I just finished reading this story over on Blackfive’s page about the power of a single teddy bear in a time of war, and it moved me to tears (in a GOOD way, honest). Please, go and read it if you want one little incident of how things are going well in Iraq.
My thanks to Charles Johnson for pointing to this story, and for letting me shamelessly steal and alter his title for my own ends.
J.
The Americans should take lessons from the British regarding ‘winning hearts and minds.’
And the Americans should get out of Iraq to avoid the mines.
DAMN, I hate to cry at work.
The LORD works in mysterious ways.
Got this story yesterday just in time for me to add a Teddy Bear, little Snoopy, and a Touch & Feel animal book to the package I was getting out to a Marine in Fallujah. Anything to help out our Troops.
Once again bloggers are getting out the messages that keep alluding the MSM.
Keep spreading the Truth!
And Solid should get his head out of his…
Are you in denial McGehee? America has attacked Iraq based on lies, every one knows this. America has lost all respect throughout the world. So I would suggest you get your head out of your ….
Solid, you’re sick. People like you have some compulsive need to turn every act of kindess into something perverse. It’s people like you who would be more than happy to have Saddam and his spawn still in power and torturing and killing people by the thousands every day. And by torture, I mean real torture — no Victoria Secret stuff. You got to love the left. They do nothing, absolutely nothing. They bitch and moan and criticize everyone else. Never give a dime to charity. And Solid, if the rest of the world does not respect us. GOOD! We are on the right path.
So, Merry Christmas, Solid. And, here’s a Teddy Bear. Now go sit on a mine. Ho Ho Ho
What julie and McGehee wrote.
And again, sentiments and kindness and threads about those aspects to goodness in our world are again attempted by the liberal left to be redirected to be about the liberal left and their distorted perspectives about everything, apparently.
It’s not all about the liberal left. Most of the world is trying to survive the liberal left and many of the problems created by the liberal left (always decrying “peace” when they seem to be inflicting most of the damage on others, can never figure that one out)…
Solid, let me be the first to wish you a Merry Christmas and suggest that you fork over ten dollars or so and send a Teddy Bear or similar toy to the U.S. Military in Iraq, so they could make sure some other child gets a huggable plaything for once.
julie…lol, Another who is in denial. What is it with you Yanks? You attack another country, and give the world a bullshit excuse like WMDs, then you expect everyone to love you. How would YOU feel julie, if foreign troops were patroling/driving tanks on your land and up your street? Come on be honest about it. Let the Iraqis sort their own future out. I hope my prime miminster Tony Blair takes our troops out of Iraq and subscribe to the view of Chirac of France, which is to have a multi-polar world to counter balance the Americans. merry Xmas to you too.
-S- And merry Xmas to you too. I will think about the point you brought forth.
Solid, lets see who is really in denial. First go read this site:
http://husseinandterror.com/
When you finish you might also read the text of the MULTIPLE reasons we went to war in iraq:
http://www.yourcongress.com/ViewArticle.asp?article_id=2686
Iraq was the attacker, invading Kuwait. You would prefer to ignore the relevant facts of history. It was Saddam who was in breach of the cease fire from the Gulf War. Saddam had every opportunity to live up to the terms to which he agreed.
Who’s in denial? You are, grinch. If Americans were patrolling my street I would know I wouldn’t be hauled off to a palace and raped by sadists. I would know my children feet wouldn’t be crushed as I was forced to watch as an additional way to torture me. I would know I wasn’t getting substandard medicine, if I got any medicine at all, because the money was going into Saddam’s pocket for his weapons program and scum like the French and Germans. You have the nerve to point to Chirac as a model? You are a sick sick man. Take your knee-jerk socialism and shove it where McGehee said your head is located. And, yes that is my honest opinion.
Oh, and you mention “our troops.” What have you done for your troops? Anything? Nah. And don’t tell me whining about a kid getting a TeddyBear helps your troops.
Oh, Solid, Chirac is too busy these days murdering people in the Ivory Coast to work on his “multi-polar world” view. And Tony Blair is never going to emulate the french. For you to even hope he will, means, you are delusional.
lol…Americans have never been the sharpest tools in the box…..Shoot 1st ask questions later…..Quote of the day comes from George Bush’s address to reporters on Wednesday. “We will continue to make it clear to both Syria and Iran that….meddling in the internal affairs of Iraq is not in their intrests,” he explained. Hell,he’s just another responsible adult trying to save others by inviting them to learn from his mistakes. I wish him good luck, but kids will be kids. I also think, the dollars weakness and global mistrust of the US are simply two sides of the same coin: a reflection of America’s decreasing political and economic importance….America has no choice other than to…refocus its priorities on the basics that once earned it universal admiration. These basics are fiscal responsibilty at home and a strategy of honest engagement abroad. Another tax cut for the rich, and another military ADVENTURE abroad, will only serve to accelerate the nation’s decline. Take your heads out of the (Iraqi) sand.
