President Barack Obama and Army Assistant Judge Advocate Maj. Gen. Daniel Wright salute as an Army carry team transports the case containing the remains of Sgt. Dale R. Griffin of Terre Haute, Ind., at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Del.

Editorial

The Commander's Duty Done

In his midnight mission to honor the returning war dead, President Obama did more than personally extend the nation’s condolences to grieving families gathered at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Without uttering a public word, Mr. Obama erased President George W. Bush’s shameful attempts to hide the pain of war from Americans and to shield himself from paying public tribute to the thousands who died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The long-overdue display of national gratitude and regret by the commander in chief rekindled a note of most solemn ritual that the country owes sons and daughters in uniform sacrificed in war. The president was restoring a post-Vietnam tradition that included the graphic embraces and wrenching words personally extended by President Ronald Reagan to the families of the 241 soldiers, sailors and Marines who perished 26 years ago in the bombing of the Marines' camp in Lebanon.

The Bush policy was to prohibit any news media coverage of the returning war dead and to never show the president within a camera-lens' length of the dolorous homecomings. Under Mr. Obama, the Pentagon reversed the no-coverage policy in February. On Thursday, the president himself took the necessary next step.

He silently saluted in the morning darkness as the remains of 18 Americans killed this week in Afghanistan were transferred from a military transport. He spent close to two hours talking in private with stricken families. One of them gave approval for the news media to show the nation its loved one's arrival before the president and assembled officers. Within minutes, of course, bloggers were reacting. Some were grateful. Others denounced Mr. Obama for photo-op exploitation even as they demanded he hurry up and decide whether to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan.

The true cost of war must never be denied by the nation or its leader. Mr. Obama's visit was entirely appropriate as he faces the decision of what comes next in Afghanistan. The pity is President Bush never dared as much.

More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on October 30, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.
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Obama calls Dover visit a 'sobering reminder' - White House ...

President Barack Obama says the sight of 18 cases holding the remains of Americans killed in Afghanistan can't help but influence his thinking about sending more ...

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33526742/ns/politics-white_house
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Think about it, Mr. President. Bring the rest home while alive and well and don't send any more over there.

Labels: honors afghani war dead, obama meets

# posted by Worried American @ 11/02/2009 11:37:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

....................................................."WHAT WAR??"

from a comment:

Very good and to the point. Here is a basic reality of our understanding of th war in Afghanistan stated in a picture. Thanks.

Labels: what war cartoon

# posted by Worried American @ 11/02/2009 02:19:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post


NEWS	CELEBRITY	TRAVEL	ANIMALS	SPORTS

Guantanamo Bay: 10.28.2009

http://www.life.com/image/92477239/in-gallery/35732


	Guantanamo Bay: 10.28.2009


	Copyright © 2009 See The World, LLC. All rights reserved \| About Us \| Privacy Policy

Labels: Gitmo - 7 years

# posted by Worried American @ 10/30/2009 11:36:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Wednesday, Oct 21, 2009 18:22 PDT

Why are we still in Afghanistan?

The country poses no threat to the U.S., but the war costs lives, drains the treasury and makes enemies

By Gene Lyons

Reuters/Asmaa Waguih

U.S. marines fire during a Taliban ambush as they carry out an operation to clear an area in Helmand province, October 9, 2009.

One of the enduring oddities of the American foreign policy debate is that asking the most obvious questions is all but forbidden. For example, how does Afghanistan pose a threat to the United States?

Certainly not in any military sense. The impoverished, largely illiterate Afghans have no army apart from the one U.S. and NATO forces, with very limited success, are trying to train. No air force, no navy, no offensive military capacity whatsoever.

From the U.S. perspective, Afghanistan is the absolute end of the earth. Indeed, it's not a nation at all. The idea that well-intentioned Westerners can create an efficient central government on, say, the Swiss model, where none has ever existed, much less one acceptable to Afghanistan's many warring tribes, sects and ethnic factions, is almost certainly a delusion.

Here's the reality, as explained by a theater manager in somewhat Westernized Kabul to the New York Times: "The Afghan people are not mentally united ... An Uzbek will never vote for a Tajik. A Tajik will never vote for a Pashtun." The prevailing view, reporter Sabrina Tavernise found, appears to be that President Hamid Karzai's recent election victory was both fraudulent and inevitable.

Almost nobody believes a recount would solve anything. "Even if every Afghan casts their vote for (runner-up) (Abdullah) Abdullah, he won't be president because the foreigners don't want him to be," another man told her. "Nobody respected the people's vote."

Afghans see the Karzai government as organized thievery with a Pashtun accent. Period. Thus while veteran Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland is likely correct that President Obama's seeming indecision about sending 40,000 more American soldiers there is actually a squeeze play to pressure "Karzai into sharing power with more honest, competent Afghans," it's also apt to show more illusory than real results.

Granted, Obama's current dilemma is yet another fine mess bequeathed to him by the epic incompetence of George W. Bush. But it's a political rather than a military threat Obama faces. Terrorists can't defeat the United States; they can only cause American politicians to self-destruct in fear of taking blame for future atrocities.

Had the United States and its allies not diverted manpower and resources from Afghanistan to a futile, unnecessary war in Iraq, the counterinsurgency techniques proposed by Gen. Stanley McChrystal to persuade Taliban fighters to put down their weapons might have worked.

Eight bloody years on, however, what motivates the insurgency has been captured in an extraordinary series by David Rohde, the New York Times reporter rescued after seven months as a Taliban prisoner.

While his "captors harbored many delusions about Westerners," Rohde writes, U.S. antiterrorist policies had galvanized them. "They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges."

Rohde witnessed Taliban militants weeping over a NATO airstrike that killed scores of Afghan women and children. "To Americans," he writes "these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law.

"When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?"

