Town of Braintree

Semper Fi And They Mean It !

Semper Fi

Some 40 Marines have just lost their lives cleaning out one of the world's worst terror dens, in Fallujah, yet all the world wants to talk about is the NBC videotape of a Marine shooting a prostrate Iraqi inside a mosque. Have we lost all sense of moral proportion?
The al-Zarqawi TV network, also known as Al-Jazeera, has broadcast the tape to the Arab world, and U.S. media have also played it up. The point seems to be to conjure up images again of Abu Ghraib, further maligning the American purpose in Iraq. Never mind that the pictures don't come close to telling us about the context of the incident, much less what was on the mind of the soldier after days of combat.

Put yourself in that Marine's boots. He and his mates have had to endure some of the toughest infantry duty imaginable, house-to-house urban fighting against an enemy that neither wears a uniform nor obeys any normal rules of war. Here is how that enemy fights, according to an account in the Times of London:
''In the south of Fallujah yesterday, U.S. Marines found the armless, legless body of a blonde woman, her throat slashed and her entrails cut out. Benjamin Finnell, a hospital apprentice with the U.S. Navy Corps, said that she had been dead for a while, but at that location for only a day or two. The woman was wearing a blue dress; her face had been disfigured. It was unclear if the remains were the body of the Irish-born aid worker Margaret Hassan, 59, or of Teresa Borcz, 54, a Pole abducted two weeks ago. Both were married to Iraqis and held Iraqi citizenship; both were kidnapped in Baghdad last month.''

When not disemboweling Iraqi women, these killers hide in mosques and hospitals, booby-trap dead bodies, and open fire as they pretend to surrender. Their snipers kill U.S. soldiers out of nowhere. According to one account, the Marine in the videotape had seen a member of his unit killed by another insurgent pretending to be dead. Who from the safety of his Manhattan sofa has standing to judge what that Marine did in that mosque?

Beyond the one incident, think of what the Marine and Army units just accomplished in Fallujah. In a single week, they killed as many as 1,200 of the enemy and captured 1,000 more. They did this despite forfeiting the element of surprise, so civilians could escape, and while taking precautions to protect Iraqis that no doubt made their own mission more difficult and hazardous. And they did all of this not for personal advantage, and certainly not to get rich, but only out of a sense of duty to their comrades, their mission and their country.
In a more grateful age, this would be hailed as one of the great battles in Marine history--with Guadalcanal, Peleliu, Hue City and the Chosin Reservoir. We'd know the names of these military units, and of many of the soldiers too. Instead, the name we know belongs to the NBC correspondent, Kevin Sites.

We suppose he was only doing his job, too. But that doesn't mean the rest of us have to indulge in the moral abdication that would equate deliberate televised beheadings of civilians with a Marine shooting a terrorist, who may or may not have been armed, amid the ferocity of battle.



By The al-Zarqawi TV network

INSULT ART Can anything top

INSULT ART Can anything top a British snub? Consider the reception planned for French President Jacques Chirac on his arrival yesterday in London: After alighting at Waterloo station, the Toronto Globe and Mail tittered earlier this week, Mr. Chirac was to watch ''Les Mis?©rables,'' the ''musical adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel so disliked by French elites.'' The venue? Windsor Castle's Waterloo Chamber, ''specially built by King George IV as a secular shrine to the defeat of the French, where large portraits of the Duke of Wellington and other British victors will glare down at the French President.''

By a British snub of Jacques Chirac

French President Jacques Chirac


Chirac faces British press criticism for comments during visit
French President Jacques Chirac faced at times scathing criticism from British newspapers for stressing his continued differences with London over Iraq (news - web sites) during a visit to Britain. Chirac had at times adopted ''a manner calculated to embarrass his host'', British Prime Minister Tony Blair The Times newspaper said in an editorial comment.
While Chirac and Blair used a joint press conference on Thursday to make a unified call for stability in Iraq, the French leader also issued an implicit rebuff to both Britain and the United States in a speech earlier in the day.
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Chirac's talk of multipolarism talk was fine, The Times said, but ''it would be useful if he had clarified whether this meant anything more than giving France a bigger megaphone''.
Some of his other comments, which appeared to ridicule the United States, were ''not acceptable'', the right-of-centre paper said.

