Out of Whack

I have been feeling like crap since last week with a horrible bout of my semi annual Bronchitis infliction so forgive me if I haven't blogged much. I do, however, want to call attention to some news that probably won't gain much attention since it has to do with dead American Soldiers and not dead insurgents. The Department of Defense shortcut on my desktop had the story. Opinion Nation also had a good write up.

Four days ago a soldier was killed and two were snatched from a checkpoint near the Euphrates River. Regrettably, they were found today sans head. Of course, it's not enough for our adversaries to kill our soldiers in the name of their peaceful religion but they do everything in their power to ensure more soldiers are killed as they go to recover their fallen comrades:

"They waited until daylight to bring in the explosive ordnance detachment to pick up what we believe are our two soldiers," he said. "There were IEDs in that location and we did have to dismantle some stuff to get to (the bodies)."

Bastards.

Because the military refuses to abandon its own, a concept many civilians could take note of, a massive search for the two soldiers was launched.

More than 8,000 coalition and Iraqi soldiers and police participated in the search for the missing Americans.
U.S. Navy and Air Force fighter-attack jets; E-8 Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or JSTARS, aircraft; and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles helped in the search. In addition, dive teams and "national assets of varying types" supported the effort, Caldwell said.

There is no distinction between services when a military member is missing. The Navy and Air Force helped out because those fallen soldiers were Americans. Hell, the Navy doesn't make distinctions even when it comes to fallen submariners of another country. When K-141, also known as the Kursk, sank in August of 2000 message boards and newspapers were flooded with sympathy from U.S. submariners. I remember shedding a tear when I learned of the accident.

My many years as a submariner forced me to accept the reality that our escape procedures were a false comfort, like the false comfort people had when they voted for Kerry, and it would be no different for the 118 sailors on the Kursk. Bubbleheads work in an unforgiving environment surrounded by an ocean that is constantly trying to penetrate our submarine hull but we know there is nothing romantic about being on eternal patrol. To me, those Ruskies were stillbrothers in arms even after the 50+ years of the unseen cat and mouse games our submarines played.

This is also the reason Iraqi nationals helped look for our soldiers.

So while Murtha and his followers are criticizing Gitmo and the white collar criminal treatment the inmates receive not one mention of the treatment our boys and girls get when captured by jihadist militants makes it to the news.

I say shut Gitmo down. Let our foreign friends take the captured insurgents then maybe they will get what is coming to them. I would love to ship the Gitmo terrorist detainees to a Turkish prison.