And yet they did. Because his kidnappers saw Rohde as a valuable commodity, he was housed comfortably, provided with toiletries, fresh food and water, newspapers and a short-wave radio. While often threatened, Rohde was never tortured; his captors even took him to a remote spot in the mountains to shoot a video making his plight appear worse than it was.

Although it infuriates some Americans to hear that "terrorists" have recognizable human motives, understanding them is also crucial to what Gen. McChrystal hopes to achieve there: separating ethnic Pashtun insurgents from al-Qaida fanatics by offering what his report calls "reasonable incentives to stop fighting and return to normalcy, possibly including the provision of employment and protection."

U.S. intelligence officers have told the Boston Globe that an estimated "Ninety percent (of Afghan fighters constitute) a tribal, localized insurgency ... Ten percent are hardcore ideologues fighting for the Taliban."

And what if a U.S. president recognized that destroying mud villages and killing children in distant Afghanistan isn't making America safer? That endless war creates endless enemies? What if he showed enough political courage to say that 100 percent security from terrorism isn't possible? That the mad, quixotic attempt to achieve it is sacrificing the lives of our best and bravest while it bankrupts the treasury?

Who in the world would be angry with him except the Washington war lobby and Osama bin Laden?

Labels: why are we in afghanistan

# posted by Worried American @ 10/30/2009 11:10:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091027/us_time/08599193238600

Why Flying Helicopters in Afghanistan Is So Deadly

Reuters – U.S. military personnel watches as a U.S. helicopter flies over a military base in Ghazni province Ocotober …

By MARK THOMPSON / WASHINGTON Mark Thompson / Washington – Tue Oct 27, 11:05 am ET

The 14 Americans who died in Afghanistan on Monday were a reminder that U.S. troops who die in Afghanistan are twice as likely to be killed in helicopter crashes as are their counterparts in Iraq. And the reasons for that discrepancy are not to be found in the country's skies, but on the ground - the Taliban's growing footprint has forced the U.S. to be far more reliant on moving troops and supplies by air. And the rugged terrain often makes helicopters the only option, even as the altitudes involved greatly increase the risks.

Afghanistan's few roads are now increasingly monitored - and mined - by insurgents, meaning that many of the 180 U.S. outposts spread across the country can now only be reached by helicopters. "We don't have freedom of movement on the ground," a senior Army logistics officer says. "We're resupplying between 30% and 40% of our forward operating bases by air because we just can't get to them on the ground." (See pictures of a U.S. Marine offensive in Afghanistan.)

That forces the U.S. military to rely on helicopters, not only to reach remote outposts, but also to carry out dangerous combat missions that thinly spread troops couldn't do without the helicopter's ability to hopscotch hundreds of miles. It was precisely such an antidrug mission that a twin-rotor Army MH-47 Chinook was flying when it went down in western Afghanistan, killing 10 Americans including three civilians with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Earlier in the day, a Marine UH-1 Huey troop helicopter collided in midair with an A-1 Cobra helicopter gunship over southern Helmand province, killing four. U.S. officials said they don't believe hostile fire caused either crash. The death toll could rise because some of the 28 people left injured by the crashes are in critical condition.

"Helicopters are not shot down in battle very much in either place [Iraq or Afghanistan]," says Brookings Institution defense analyst Michael O'Hanlon. He and his colleagues are keeping running tallies of U.S. fatalities in both theaters. While 5% of U.S. deaths in Iraq have been caused by helicopter crashes - 216 out of 4,348 - the total is 12% in Afghanistan - 101 of 866 - even before Monday's losses. "The main issues [responsible for the higher rate of helicopter-crash casualties in Afghanistan] have to do with terrain, weather and of course frequency of use," O'Hanlon says. (See pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley.)

The U.S. has over the past year doubled its number of helicopters based in Afghanistan to about 225, but troop numbers have risen even faster, making for a more acute chopper shortage. Helicopters are swift but delicate machines. The physics of flight make them inherently unstable, and therefore less reliable, than fixed-wing aircraft which generate their lift from stationary wings instead of egg-beater-like rotor blades. More critically, chopper pilots are commonly expected to fly in hot weather at high altitudes, where less-dense air offers them less control over their aircraft.

Air Force Captain Matthew Miller wrote about the challenges of flying in Afghanistan after returning from a four-month deployment there in 2007. His medevac unit, from Georgia's Moody Air Force Base, had lost three helicopters and seven crew members in the two wars. Enemy fire had been a factor in none of the Afghan crashes. "In Iraq, helicopter pilots face a greater prospect of being shot at by ground fire," Miller wrote. "In Afghanistan, the greatest threat is the terrain." He described flying in Afghanistan as "'graduate level' piloting more challenging than cruising over the flatlands of Iraq. "It didn't take long to feel the perils of mountainous flying in Afghanistan," he added. "Between Iraq and Afghanistan, most helicopter pilots I've spoken to consider Afghanistan the more dangerous place to fly."

More...

Read "Moving Troops to Afghanistan Harder Than Getting Them."

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

View this article on Time.com

Also Moving From Iraq to Afghanistan: Blood Platelets

By Mark Thompson / Washington Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

A medevac crew cares for an injured soldier in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

Patrick Barth / Corbis

President Obama will meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff Friday to debate the wisdom of sending up to 40,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. The meeting comes as the deadliest month for U.S. troops in eight years of war draws to a close — a spike in casualties that has already triggered a flow of precious reinforcements. The U.S. military has begun for the first time transferring from Iraq to Afghanistan pint-sized bags of platelets — the key blood component that encourages clotting and can prevent wounded soldiers from bleeding to death.

More Related

U.S. forces in Iraq needed the life-saving elixir far more than those in Afghanistan until fairly recently. Back in October 2006, 106 U.S. troops died there compared with 10 in Afghanistan. Three years later, those numbers have flipped: 56 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month, compared with six in Iraq. On Thursday, President Obama called his visit to Delaware's Dover Air Force Base in the wee hours to witness the return of 18 U.S. troops killed in the Afghan war "a sobering reminder of the extraordinary sacrifices that our young men and women in uniform are engaging in every single day." (See pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley.)