''His words, as so often, are grandstanding for a European and domestic audience,'' the editorial said, while noting that France is ''more than M. Chirac'' and looking forwards to his possible replacement by French finance minister and presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy.
Britain ''should politely ignore the bad manners of France's president and wish M. Sarkozy godspeed'', The Times said.

The tabloid Sun newspaper was -- as tends to be its way -- considerably more blunt.
Britain's best-selling daily paper, a long-time foe of Chirac which dubbed him ''Le Worm'' for his opposition to the war in Iraq, called France's reverent treatment of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who died last week in a Paris hospital, ''nauseating''.
''So why should we roll out the red carpet for Chirac?'' the paper asked.

''Chirac is a two-faced, double-dealing, arrogant, selfish crook. At least he's going home today.''
The only other newspaper to deal with Chirac's visit in its editorial pages, the left-leaning Guardian, was more polite, saying Chirac had been ''on sparkling form''.
It also stressed the many areas of agreement between London and Paris.
While ''divided on how Europe and an unassailably powerful America can work together, they agree on the urgent need to do more to tackle climate change, African poverty, nuclear proliferation, the Middle East, and the rise of China and India'', it said.



By Chirac faces British press criti

It's impossible to know how

It's impossible to know how you'll react to being shot at until it happens. And when it does happen there is little time for sober reflection on what to do next. There are only the nearly unconscious choices you make from among the conditioned responses instilled in you through training. Where is the threat? Where is my nearest cover? How clear is my shot? But training, no matter how realistic, never quite prepares you for that dreadful moment, that sudden flash in time, when you realize someone is doing his very best to kill...you.
------Under Fire The Marine has earned the benefit of the doubt

I have been blessed in that I was able to avoid the bullets on both occasions when I came under fire, the first coming very early in my police career, the second only months ago. But as I write these words in the comfort and safety of my home I feel my heart begin to race, I feel the hair on my arms rising, I see the images of those moments as though they happened only yesterday. Or this morning. Or even five minutes ago. Neither incident aroused any interest in the press, nor were they even considered noteworthy around the police station after only a few days had passed; most of the people I worked with had had similar or even more harrowing experiences. It's what cops do.

These things take some time to get over, if indeed one ever truly does. In the days that followed both incidents I was not quite the same man I was in the days before. I was more curt with the people I stopped, more wary of their actions. My hand didn't leave the grip of my pistol until I was sure ?— perfectly sure ?— that the person I was dealing with meant me no harm. And yet, even as I relive those moments, even as I ponder what might have been, even as I picture the bullet hole in the police car only inches above my head, I cannot begin to grasp the hell that is the daily life of our Marines now fighting for control of Fallujah.

And now we are deluged with the outraged reactions from ''the Arab street,'' which finds more offense in the death of this terrorist than it does in the execution of Margaret Hassan, a gentle woman who devoted her life to helping Iraq's most desperately needy citizens. This is the same Arab street that says a mosque is desecrated when Americans are shooting into it but not when terrorists are shooting out of it, that images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib are more appalling than those of mass graves, or of innocent civilians being butchered by savages gleeful in the task.

But we expect as much from this Arab street. What is more disconcerting is the reaction of our sophisticated betters in the American media, who, still smarting from the voters' rejection of their candidate, put forth this terrorist's death as a means to discredit the entire war in Iraq. Typical was MSNBC's Chris Matthews, who on Monday's Hardball discussed the mosque incident with retired Army colonel Ken Allard.

''Well, let me ask you this,'' Matthews says. ''If this were the other side, and we were watching an enemy soldier, a rival ?— I mean, they're not bad guys, especially, just people who disagree with us, they are in fact insurgents, fighting in their country ?— if we saw them do what we saw our guy do to that guy, would we consider that worthy of a war crimes charge?''

Not bad guys, especially, just people who disagree with us.

This is repugnant, but it is hardly new. Matthews's moral relativism, indeed his moral inversion, is viewed by the exalted in his profession as the only proper mindset, the one that distinguishes them from the rabble out there in the red-state wasteland between Beverly Hills and the Hudson River.




By how you'll react to being shot