Solid:
The temporary weakness of the dollar will only be temporary. Over the course of the next decade we will have to be adjusting to changes in the world economy for sure, but America’s resources, business acumen are still very strong; plus we do adapt to change and are adapting to change.
The bottom line is that the world who may be hoping for the failure of the U.S. may be more jealous of their own current problems and some of the residual resentment from needing help from us the past. Having said that, the UK is also a formidable country, and I trust in the strength of leaders like Thatcher and more currently Blair who have the character of British determination to do what is right – no matter what others may say. So I salute your country.
Something to think about.
So why are there no details in this story? The Sgt is not named, nor the unit, the time the place? This reads like a typical made-up ‘Urban Legend’. Think about it, this story would be nothing but great PR for the war effort.
I make the following prediction:
There will be NO evidence this ever happened ever presented. NONE. If this was a true story FOX NEWS would run with it.
I think one main reason US had to get involved in Iraq is the UN. No one takes the UN seriously anymore. 16 sanctions and Saddam was laughing all the way. Sort of like the unarmed bobbys – Stop or I’ll toot. Ok I’ll toot some more, Ok, well just don’t come back here. When a goverment or an international body says they will do something they need to grow some balls and do it or no one will believe them.
Seriously If the world really doesn’t want us there we should put saddam back in place, then with draw all our troops from around the world and cut all our funding to any non-us entity. Funny how on things like world Aids relief the US donates almost as much as all the other countries combined but when we ask for a hand no one is around. So either youi want us around for the good and the bad or you get nothing.
Lynn, thankyou for your reasoned response as opposed to the others, who in my view are in denial. Could I bring your attention to another point I wish to bring up. About the corruption evident in the oil-for-food programme that was real, but did not originate from within the UN, as others have charged. Its origins are in a morrally corrupt policy of economic strangulation of Iraq implemented by the US as part of an overall strategy of regime change. Since 1991, the US has made it clear – through successive statements by James Baker, George Bush and Madeleine Albright – that economic sanctions, linked to Iraq’s disarmament obligation, would never be lifted even if Iraq fully complied and disarmed, until Saddam was removed from power. This policy remained unchanged for over a decade, during which time hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died as a result of these sanctions. While money derived from the off-the-book sale of oil did indeed go into the purchase of conventional weapons and the construction of presidential palaces, the vast majority of these funds were poured into economic recovery programmes that saw Iraq emerge from near total economic ruin in 1996. By 2002, on the eve of the US-led invasion, Baghdad was full of booming businesses, restaurants were full, and families walked along well-lit parks. Compare and contrast that image with the reality of Baghdad today, and the ultimate corruption that was the oil-for-food programme becomes self-evident.
lynn, if you do respond, I will have to read it in the morning (UK)…….but thankyou for your last comment.
Solid: you don’t appear to be well intended, based upon what I’ve just read here — all of what you’ve written.
What I’d like to know is why you are “laughing out loud” about issues of warfare, death and tragedy? You’re not American, obviously. Isn’t it really in terribly bad taste to make such baseless accusations as you are doing here complete with attempts to ridicule those unlike yourself?
It’s a liberal MEME to do just that: insist on attention about liberal memes. And about liberals making memes as you are.
There’s ample evidence that Saddam Hussein and others have and did have and still do have “WMD” and yet there you go again, the liberal MEME of “(us Americans) using (what you accuse as being ‘a lie’) of WMD” while, please, explain what it is that you rely on to allege that there are NO WMD, nor were? I’m curious as to your super liberal powers of perception here, and wonder if your sources are available, and if so, if they are other than Michael Moore’s fantasies and Indymedia’s baseless paranoia?
Please enlighten us with your far flung concepts, because, otherwise, I’d hate to let it stand on this thread written in the best possible motives and intentions, that Solid was just a ranky troll trying to make his way in the world.
Jake, the letter is written and signed by a real individual. There really are good people in the United States military and otherwise, and perhaps you might consider pointing that fine tuned radar of yours to sources that deserve examination for authenticity, like, say, John Kerry, the DNC, DU, CBS, MSNBC, Indymedia, LATimes because they’d undoubtedly prove to be ripe with questionable sources and ‘opinionators’ posing as sources.
Well, if that individual were to identify him/her self, it would add a lot of credibility to the story.
For example: how could the ‘little girl’ have possibly known there was a mine there? And if she did know it, why wouldn’t she tell her family? In which case, why would she be sitting on top of the mine? And why wouldn’t any other Iraqi pull her out of the road?