But despite the grim tableau witnessed by Obama, it could have been worse. A 2008 Army book on combat surgery in Iraq and Afghanistan says the "recent (limited) theater availability of ... platelets" is a key reason for a significant reduction in fatal bleeding. Wounds that cause such hemorrhages are "the most preventable cause of death on the battlefield," it says, adding that pumping platelets into a wounded soldier is better than using whole blood. (See the top 10 medical breakthroughs.)

Platelets — the "body's own Band-Aid" — circulate along the smooth walls of blood vessels, seeking telltale signs of a leak. Once detected, the colorless, irregularly-shaped platelets stick to the rupture's edge and attract fellow platelets to join it in a clump and begin the process of sealing the wound. "We noticed an increase in the survival rate compared to when we were using whole blood," Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Jordan, who oversees platelet collection in Balad, Iraq, told a military interviewer in August. "They serve as the main factor in stopping bleeding and are used in any situation in which there is excessive blood loss."

Beginning in 2006, U.S. troops have been donating about 60 bags a week of platelets at the Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad, sitting back and watching a movie as an IV siphons the donor's blood through a centrifuge, where the platelets are separated out before the blood is returned to the donor. Soldiers can volunteer for the two-hour procedure twice a month. But platelets' life-saving properties don't last long — there is no way to preserve them, and the cloudy, yellow liquid containing them typically has to be discarded a week after it is drawn. Their short shelf-life outside the body means that the platelets have to be drawn close to the front lines.

As the Iraq war has wound down, a growing share of the platelet supply was going to waste, and on Oct. 14 the first batch was sent the more than 1,000 miles from Balad to a U.S. military hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Pentagon officials say it makes more sense to tap into the existing setup in Iraq for platelets than to try to establish a similar pipeline in Afghanistan.

See pictures of the surge in Iraq.

Labels: blood platelets to Afghanistan

# posted by Worried American @ 10/30/2009 10:05:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

deadly -afghanistan

Deadly days for US troops in Afghanistan

Shops burn following a deadly car bomb blast in Peshawar. A huge car bomb has ripped through a crowded market in Pakistan killing 92 people and underscoring the gravity of the extremist threat destabilising the nuclear-armed Muslim state.

(AFP/A Majeed

Labels: deadly afghanistan

# posted by Worried American @ 10/30/2009 09:33:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Obama says he will not rush Afghanistan decision

By CHARLES BABINGTON and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Press Writers Charles Babington And Anne Gearan, Associated Press Writers – Tue Oct 27, 2:33 pm ET

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Despite Republican pressure to act quickly, President Barack Obama says he won't rush his decision about whether to send more troops to Afghanistan where 14 Americans died in the deadliest day for U.S. forces in more than four years.

"While I will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests, I also promise you this — and this is very important as we consider our next steps in Afghanistan: I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way," Obama said Monday during a visit to Naval Air Station Jacksonville. "I won't risk your lives unless it is absolutely necessary."

Obama spoke on a day when a U.S. military helicopter crashed while returning from the scene of a fire fight with suspected Taliban drug traffickers in western Afghanistan. Ten Americans, including three Drug Enforcement Administration agents, died in the crash. Four more troops were killed when two helicopters collided over southern Afghanistan.

It was the heaviest single-day loss of life since June 28, 2005, when 19 U.S. troops died, 16 of them aboard a Special Forces MH-47 Chinook helicopter that was shot down by insurgents.

Obama is nearing a decision on whether to commit large numbers of additional troops to the war next year. His top military commander in Afghanistan favors an increase of roughly 40,000, officials have told The Associated Press, which would allow the U.S. military to expand its reach in areas of the country's south and east now under Taliban sway.

Obama's visit to the naval air station came after he convened another in a series of White House war council sessions with about a half-dozen Cabinet officials and other top advisers earlier Monday in Washington amid Republican criticism that he is taking too long to choose his next move. The White House Situation Room session focused on the cooperation between U.S. military and civilian efforts in Afghanistan, White House officials said. Another session may be held later this week.

Obama did not tip his hand on how he might decide. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that a decision was still expected in the coming weeks.

A war plan that asks Obama to commit tens of thousands of additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan is too ambitious, a top Senate Democrat said in Washington on Monday.

Sen. John Kerry, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman who was the White House's point man during last week's tense talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, praised commanding Gen. Stanley McChrystal but said his plan for adding troops in Afghanistan "goes too far, too fast."

Kerry's stance would aim for a modest increase in American forces, treading middle ground between Republicans who have said Obama would put soldiers and the country at risk by rejecting McChrystal's larger request and anti-war Democrats who question whether the United States already has taken on too much in Afghanistan.

"Under the right circumstances, if we can be confident that military efforts can be sustained and built upon, then I would support the president should he decide to send some additional troops to regain the initiative," Kerry, D-Mass., said.

Fresh from several days of talks in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, Kerry warned that the United States also cannot risk a drastic shift in strategy that would focus narrowly on hunting terrorists.

"We all see the appeal of a limited counterterrorism mission, and no doubt it is part of the endgame, but I don't think we're there yet," Kerry said during remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations. "A narrow mission that cedes half the country to the Taliban could lead to civil war" in Afghanistan and threaten the fragile civilian government in Pakistan, he said.

Last week, former Vice President Dick Cheney said Obama should stop "dithering while America's armed forces are in danger."

"It's time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity," Cheney said.

___

Gearan reported from Washington. AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

Labels: obama won't rush afghanistan decision

# posted by Worried American @ 10/27/2009 07:15:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Video - Decorated marine, now diplomat, resigns in protest ot Afghani war. Says Americans are not being told truth.

