We must never forget who deserves the credit for the freedoms we have, of which we should be
eternally grateful.

I watched the flag pass by one day,
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease..

I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud,
With hair cut square and eyes alert
He’d stand out in any crowd.

I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil
How many mothers’ tears?

How many pilots’ planes shot down?
How many died at sea
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No, freedom isn’t free.

I heard the sound of Taps one night,
When everything was still,
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.

I wondered just how many times
That Taps had meant “Amen,”
When a flag had draped a coffin.
Of a brother or a friend.

I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.

I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No, freedom isn’t free

Here’s a REAL hero, unlike aforementioned douche nozzles.  Lt. Col Ted Lockwood personally helped rescue 14 women from slavery in Iraq and provided them with protection, food, shelter, clothing and used their own money to buy the women personal items at the exchange on the post.

And, like an actual hero, he doesn’t think he did anything special

“I am not interested in any publicity but would really like to raise awareness of the fate of these women and especially the 100+ that are still in Iraq,” Lockwood wrote in an initial email. “I do not need to be a part of your telling.”

Sorry, sir. But you do.

Most people have only a glimmering rememberance that on this day over 160,000 troops, and 5,000 ships were involved in one of the greatest naval invasions of an occupied territory that history has ever seen.  And most people will not remember that by the end of that day 10,000 men were dead or wounded in our first real strike against the greatest evil the world had ever seen.

Unfortunately for America, most of her citizens only know about D-Day from watching “Saving Private Ryan” and I feel sorry for them on that.  They have forgotten the sacrifices that their grandfathers, great-uncles and great-grandmothers made for them so that they could grow up free.  I lost four great uncles to the war, only my grandfather survived.

I salute the men and women that fought for us and protected us throughout the years.  My ancestors who fought in the Revolution, Civil War, Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, and my father who fought in Korea.  All of them answered the call when it went out just as I answered for the Gulf War.  I especially salute the men and women who are out there right now risking their lives to fight an enemy who follows no rules of war, has no compassion for the enemy, and will use anything they can, including children, to kill or maim and cause terror.

God bless you all.

The smackdown is still going on at Quoth the Raven and I urge everyone who appreciates their freedom to take a few minutes and go help kick some terrorist videos off YouTube since YouTube won’t do it themselves.

You can read my original post on it here but what you really need to know is posted below.

1. Create an account on YouTube so that you are able to flag videos for deletion for hate speech and violence
2. Go to the Operation: You Tube Smackdown website to view the list of terrorist videos they have found.
3. Go to the video and mark it as hate speech.
4. Rinse and repeat as often as necessary.

So go and support your freedom

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.  ~Thomas Paine

***Update***

You can also help out by buying some gear at their shop. Go get a couple of dozen shirts or mugs.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki confirmed Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering a controversial plan to make veterans pay for treatment of service-related injuries with private insurance.

Excuse me?? Even for civilians if you are hurt on the job your injuries are covered by workers comp insurance which is mandated by the state and paid for by the employer. Now though Obama wants those who have sacrificed the most to have to pay for their own treatment?  All I have to say to that is FUCK YOU, YOU BASTARD!

Mr. Obama, you and the traitorous bastards that came up with this plan should be ashamed of yourselves, but I’m sure you’re not. As long as you and Michelle have Waygu beef to feast on every night who gives a damn what the plebeians have to say. ‘Let them eat cake’ seems to be the attitude of the Obama administration.

Asked about the proposal, Shinseki said it was under “consideration.”

“A final decision hasn’t been made yet,” he said.

Currently, veterans’ private insurance is charged only when they receive health care from the VA for medical issues that are not related to service injuries, like getting the flu.

A ‘final decision hasn’t been made yet’??? Are you saying that you assholes have to think about this for even one moment?

At the time, a White House spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the option was being considered.

What the hell, Barry? Thought you were going to be all ‘open and honest’ you lying piece of crap!?

Do you really think the American people are so stupid that we will let you ruin this country without raising our voices up and DEMANDING to be heard? Do you think the military will be your whipping boy and there won’t be any fallout at all from this?

You blow OUR money on a BS”stimulus” plan which is really just political payback to ACORN and all your Democrat friends raiding the piggy bank and then decide to cut money from the military.  Why would you do that, Barrry?  Is it because the majority of the military voted for McCain rather than a coke-head, terrorist sympathizer, Marxist like you?

Enjoy your time as President, Barry. Because if the Dems don’t pull you back to reality soon, this term will be the only time you see the oval office and you and the rest of your party will be sent packing.

H/T to MuscleDaddy
**UPDATE**

Oh, and as MuscleDaddy pointed out, it’s SO undcided that it’s already a part of Obama’s budget.  Fuck getting along, fuck compromising and fuck the Democrats.   I say that the real conservatives be as obstructionist to this bullshit as possible.

I hope they do everything in their power to gridlock Congresss, and I dearly hope that Michael Steel, who is supposed to represent US and not somekind of bi-partisan BS love fest, pulls his head out and starts to fight.  I truly feel that we either fight them in Congress or we will be fighting them in the streets.

