to our brave soldiers there.

Let's get them home in December so they can play with their kids' action figures instead of being in danger of dying like the Marine who got killed today or the many soldiers who died in yesterday's copter crash.

Here's a link to Frank Rich's article: Forget Armor, All You Need Is Love and a quote about a film that profiles our troops:

The Bush administration's National Endowment for the Arts, eager to demonstrate that it, too, loves the troops, announced with much self-congratulatory fanfare that it will publish its own anthology of returning veterans' writings about their wartime experience ("Operation Homecoming") - by spring 2006. In "Gunner Palace," you can sample this art right now, unexpurgated - if you're over 16. Here's one freestyle lyric from Sgt. Nick Moncrief, a 24-year-old father of two: "I noticed that my face is aging so quickly/ Cuz I've seen more than your average man in his 50's." True, he does go on to use a four-letter word - to accentuate his evocation of metal ripping through skin and bones. The Traditional Values Coalition would no doubt lobby to shut down the endowment were it to disseminate such filth.

Another of the movie's soldiers, Robert Beatty, a 33-year-old Army lifer with three children back home, wonders whether Americans who "don't have any direct family members in the military" regard the war as anything other than "just entertainment" and guesses that they lost interest once "major combat" had given way to the far deadlier minor combat that followed. A Gallup poll last year showed that most Americans might fall into that group, since two-thirds of those surveyed had no relative, friend or co-worker serving in Iraq. Does that vast unconnected majority understand what's going on there? Sergeant Beatty gives his answer in one of the film's most poignant passages: "If you watch this, you're going to go get your popcorn out of the microwave and talk about what I say. You'll forget me by the end. ..."

No, we won't forget you guys. See you back home at Chrismukkah.

Troops Home By Chrismukkah: A New Political Action Commission

2005-01-26T07:39:00.000-08:00

Presented by the Federal Election Commission

Committee ID: C00408476

TROOPS HOME BY CHRISMUKKAH

1093 W 14 AVE
APACHE JUNCTION, AZ 85220

Treasurer Name:
RICHARD GRAYSON

Committee Designation:
(N/A)

Committee Type:
NON-PARTY NON-QUALIFIED

We have registered as a political action committee with the Federal Election Commission. We will support candidates who pledge to getting our troops out of Iraq by Chrismukkah 2005 so that our military women and men can be celebrating the holiday with their families.