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/?cl=16315060

VideoEx-Marine turned diplomat resigns in protest over Afghanistan war

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October deadliest month for US in Afghanistan

AP – Afghan National Army soldiers gather as they prepare to go on patrol in the Pech Valley of Afghanistan's …

By TODD PITMAN and HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press Writers Todd Pitman And Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writers – 26 mins ago

KABUL – Roadside bombs — the biggest killer of U.S. soldiers — claimed eight more American lives Tuesday, driving the U.S. death toll to a record level for the third time in four months as President Barack Obama nears a decision on a new strategy for the troubled war.

The homemade bombs, also called improvised explosive devices or IEDs, are responsible for between 70 percent and 80 percent of the casualties among U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan and have become a weapon of "strategic influence," said Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz in Washington.

The attacks Tuesday followed one of the deadliest days for the U.S. military operation in Afghanistan — grim milestones likely to fuel the debate in the United States over whether the conflict is worth the sacrifice.

Obama has nearly finished gathering information on whether to send tens of thousands more American forces to quell the deepening insurgency, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said. A meeting Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be among the last events in the decision-making process, Gibbs said.

Both attacks Tuesday took place in the southern province of Kandahar, said Capt. Adam Weece, a spokesman for American forces in the south. The region bordering the Pakistan frontier has long been an insurgent stronghold and was the birthplace of the Taliban in the 1990s.

The Americans were patrolling in armored vehicles when a bomb ripped through one of them, killing seven service members and an Afghan civilian, U.S. forces spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said.

The eighth American died in a separate bombing elsewhere in the south, also while patrolling in a military vehicle, Vician said.

The number of effective IED attacks in Afghanistan has grown from 19 in September 2007 to 106 last month.

"It's a weapon system that the enemy has figured out has strategic impact," said Metz, who leads the U.S. military organization tasked with defeating improvised explosive devices. "It really hampers our ability to execute a counterinsurgency doctrine. And it's a weapon system that has to be fought, and I don't think we can back off or shy away from fighting it."

Nine coalition forces were killed and 37 were wounded by IEDs in Afghanistan in September 2007. In September 2009, 37 coalition forces were killed and 285 were wounded by IEDs, according to the figures.

Several other Americans were wounded in the Tuesday blasts. The military said the deaths occurred during "multiple, complex" bomb strikes, but gave no details.

"Complex" attacks usually refer to simultaneous assaults from multiple sides with various weapons — including bombs, machine guns and grenades or rockets.

In Washington, a U.S. defense official said at least one of the attacks was followed by an intense firefight with insurgents after an initial bomb went off. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information.

The casualties bring to 55 the total number of Americans killed in October in Afghanistan. The next highest toll was in August, when 51 U.S. soldiers died and the troubled nation held the first round of its presidential election amid a wave of violence.

By comparison, the deadliest month of the Iraq conflict for U.S. forces was November 2004, when 137 Americans died during a major assault to clear insurgents from the city of Fallujah.

"A loss like this is extremely difficult for the families as well as for those who served alongside these brave service members," said Navy Capt. Jane Campbell, a military spokeswoman. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends who mourn their loss."

The deaths came one day after 11 American soldiers were killed in separate helicopter crashes, marking the biggest loss of American life on a single day in four years.

One chopper went down in western Afghanistan as it left the scene of a gunbattle with insurgents. Seven soldiers were killed along with three Drug Enforcement Administration agents — the agency's first deaths since it began operations here in 2005. Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium and the trade is a major source of funding for insurgent groups.

Two other U.S. choppers collided while in flight in the south Monday, killing four Americans.

Casualties swelled at the start of the month when eight U.S. soldiers were killed Oct. 3. Several hundred militants had launched a coordinated attack on a pair of remote U.S. outposts in mountainous Nuristan province's Kamdesh district. U.S. troops pulled out days later as part a new strategy by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to shut down difficult-to-defend posts and redirect forces toward larger population areas to protect more civilians.

Also Tuesday, NATO-led forces announced they had recovered the remains of three American military contractors from the wreckage of a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane that crashed two weeks ago in Nuristan.

The trio was employed under a Lockheed Martin contract for "counter-narcoterrorism" operations, said Thomas Casey, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin Corp. He said the pilot and co-pilot worked for a company called Avenge Inc., while the technician was employed by a contractor called Sierra Nevada Corp.

The Army C-12 Huron twin-engine turboprop went down Oct. 13 while on a routine mission. The military likely delayed announcing the crash site's location because it did not want to tip off insurgents. Nuristan is believed to be crawling with anti-American militants.

U.S. forces spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the crew were the only ones aboard when the craft went down without giving off any distress signal. "We just lost contact," Shanks told The Associated Press.

NATO it was investigating the crash and did not believe hostile fire was involved.

The military also said a UH-60 helicopter traveling to the crash site four days later "experienced a strong downdraft and performed a hard landing" nearby. The helicopter's crew members were rescued, and the chopper was stripped of sensitive and useable parts and destroyed to keep insurgents from salvaging anything in the wreckage.

___

Associated Press writers Heidi Vogt and Robert H. Reid in Kabul and Pauline Jelinek and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

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Labels: afghanistan war update

# posted by Worried American @ 10/27/2009 06:34:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

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Honor Flight For WWII Vets;

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Labels: normandy_WWII -Capa's pics

# posted by Worried American @ 10/27/2009 05:52:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,45950304001_1931954,00.html

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Labels: afghanistan - videos

# posted by Worried American @ 10/27/2009 05:19:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

heroes - afghanistan- video

Yahoo! Yahoo archives videos rapidly. Won't be able to view it long.

http://cosmos.bcst.yahoo.com/up/player/popup/index.php?cl=15947682

Labels: afghan-vid

# posted by Worried American @ 10/25/2009 11:51:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

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Labels: pics-military

# posted by Worried American @ 10/16/2009 10:28:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

1/2 Boy All man

The average age of the military man is 19 years.
He is a short haired, tight-muscled kid who,
under normal circumstances is considered by
society as half man, half boy. Not yet dry behind
the ears, not old enough to buy a beer, but old
enough to die for his country. He never really
cared much for work and he would rather wax
his own car than wash his father's, but he has
never collected unemployment either.