And so on.
She’s a little girl, Jake, and one in Iraq, she’s not highly likely to be in touch with media folks, cameras, have a cell phone, be able to call herself into TNYTimes and chat.
There are many likely possibilities here: perhaps she saw someone earlier (d’oh) bury the mine(s), or, probably, obviously, did.
The letter does not say that she was “sitting on top of a mine” but that she was sitting in the road between the line of approaching traffic and where the mine was buried in the roadway, sitting facing that buried mine. Maybe someone plopped her down there while they buried the mine, maybe she plopped herself down there before, during or after, but, asking why “any other Iraqi (did not) pull her out of the road” seems like wondering when the ocean will go dry. As in, it’s an unproductive, in the near term as in understanding this story, message of the moment.
I suppose we could all, the rest of us, wonder why no Iraqi ever gave her a teddy bear/plush toy/anytoy before, or even let her sit down in a street as she was found to be, but, then again, why did the Iraqi “allow” Saddam Hussein to do what he did? As in, again, it’s a nonsensical issue after a point, a very large point.
The road could have been a less travelled one. I’ve been to Mexico and even many places in the Rocky Mountains and Midwest in the U.S. where there were roads (even paved ones) that rarely a vehicle travels. I used to go lay down in the roadway outside my mother’s house in the Florida Keys at night to look at the stars — the pavement was still warm in the chilled night air off the ocean and no cars were ever around, or, if one ever drove that way, you could hear/see them for miles coming ahead.
Maybe you’ve only ever seen interstates and congested, urban roads, but, lemme tell you, there are many, MANY “roads” in our world, even paved ones, that are vacant enough to sit in, even for children, though I’d never let any child in my care sit in one, just saying, there are a lot of vacant, untravelled roadways.
Jake – perfectly acceptable questions. I’ve had a few of my posts verified by snopes before.
FYI – the last time that I posted a Sergeant’s name and unit, he received about a hundred anti-war posters in the mail.
I am talking right now with a few media people about verifying the story.
Jake – how about $100 and a bottle of 15 year Laphroaig on it?
for Solid….
GAZE
Mark
-S-
Thankyou for that rant.
-S-, In my view, Britains moral authority in the world has been undermined by our participation in the invasion of Iraq. My only quibble would be on the degree to which Blair should be singled out for individual responsibilty.
Others have pointed out, the roots of our military engagement in the Middle East go back a long way. Surely the most cowardly episode was our conniving in Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against Iran and his own people. What is new, and what took the genius of Bin Laden to provoke, is the overt nature of the current venture and the stripping aside of any pretence at legality.
I would also consider, that now devoid of moral authority we will become all the more dependent on force rather than argument or negotiation in settling international disputes, thus instigating a vicious downward spiral. The more we portray our enemies as beyond the pale of humanity the more we will appear to them in the same light.
We may comfort ourselves in our vastly superior strength, but therein lies our weakness-a weakness the enemy has finally learnt to exploit. If by some chance the very enormity of the current crisis should serve to awaken us from our idolatrous infatuation with power, then surely our responses should be of profound gratitude.
Mass graves of children found buried in iraq still holding toys.
And state of decay showed they was put there recently.
Look at what the story tells, while germany and france china and russia was skimming Oil For food money thru the “Our protection means you will be butchered while we watch, while we have sex with your children” United Nations that the left look to with love and repect.
100s of ditches are dug, the little kids are herded into the bottom, and shot and covered up where they fall.
We find these.
Response from the left ? “No Blood For Oil!”
The world will remember what side the left was on, what they said, how even mass graves of kids are shrugged off by them because they saw no political gain from it.
It explains how the left was able to commit a woldwide Holocaust of 100+ Million murdered and you see no change in their blood stained blind devotion to their egalitarian religion.
Crimes against humanity found, and the evil they see is the United States.
The left in a very public way this time, have earned the badge of worldwide infamy.
History will remember, may the stain and the stench of them, may their malignant evil, stand naked befor the world.
For all time.
Solid,
Can you please blog in German… wait, you don’t have to because us Yanks saved your island from the Germans in WWII. We had the chance to basically control the entire world then when we were the only country with the Atomic Bomb and with an intact infrastructure left and we installed democracies throughout Europe. We could easily kick the entire world’s ass good for them now and take any country we want by force, but don’t. Lots of countries have more oil than Iraq and we are not invading them for oil.
Be a pessimist all you want or spout the leftist crap, but all I hear is the left trying to snuff out any sign of hope at all from Iraq. They want it to get worse and worse and either more soldiers to die or for us to hang our head in defeat. Sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen.