The Name's of The Fallen / Part 16 / Total Count as a today 5/25/2008 4177 Soldiers are Dead / Names In Reverse order from: 4158 to 4177
4177 9/29/2008 Specialist Christopher T. Fox 21 Memphis TN
4176 9/27/2008 Private 1st Class Jamel A. Bryant 22 Belleville IL
4175 9/24/2008 Captain Michael J. Medders 25 Ohio OH
4174 9/25/2008 Staff Sergeant Ronald Phillips Jr 33 Conway SC
4173 9/23/2008 1st Lieutenant Thomas J. Brown 26 Burke VA
4172 9/14/2008 Chaplain (Col.) Sidney J. Marceaux Jr 69 Beaumont TX
4171 9/21/2008 Staff Sergeant Matthew J. Taylor 25 Charleston SC
4170 9/18/2008 1st Lieutenant Robert Vallejo II 28 Richland Hills TX
4169 9/18/2008 Corporal Michael E. Thompson 23 Harrah OK
4168 9/18/2008 Chief Warrant Officer Brady J. Rudolf 37 Oklahoma City OK
4167 9/18/2008 1st Sergeant Julio C. Ordonez 54 San Antonio TX
4166 9/18/2008 Sergeant Anthony L. Mason 37 Springtown TX
4165 9/18/2008 Sergeant Daniel M. Eshbaugh 43 Norman OK
4164 9/18/2008 Chief Warrant Officer Corry A. Edwards 38 Kennedale TX
4163 9/17/2008 Captain Darrick D. Wright 37 Nashville TN
4162 9/17/2008 Private 1st Class Leonard J. Gulczynski I 19 Carol Stream IL
4161 9/14/2008 Lt. Colonel Ralph J. Marino 46 Houston PA
4160 9/14/2008 Sergeant Wesley R. Durbin 26 Hurst TX
4159 9/14/2008 Staff Sergeant Darris J. Dawson 24 Pensacola FL
4158 9/15/2008 Sergeant 1st Class Daniel R. Sexton 53 Wentzville MO
Total Count as a today @ 5:50 PM 10/2/2008 : : 4177 soldiers are dead
More Information please visit our data base: : The Name's of the Fallen
Or you can visit the DoD web site: : US DoD News Release
S T O P T H E W A R
Stop the War & Bring Troops Home
Percy H Florez
The first security job of the next president will be to try to avoid both these new potential "Vietnams". How can McCain, let alone the totally inexperienced Mme Palin (with, we are told, a one in seven actuarial chance of being president by 2012) possibly succeed in this?
No - experience does not automatically qualify. Look at Cheney and Rumsfeld with perhaps more hands-on experience of security and defence maatters than anyone else. They got us into the worldwide catastrophe of Iraq. Not just military, but financial.
Curious that the overall cost of "Iraq" to date is around $700bn, financed by borrow-all-the-way: the same figure as is now assessed as needed to resolve the financial meltdown. The financial demands of "Iraq" are to a large extent responsible for this financial crisis.
For more of our work at JP Diplomatic Consultancy, France, please see our www.dipconsult.eu
It's not a question of left or right, Rep. of Dem. - for us Europeans it's plain (Palin?) fear: American voters elected the obviously unqualified G W Bush and the well known neo-conservative Cheney in 2000. AND did the same again in 2004 when the full worldwide disaster of Iraq was already becoming apparent.
America's voters, now once again about even in the polls, are quite likely to show their dangerous ignorance a third time and give us 72 yr old past sell-by-date McCain and even more dangerous and utterly unqualified Palin with her good actuarial chance of "running the world".
KEY POINT - McCain's whole campaign depends on bragging that his 'experience' automatically qualifies him to be Commander-in-Chief. But of course experience does not in itself qualify!
Cheney and Rumsfeld had far more experience (executive not just Senatorial) but they manufactured the Iraq war that has proved far more disastrous financially as well as militarily, than ever did the Vietnam war.
And McCain, despite all that boasted "experience" in Vietnam and the Senate, backed and enthusiastically supported Cheney/Rumsfeld - thereby risking a second "Vietnam" in Iraq (Gen. Petraeus himself insists the temporary improvement is extremely fragile and could disappear as the US draws down: i.e the same "can't stay,can't leave" situation as in Vietnam).
Indeed, as a direct result of "Iraq", there's maybe even another "Vietnam" looming in Afghanistan!
Yet he - McCain - was the one US politician who might have made Bush think twice about the invasion had he - with his "experience" - come out against it!
Obama really must deliver this knockout blow: "experience" is NOT qualification - bad judgement nullifies it! And McCain voted for the worldwide catastrophe for the U.S. of "Iraq"
On all this please see my: www.dipconsult.eu
Thousand of thousands are wounded and John McCain still support this illegal war!
And both candidates assume the surge is working!
The Name's of the Fallen: Link
Percy H Florez
S T O P T H E W A R
Sun Sep 28, 2008 at 01:01:20 AM PDT
After watching the debate I have to speak up. I am a currently serving veteran of the Iraq war who is soon to go back. Senator McCain, with all due respect, you do NOT speak for me. And just as you do not speak for me; I do not speak for all Soldiers. We all think for ourselves.
Stop implying that you are the only one who can understand our veterans, because for millions of us clearly you do not. So let me address some of the things you said during the debate. Read More »
Republican operatives are using an anti-Muslim film and push polling to raise fears of terrorism and smear Barack Obama
Richard Silverstein, Guardian, 9/22/08
We are now entering the closing weeks of what promises to be yet another close and contentious presidential election contest. As each side seeks to maximise its advantages and minimise its weaknesses, the Republican party has chosen the lowest of low roads, engaging in two sleazy political marketing campaigns over the past week.