He's a recent High School graduate; he was probably an average student, pursued some form of sport
activities, drives a ten year old jalopy, and has a
steady girlfriend that either broke up with him when
he left, or swears to be waiting when he returns from half a world away. He listens to rock and roll or hip-hop or rap or jazz or swing and a 155mm howitzer.

He is 10 or 15 pounds lighter now than when he
was at home because he is working or fighting
from before dawn to well after dusk. He has
trouble spelling, thus letter writing is a pain for him,
but he can field strip a rifle in 30 seconds and
reassemble it in less time in the dark. He can recite
to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively if he must.

He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional. He has few comforts and will sleep where ever he can, when he can.

He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march.

He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation,
but he is not without spirit or individual dignity.
He is self-sufficient.

He has two sets of fatigues: he washes one and wears the other. He keeps his canteens full and his feet dry.

He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never
to clean his rifle. He can cook his own meals, mend
his own clothes, and fix his own hurts.

If you're thirsty, he'll share his water with you; if you
are hungry,his food.

Sharing his MRE with an Iraqi child.
He'll even split his ammunition
with you in the midst of battle when you run low.

He has learned to use his hands like weapons
and weapons like they were his hands.

He can save your life - or take it, because that is his job.

He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all.

He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime.

He has wept in public and in private, for friends
who have fallen in combat and is unashamed..

He feels every note of the
National Anthem
vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to 'square-away ' those around him who haven't bothered to stand,
remove their hat, or even stop talking.

In an odd twist, day in and day out, far from
home, he defends their right to be disrespectful..

Just as did his Father, Grandfather, and Great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy.

He is the American Fighting Man that has kept this country free for over 200 years.
Veterans Day 2004 - World War II veteran and Pearl Harbor survivor, Houston James, emotionally embracing Iraq War veteran, Marine Sgt. Mark Graunke, Jr., who lost a hand, leg, and eye when defusing a bomb in 2003.
He has asked nothing in return, except our friendship and understanding.
Remember him, always, for he has earned our respect and admiration with his blood.
Comrades aid and encourage their wounded brother spilling his blood into the rocky soil of a foreign land.
And now we even have women over there in
danger, doing their part in this tradition of going to War when our nation calls us to do so.

As you go to bed tonight, remember this shot. .
A short lull, a little shade and a picture of loved ones in their helmets.

Prayer wheel for our military...

Prayer Wheel
Uplift our troops in loving care and prayers. Ask that they be protected as they protect us.
Bless them and their families for the selfless acts they perform for us in our time of need.

When you receive this, please stop for a moment and
say a prayer or offer positive thoughts for our ground troops in Afghanistan , sailors on ships, and airmen in the air, and for those in Iraq , Afghanistan and all foreign countries.
Memorial Day - In Honor from Ava Lowrey on Vimeo.
This video is several years old but just as pertinent today. Only the casualty numbers in recent wars continue to escalate.

Of all the gifts you could give a US Soldier,
Sailor, Coast Guardsman, Marine, Airman, or National Guardsman, prayer, support, and honor is the very best ones.

Labels: all man, half boy

# posted by Worried American @ 10/14/2009 08:18:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

afghanistan

8 Fort Carson soldiers killed in battle in Afghanistan

Hundreds attacked two remote outposts

Denver Post staff and wire reports

Posted: 10/05/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Jordan Christie takes aim during a battle Sunday with members of the Taliban in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. ( Brennan Linsley, The Associated Press )

Eight soldiers from Fort Carson's 4th Brigade Combat Team died in Afghanistan when insurgents attacked a pair of remote outposts in Nuristan province, two Colorado Springs media outlets reported Sunday.

The Army hasn't identified the dead, but the Colorado Springs Gazette and KOAA-TV said military sources confirmed that all eight were from the 4th Infantry Division's 4th Brigade, which went to war in May.

Fort Carson spokesmen would not confirm the reports Sunday until they heard from the Department of Defense. DOD Maj. Shawn Turner said he could not speak until the next of kin of the eight dead soldiers had been notified.

The post had lost 270 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan before Saturday's deaths. Since the Afghanistan war began in 2001, the post's highest number of casualties in a single incident was five, a total reached in three Iraq bombings — one in 2007 and two in 2008.

U.S. military officials said Sunday that the day-long battle near the Pakistan border, in which the eight U.S. soldiers were killed as hundreds of insurgents stormed a pair of remote outposts, is likely to fuel the debate in Washington over the direction of the troubled eight-year war effort.

The insurgents were armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades during the fierce gunbattle Saturday in the Kamdesh district of Afghanistan's mountainous Nuristan province. It was the heaviest U.S. loss of life in a single battle since July 2008, when nine American soldiers were killed in a raid on an outpost in the same province.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, plans to shift U.S. troops away from remote outposts that are difficult to defend and move them into more heavily populated areas as part of his new strategy to focus on protecting Afghan civilians.

U.S. troops used artillery, helicopter gunships and airstrikes to repel the attackers, inflicting "heavy enemy casualties," according to a NATO statement. Fighting persisted in the area Sunday, U.S. and Afghan officials said.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, a spokesman for NATO, said the assailants included a mix of "tribal militias," Taliban and fighters loyal to Sirajudin Haqqani, an al-Qaeda-linked militant based in sanctuaries in the tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border.

Afghan authorities said the hostile force included fighters who had been driven out of the Swat Valley of neighboring Pakistan after a Pakistani military offensive there last spring.