As Uncle Jimbo said; War’s don’t end, they are either won or lost.  So why the hell can’t Europe seem to understand that?

Poland pledges to capture and “punish” the Taliban militants who beheaded a Polish engineer in Pakistan on Friday before delivering a video of the attack to the media, the Times of London reports.

“The cassette of the execution, this bestial execution, is authentic and unfortunately it confirms the worst,” Sikorski reportedly said in a statement. “Now we can no longer save our compatriot, we are going to try to punish his killers.”

Sikorski promised to issue international arrest warrants for the Taliban militants, and officials charged that elements within the Pakistani government shared blame for the killing.

Punish?? No. How about ‘decimate’, how about ‘exterminate’, how about ‘kill’?

These are not criminals that can be arrested, then put on trial and locked up for a few years and then, gee, they are reformed.  These people worship death, to them every road leads to death no matter what.  They blow themselves up and they are martyrs, if they are shamed then blowing themselves up will erase the shame and make them martyrs.

So why are people still talking about arresting and ‘bringing them to justice’? Kill them and be done with it for once.  IF they want death so badly I think that is one thing we should accommodate them on.

A WOMAN suspected of recruiting more than 80 female suicide bombers has confessed to organising their rapes so she could later convince them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

This goes hand in hand with this

Islamic terrorists are raping young men in order to drive them into suicide bombings.

The Sun quotes Algerian militant Abu Baçir El Assimi:

“The sexual act on young recruits aged between 16 to 19 was a means to urge them to commit suicide operations.”

The paper claims that “intense social stigma and fear of more gay sex attacks leaves Muslims prepared to die.”

But who are we to judge their culture, right?  All I hear is that we need to ‘understand’ and, according to Obama, we need to “listen more”.  Well, maybe if we listen hard enough we can hear the girls and boys of this twisted ‘culture’ begging their attackers not to rape them.

Hunt them down and kill them like the animals they truly are.

The first parts of the world that I saw was San Diego CA (boot camp), Millington TN (A school) and then LeMoore CA (Duty Station).  When I hit Lemoore I was assigned to VA-147, the Argonauts.  They had just come off a cruise when I got there so it was over a year before we went on another one.

We headed out to Fallon a few times to do training during that first year which was a lot more dirt and dust, something that I had grown up with, so I wasn’t to impressed by it all. I wanted the ocean!  I wanted to see the WORLD!  Not more dirt, scrub brush and sandstorms.  Finally though we were packing up to go on our first training cruise and we were heading back to San Diego to meet our ship – the Kittyhawk.

When we reached the pier that Kitty was tied up at I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.  She was big, grey and beautiful.  I remember wondering how I was going to keep from getting lost on something that big.  Walking through the hangers was like walking through our hangars back home, they were HUGE to me.  Combine that with the smell of the salt water and the sound of seagulls, and this desert rat was ready to go!  The sea was calling and I wanted to answer it!!

During one of our training exercises we provided security for a missile test by keeping ships out of the launch area and making sure it was clear.  I remember being up on the flight deck when the missile burst from the ocean waves.  It was like a white hot star leaping for the sky.  I learned later that the glow of it was seen all the way into Arizona and people had called in to report a UFO.

It was on Kittyhawk that I first saw the world.  My first cruise on her was also, sadly, my last.  We took her around the world from San Diego to Philadelphia and back to the port that she originally sailed from for an overhaul.

In the Philippines  I learned to always keep my wits about me, no matter how friendly the company.  Some pickpockets are very, very good at serving beer.  From there is was on to the Indian Ocean and Karachi Pakistan where I found out that you can get some very nice boots for a very good price if you are willing to haggle over it.  Pattaya Beach Thailand I learned that sometimes you should go ahead and catch that boat back to your berth and not wait for the next one to come it.

Italy was my first taste of Europe, and a welcome one it was after traveling at a snails pace through the Suez canal.  The canal was so narrow for a ship our size that I still swear that if I had jumped off either side of the flight deck I would have landed on sand.  That was probably the tensest moment for us during the cruise, we were helpless.  A carrier relies on it’s air-wing for defense and going through the canal there was no way for us to launch anything.  We were essentially sitting ducks.

After Italy we stopped in France and after that Rota Spain which was probably my favorite stop on the whole cruise.  There was a shop in Rota, a smoke shop, and the owner was an old man who had behind the counter a display of every American military zippo lighter that he had collected over the years.  He had over 25 different ships in his collection, he thanked us for our service and told us he was a child during WWII and he never forgot what we Americans did.  I was glad to add a Kittyhawk lighter to his collection.

Miss Kitty helped this young boy become a young man.  I saw places that I will never see again, some good and some bad but all of them incredible in their own way.  Now we say goodby to Miss Kitty, sometimes called the Shitty Kitty, god bless that wonderful ship and all the men and women who served on her.

God bless the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines.  I will say again that I wish we had finished this the first time we were over there, when I was in the Navy, so that you wouldn’t have to deal with it now. Thank you for picking it up and carrying on.

h/t BLACKFIVE