First, DVDs of an anti-Muslim documentary film are being distributed to 28 million voters in swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado and Wisconsin. Second, Republican telemarketers have begun push polling aimed at scaring Jewish voters in swing states from voting for Barack Obama…
The mass distribution of Obsession is an obvious Republican scare-tactic, right out of the Rovian playbook. Party operatives believe that scaring Americans into believing there's a jihadist under every bed will play to Republican strengths and Democratic weaknesses on national security. They swiftboated John Kerry in 2004. Now they're jihadising Barack Obama.
Ali Gharib, Inter Press Service, 9/19/08
WASHINGTON, Sep 19 (IPS) - Millions of voters in U.S. states crucial to this fall's presidential election received DVD copies of a controversial documentary film as advertising inserts in their morning newspapers over the past week, with more expected to be sent out over the upcoming weekend.
The 2006 film, "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West", which has been accused by critics of encouraging Islamophobia, was reportedly delivered, or slated for delivery this weekend, into tens of millions of households in states such as Ohio, Michigan, Florida, Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri and other "swing states" that don't vote consistently for either party and usually decide elections.
Republicans and their candidate, Sen. John McCain, have made the battling the threat posed by radical Islamists a central platform of their campaign, while presenting their Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama, as being weak on the issue. Obama has also fought off persistent "smear" campaigns, particularly among Jewish voters, that he is a closet Muslim. Read More »
Percy H Florez
Word count: 830
[Ahmed Rehab is strategic communications director for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil liberties group. He may be contacted at arehab@cair.com]
You have to wonder about a film that could muster no better an endorsement to adorn its poster than that of CNN’s resident right-wing extremist Glenn Beck. "Obsession is without exaggeration one of the most important films of our time," says Beck. (Who would accuse Glenn Beck of exaggerating?)
The film Beck is lauding, “Obsession: Islam’s Radical War against the West,” is a 2005 work of anti-Muslim propaganda that has recently been widely distributed via an unprecedented campaign. Read More »
In reply to oped listing the many disadvantages a 'black' faces in the US:
Yes, the vast majority of us in Europe are appalled that the one man who could bring real change cleaning up the worldwide G W Bush mess in warfare and finance, could well lose this election for the sole reason that he is half 'Caucasian' (as you Americans put it) and half African. Had he been 'white' his ratings would be around, say, 60% - a sure victor.
Yes, we too, have quite enough racism in Europe but, for example, even in the 1960s the president of the French Assembly was a person of colour.
And today, by a huge majority we Europeans would vote for Senator Obama - not because we are 'Obamamaniacs' as some of your American media codescendingly dub us, but because we see in this brilliant, well informed, well organised man who opposed the Iraq war (whose military and financial consequences have severely damaged not only the US but our European position in the world) the one person who could indeed turn the page.
From his clearly stated policies, he could indeed lead the world away from the Bush era of sterile confrontation to a new era - made possible by the end of the Cold War - of international cooperation to face the grim challenges not just for the US but for every country. Indeed for humanity. (For more see our website dipconsult.eu )
NOW IRAQ, ALONG WITH THE ECONOMY, IS UNRAVELING AS REPUBLICAN TALKING POINT
We heard a week ago that the “Sunni “Awakening” militias that USA founded, armed and funded have begun fighting against the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi Army, which is also bankrolled by the United States. The number of attacks by women bombers in Iraq has tripled from eight in 2007 to more than 24 so far this year, according to US military officials. Diyala has been particularly vulnerable. The 25th female suicide bomber killed 20 people on Tuesday of this week, the same day that Petraeus announced that he is moving on to Afghanistan and turning Iraq over to yet another general (another mission accomplished?).
Now today from New America Media I read of more unraveling of the “Mission Accomplished” and “The Surge is working” talking points: Washington seems to be losing its man in Baghdad. Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister who has faithfully defended U.S. interests in Iraq since he was elected in 2006, has lately been defying his patron.
Read More »I hope that in the near future that our country will develop and implement a sane Iraq policy. We haven't had one since the liberation turned into an occupation and then into "nation building."
We cannot build the nation of Iraq. Perhaps even the various peoples who currently live "between the rivers" can't even accomplish it.
I know that there has been a great deal of suffering in Iraq. Some of that suffering has been returned to our shores in flag draped coffins. Each one a great tragedy magnified many times over in the land where they fell.
Whether the people in those coffins are called "peacekeepers" or "grunts" or "heroes" when that AK-47 round shreds your internal organs - you're dead. At some point we must answer the question of how much is enough.
Basically it targets a pull out date of mid 2010 with and unspecified number of troops remaining in Iraq.
It also retains the "bush doctrine." link at the end.
In 2004, the Democratic Party platform supported the ongoing Iraq War and occupation. Its only criticism of Bush policy was that the administration did not send enough troops or adequately equip them. With the defeat in the primaries and caucuses of Hillary Clinton and others who voted to authorize the Iraq invasion, the Democratic Party – with a standard-bearer who had forcefully opposed the invasion at the outset – might be expected to have adopted a strong antiwar plank. And, indeed, this year's platform calls for the redeployment of U.S. combat brigades by the middle of 2010.
Still, however, the 2008 platform endorses an ongoing U.S. military role in that violent oil-rich nation. It calls for an unspecified number of U.S. troops to remain as a "residual force" for such "specific missions" as "targeting terrorists; protecting our embassy and civil personnel; and advising and supporting Iraq's Security Forces, provided the Iraqis make political progress."
A troubling aspect to these exceptions is the vagueness of the language. Given that the Bush administration has referred to all Iraqi insurgents fighting U.S. forces as "terrorists," it raises questions as to what degree U.S. military operations and the number of troops to sustain them will actually be reduced. In addition, the U.S. "embassy" – the largest complex of its kind in the world, taki