"This was a complex attack in a difficult area," U.S. Col. Randy George, the area commander, said in a statement. "Both the U.S. and Afghan soldiers fought bravely together."

Details of the attack remained unclear Sunday, and there were conflicting reports of Afghan losses because of poor communications in the area, 20 miles from the Pakistani border and about 150 miles from Kabul.

A NATO statement said the attacks were launched from a mosque and a nearby village on opposite sides of a hill, which included the two outposts — one mostly American position on the summit and another mostly Afghan police garrison on a lower slope.

Denver Post staff writer Tom McGhee and Associated Press writers Rahim Faiez and Lori Hinnant in Kabul and Noor Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

Labels: 8 dead-afghanistan combat

# posted by Worried American @ 10/06/2009 12:33:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090930/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_iraq

send home 4,000 more troops from Iraq -how many to be shuttled to Afghanistan??

Top US general in Iraq calls it a key partner

By LARA JAKES, Associated Press Writer Lara Jakes, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 30, 12:40 pm ET

WASHINGTON – The top American commander in Iraq on Wednesday warned Congress against losing sight of that nation as a key Mideast ally, even as safer conditions have let him send home more U.S. troops faster than expected.

Army Gen. Ray Odierno did not directly address the impact that the war in Afghanistan is having on his mission as he makes sure Iraq's military and political systems are stable enough to stand alone by the time U.S. forces leave at the end of 2011.

But Afghanistan was on the minds of lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee who wanted to know whether U.S. troops and equipment were being shifted there.

"As you know, our military has been greatly stressed over the past several years," said the committee's chairman, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., "And they're potentially facing increased demand for troops in Afghanistan."

The United States invaded Iraq in 2003 — about 18 months after forces were sent to Afghanistan to root out al-Qaida. Iraq was the Pentagon's focal point for most of the Bush administration, leaving the public view of Afghanistan largely in the dark.

But President Barack Obama has put the focus back on Afghanistan, risking making Iraq the forgotten war.

Odierno sought to not let that happen, reminding lawmakers that Iraq, with its fledgling democracy, could be a key U.S. partner in the Mideast given its location and natural resources, like oil.

"It's important for us to stay engaged," Odierno told the House panel. "We have spent a lot of money. We have spent a lot of personal sacrifices inside Iraq. And security is headed in the right direction. We don't want to lose sight of that."

At the hearing, Odierno announced that he will send home about 4,000 additional troops by the end of October, mostly the result of better security in the once insurgent-riddled Anbar Province west of Baghdad. He said that's "a bit faster than we originally planned."

He said there are about 124,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq, and he expects to meet Obama's deadline of sending home all but 50,000 by September 2010 as the military ends its combat mission there.

Additionally, Odierno estimated about 150,000 pieces of U.S. equipment have been shipped out of Iraq, freeing it up to be sent to Afghanistan. He said the U.S. has closed about 200 bases in Iraq so far.

But Iraq's anticipated Jan. 16 elections will serve as a gut check for security there. Odierno said it will be the first elections run solely by Iraqis, and that any violence surrounding it probably will happen within the first 60 days after the vote.

He also called the long-standing tensions between Arabs and Kurds in Iraq's oil-rich but volatile northern region the largest security threat to the fragile country.

Try as he might to remain focused on Iraq, Odierno had a hard time resisting being drawn into the debate that has consumed Washington over whether Obama should order more troops to Afghanistan.

"What lessons learned would you like to see brought over to Afghanistan from Iraq?" asked Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.

Odierno said he has been too consumed with Iraq and "I don't pretend to understand the environment in Afghanistan."

Asked about whether he believes Iraq was helped by the 2007 surge of U.S. troops — as military chiefs and hawks in Congress are pushing Obama to do in Afghanistan — Odierno relented.

"The surge of forces clearly had an impact on our ability to improve the security inside of Iraq," Odierno said.

He added that civilian missions and a clear strategy also played a huge part in making the surge a success.

__

On the Net:

House Armed Services Committee: http://armedservices.house.gov/

Labels: iraq key ally

# posted by Worried American @ 10/02/2009 07:45:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27705.html

Generals: Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney are scaremongering

cheney - hype about closing gitmo

By JOSH GERSTEIN | 9/29/09 3:39 PM

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27705.html

: Guards watch over Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Retired generals and admirals say Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney are trying to instill fear about Gitmo closing. Photo: AP

About a dozen retired generals and admirals, trying to add momentum to President Barack Obama’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison, are accusing former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz of scaremongering about the dangers of closing it.

“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at which Guantanamo is closed,” retired Brig. Gen. James Cullen, a former chief judge of the Army’s Court of Criminal Appeals, told POLITICO Tuesday.

“Some of the fear issues that are being raised in this are really unfortunate. It gets people excited about things they shouldn’t be excited about and impedes doing what is critical to this country. Get that damn symbol off the table,” said retired Gen. David Maddox, a former Army commander-in-chief for Europe. “We take a setback every time somebody, whether it’s the vice president or his daughter comes out and says the things that they say….We have to get out there again and just keep pounding.”

The former vice president and his daughter declined comment on the criticism.

The former military officers, whose Washington visit was organized by Human Rights First, argued rather bitterly that the Cheneys have exaggerated the risks of bringing Guantanamo prisoners from Cuba to the United States.

“Can you imagine getting a terrorist from Guantanamo convicted and put in a federal penitentiary in your town?” Maddox asked. “Have you ever checked who the hell’s in there already? Have any of them gotten out? The person who we’re putting in is probably a heck of lot less dangerous than most of them who are already in there.”

Administration officials recently acknowledged that Guantanamo may not be closed by Obama’s deadline of Jan. 22. But retired Army Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, said the president was smart to set a mark.

“It forces us to have an end state,” Taguba said. “It cannot be open in perpetuity because we’re having this so called long war against terrorism.”

The retired officers met Monday with Attorney General Eric Holder and planned to confer later with Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn.

Holder gave no indication of when the administration might settle on a U.S. site to relocate Guantanamo prisoners, the former military leaders said.

Obama announced the one-year-closure plan on his second full day in office. But the administration lost control of the legislative process in April when the Senate voted 90-6 against funding for the closure. Democrats joined Republicans, who argued that it was a foolish risk to bring suspected terrorists into the United States.

“Closing Guantanamo is of a strategic value,” Taguba said. “Seeing people in orange jumpsuits and whatever have you creates such an excitement for people to be jihadists and terrorists…It’s not helping us.”

Labels: cheney-gitmo-scaremongering

# posted by Worried American @ 10/02/2009 07:03:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091001/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_us_afghanistan

Advisers split complicates Obama's Afghan decision - Yahoo! News

Council split complicates Obama's Afghan decision

US, British troops killed in Afghanistan attacks

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer Robert H. Reid, Associated Press Writer – 10 mins ago

KABUL – A suicide bomber struck a U.S. convoy in southern Afghanistan on Friday, killing two American soldiers, and military officials announced the deaths of two other international troopers — one American and one Briton — the day before.

The deadly start to the month followed a drop in U.S. and NATO deaths in September over the previous two months — perhaps because no major offensives were launched as the U.S. takes stock of its strategy in the troubled eight-year war. The Obama administration is debating whether to send more American troops to Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama summoned his top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, for a 25-minute meeting aboard Air Force One on Friday in Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of his review of a war strategy that has divided the president's national security team.

The two conferred just before the president returned to Washington from Copenhagen, where he made a pitch to the International Olympic Committee on behalf of Chicago's unsuccessful bid to host the 2016 games.

U.S. spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias confirmed the deaths in Friday's convoy attack but would not specify where they occurred. Afghan police reported a suicide attack west of Kandahar but were uncertain if there were U.S. casualties.

Mathias also said a third American died late Thursday after militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at a patrol in eastern Afghanistan. Several other Americans were wounded, she added.

In London, the British Ministry of Defense announced that a British airman was killed Thursday when a bomb exploded alongside his patrol near Camp Bastion in southern Helmand province, one of the flashpoints of recent fighting.

The four deaths were the first reported this month for the U.S.-led international force, which has been locked in the heaviest combat of the Afghan war.

Nevertheless, the number of American troops killed in the war dropped from a record monthly high of 51 in August to 37 in September, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press from official statements.

U.S. death tolls had been rising steadily since the spring following Obama's decision to send 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan to curb the growing Taliban-led insurgency. American deaths went from 12 in May to 24 in June and 44 in July.

The September death toll for the overall international force, including Americans, stood at 65, compared with 73 in August.

At the same time, however, Afghan civilian deaths rose from 169 in August to 202 in September, according to AP figures compiled from police and other Afghan officials. The increase may have been a result of stepped-up Taliban attacks on civilian traffic along major highways, including a bomb blast Tuesday that killed 30 bus passengers west of Kandahar.

U.S. spokesmen declined to speculate on what may have been responsible for the decline in American deaths last month and whether it marked the start of a trend.

The reason could simply be that no large-scale ground offensives were launched against the Taliban and their allies in September.

U.S. forces mounted major operations in July and August in southern Afghanistan to try to dislodge the Taliban from longtime strongholds and improve security ahead of the Aug. 20 presidential election, the outcome of which remains in doubt because of allegations of massive fraud by supporters of President Hamid Karzai.

Those allegations as well as rising combat losses have triggered a debate within the U.S. administration and Congress over the future of the U.S. mission, which began in 2001 when a U.S.-led force drove the Taliban from power after their refused to hand over al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden.

McChrystal is widely believed to want to add between 30,000 and 40,000 troops to the current U.S. force of 68,000. Other senior officials, including Vice President Joe Biden, favor a strategy that directly targets al-Qaida fighters believed to be hiding in Pakistan rather than significantly increasing troop levels in Iraq.

No decisions were announced after McChrystal's meeting with the president, but White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that the two agreed that a review of war strategy "is a helpful process."

Also Friday, Afghan authorities reported that militants attacked a convoy of empty trucks returning to Pakistan after delivering supplies to a NATO base in Kunar province of eastern Afghanistan.

One driver was killed, three were wounded and 13 trucks were burned, according to police chief Khalilullah Zaiyi.

Taliban militants also burned two empty tankers shortly after they had delivered fuel to a NATO base in the northern province of Kunduz, according to Gov. Mohammad Omar. The drivers managed to escape, he said.

___

Associated Press Writer Rahim Faiez contributed to this report.

Labels: us and british troops killed=afghanistan

# posted by Worried American @ 10/02/2009 01:54:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000980674

(One factor not mentioned here is Bush's ban on showing even military caskets and insistence on not counting as combat deaths those who died in route to or at hospitals in order to reduce the death factor to the American public. He was well aware that graphic photos of wounded, dead or dying military personnel in the wars would arouse emotions and anti-war feelings, and therefore less support for an increasingly unpopular war. Although photographers violated the president's no-casket-pics, and took combat photos of casualties when able, most of the media respected the president's views and did not publish. Another factor was that troops would block photography of their dead, dying, or wounded buddies when they could.)

Why Few Graphic Images from Iraq Make it to U.S. Papers

Photo by Chris Hondros / Getty Images

An Iraqi girl screams after her parents were killed when U.S. soldiers fired on their car when it failed to stop and came toward soldiers, despite warning shots, during a dusk patrol January 18, 2005 in Tal Afar, Iraq. After taking this photo, photographer Chris Hondros voluntarily left his military embed. "[The incident] didn't start me out on a good footing with these particular soldiers," he says. "It's impossible to be operating under hostility in an embedded situation."

By Barbara Bedway Published: July 18, 2005 2:25 PM ET NEW YORK In May, the Los Angeles Times released a survey revealing how few photographs of wounded or dead American service members in Iraq were appearing in U.S. publications. Newspaper editors seemed to agree that one primary obstacle was logistical: Given the sporadic nature of the violence occurring in a country the size of California, getting to the news is a dangerous challenge in itself. But when photographers are indeed able to capture such scenes, what happens to those images?

The Times' survey of six months of coverage found almost no pictures of Americans killed in action at a time when 559 Americans and Western allies died; the same publications ran just 44 photos from Iraq to represent the thousands of Westerners wounded during the same period. But according to photo services, pictures are sometimes transmitted and left unused. Santiago Lyon, director of photography for The Associated Press, says the wire service primarily gets such images from embedded photographers, who are bound by military ground rules to hold back photos in which the dead or wounded might be recognized until the families are notified. "If the faces are not recognizable, in theory you can send them," he says. "But it's rare that we're in a situation where we're able to [obtain] those pictures. Even with the foreign photographers working there, it's still a lot of hit and miss."

One notable exception: Last year, AP photographer John B. Moore -- one of a team of AP photographers in Iraq who won a Pulitzer in the breaking news category this year -- got exclusive access to a U.S. military hospital in Baghdad and was able to photograph the dead and wounded. One striking image that he captured showed medics attempting to resuscitate a dying soldier. "We made an effort not to show the faces," says Lyon, "but when we sent them out, in the U.S. a lot of major papers chose not to run them. Those papers and other media subscribe to our feed. They're paying a flat rate, and can run as many or as few as they choose. In this case, they chose not to."

For Philadelphia Inquirer photographer David Swanson, who spent a month with Second Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment in April 2004, the dearth of photos of the dead and wounded smacks of "situational" ethics: "There's less chance of publishing a mortally wounded American on the cover than that of an Afghani or Iraqi," he relates in an e-mail. "Papers ran the photos of the dead from the tsunami, but would we have done that if it had happened in Florida?"

The very timeliness of photographs taken in Mosul on election day last January by Moises Saman, a longtime photographer for Newsday, raised problems for both the military and the newspaper. In an e-mail from his post in Afghanistan, Saman describes being embedded with a unit from the 82nd Airborne when a grenade attack severely injured seven American soldiers: "It was a bloody scene, with medics frantically assisting the wounded soldiers. The commander of the unit politely asked me to not file the images until the families of the wounded were notified. This in itself jeopardized the chances of the photographs being seen," due to loss of timeliness. Newsday, however, chose to run two of Saman's photos. The first, published on the night of the election, showed a soldier being carried away on a stretcher, photographed from the side to obscure his identity. The second, published four days later, showed another soldier being evacuated on a stretcher.

Saman believes so few pictures are appearing in American papers because of a double standard that he says reflects the nature of our society. "Americans understand we are at war -- but not many people want to see the real consequences, especially when they involve one of your own," he says. "I think some publications cater to this sentiment by trying not to anger subscribers and advertisers with harsh 'in-your-face' coverage of the true nature of war." Newsday's photography editor, Jeff Schamberry, says the paper used the best photos from the five or six Saman transmitted that day. "There was a sense of urgency in the pictures," he recalls. "In that respect they were good, because he was there and recorded an actual hostile event. That day went better than had been expected, and we were glad to get some kind of an action shot out of it." But he points out that even when the photographer is present to capture such an event, further confirmation is often needed: "I hate to eat a good picture, but if you don't have facts, it's hard to pop a picture in the paper with no explanation. It's not that you don't trust the photographer, it's just that they only have part of the story. You try to get the story as the Army reported it."

He cites the memorable photos taken at a Tal Afar checkpoint last January, showing bloodstained children who'd been riding in their family's car when soldiers on a patrol at dusk fired on them. Their father, the car's driver, had failed to slow down despite warning shots, the military said, and both parents were killed. "The photographer had tremendous pictures, and sent them through with very sketchy information," Schamberry says. "We wondered how to run it. We try to present a balanced picture, and not just sensational photos." It was Chris Hondros, a photographer for Getty Images, who took the photos of the Tal Afar checkpoint shooting while embedded with a unit of the 25th Infantry Division. He encountered some anger from the military last January after Getty chose not to agree to the military's request to delay sending them out. "They never asked me to censor," Hondros emphasizes, "they asked me to delay." But delay can sometimes mean the photos arrive too late to ever be used. Though he had not violated any ground rules, he chose to leave the next day. "Even if I had not sent those photos, I would have left that embed," he says. "The incident had been a high stress one, and it didn't start me out on a good footing with these particular soldiers. It's impossible to be operating under hostility in an embedded situation." His photographs of the blood-spattered, traumatized children were widely distributed to U.S. papers -- but few ran more than a single photo.

By contrast, Hondros says, those photographs "seemingly dominated the discourse in Europe, where they were run in full over multiple pages by many important papers there." AP's Lyon agrees that internationally there's more an appetite for those types of pictures. He feels the reluctance of U.S. newspapers to publish those images is not an issue on which AP should comment. "We're providing photos and text to our subscribers, and it's up to them to use pictures as they see fit," he observes. "We've covered our mission. Of course, as a journalist, I think the truth needs to be told." For Swanson, who captured a particularly vivid truth while embedded with Echo Company, which lost 12 of its Marines in a two-week period, the poverty of images has removed death from the war: "It's war, whether you agree to it or not ... death needs to be shown. You have to know what you might lose before you commit so many lives. A country needs to be reminded that an 18-year-old has just died, and that Memorial Day and Veterans' Day are not just days for picnics at the beach."

Barbara Bedway (letters@editorandpublisher.com) is a contributor to E&P.

Labels: dearth of US casualty pics

# posted by Worried American @ 9/21/2009 01:07:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

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