I have been a PGRider since March, 2006. We are nearly out of Iraq and have a date to be out of Afghanistan. We will not be out by that date, but whenever it is we do it is sure there will be more to be done. The source is Iran and we are doing nothing to turn off the source. So after a term of honorable service, Slingblade is relieved by Cowboy and the Illinois PGR carries on. Karbala veteran Major Kent Solheim carries on even to the Most Horrible Thing Ever. By the light of Jesus and with the support of my wife, I will try to too.

Remember the “axis of evil”? GWB’s second State of the Union address (delivered less than 5 months after 9/11) spoke of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as three regimes most threatening to the dignity of civilization. Since then, the Norks have developed nuclear weapons and three-stage rocketry making that relationship greatly more difficult to resolve. On the other hand Iraq, (like post-WWII Germany & Japan) has undergone a fundamental cultural shift.

Iran is in turmoil. This is an inflection point of history. We have very little to do to change the course of events there, and yet we may not do it…even as they continue to press us. Guest blog:

“You don’t have to love the war, but you have to love the warrior.” – Private Johnathon Millican

The author of those words was twenty years old when he died. He used a web camera to talk with his wife from Iraq on the morning of his final day. He had been in Iraq for about three months. The quote above comes from his MySpace page.

Private Johnathon Millican

1^st Lt. Jacob Fritz was a graduate of the United States Military Academy. His younger brother Daniel graduated from West Point a year after his death. He looks like a man who knew how to laugh. “Sometimes, when there’s a whisper in the wind, I feel he’s walking with me,” says his mother Noala. His parents bought 70 acres of farmland across the highway from their place for Jacob to settle on, when his military career was over.

1st Lt. Jacob Fritz

Private First Class Shawn Falter had twelve brothers and sisters. Three of his older brothers preceded him in military service. At his funereal, his older brother Andrew, an Air Force master sergeant, said, “Rest, Shawn. You’ve done your part. Your brothers will take it from here.” Pfc. Falter once gave up his own leave time, so a fellow soldier could return home to be with his wife and children.

Private First Class Shawn Falter

Specialist Johnathan Bryan Chism was a month away from coming home for two weeks of rest and recuperation when he died. A few years ago, he was a Boy Scout.

Specialist Johnathan Bryan Chism

On January 20^th, 2007, these four men were abducted from the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, Iraq, during a sophisticated insurgent attack.  The operation was believed to have been coordinated by the Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Within a few hours, they were executed by their captors. Their bodies were left with some abandoned vehicles. Two of them were tossed on the ground, while two were still handcuffed together inside one of the vehicles.

A fifth soldier, Captain Brian S. Freeman, was killed in the initial attack. He was a world-class athlete who won a bronze medal as part of a bobsled team in the 2002 America’s Cup race. Some of the bobsled drivers he trained with went on to compete in the last Olympics. One of them, Steven Holcomb, called Captain Freeman “one of the greatest men I have ever known.”

Captain Brian S. Freeman

The architects of the attack that killed Captain Freeman, and the subsequent murders of the other four brave soldiers, are brothers named Qais and Laith Khazali. They were captured in a March 2007 raid in Basra. On New Year’s Eve, we learned that Qais Khazali has been released, apparently as part of a prisoner exchange for British hostage Peter Moore. Laith Khazali was already released six months ago. Peter Moore was kidnapped in May 2007, explicitly to be used as a bargaining chip for the freedom of the Khazali brothers.

The circumstances around Qais Khazali’s release are murky, with the usual denials and clarifications swirling around like a cloud of confetti over Times Square on New Years’ Eve. Multi National Force spokesmen claim this was not a hostage trade, but rather an attempt to comply with “the implementation of the U.S. – Iraq Security Agreement” and support a “reconciliation process.” Some suggest this is all part of an elaborate intelligence operation.

Republican Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl have already sent a letter to the Obama Administration, citing an executive order signed by President Reagan in 1986 that prohibits concessions to terrorist hostage takers. With the New Year holiday behind us, more Republican congressmen will doubtless be right behind Sessions and Kyl with their own hard questions. It’s even possible some Democrats will join them, now that they’re finished with midnight votes to take over the health-care system, and desperately need to fool their constituents into thinking they’re “moderates” who care about national security.

Was that harsh? Prove me wrong, Democrats. Make me eat those words. I’ll gladly slather them in barbecue sauce, and savor ever last consonant.

International conflicts are a messy business. We know that Iran has been supporting the Iraqi insurgency with money, equipment, and personnel. We don’t have the manpower to completely lock down the thousand-mile border between Iran and Iraq. Attacks on Qods Force bases in Iran would swiftly escalate into all-out war. Intelligence is the key weapon in defeating a terrorist insurgency, and it must often be obtained through sins committed in deep shadow. We must also make efforts to respect the sovereign dignity of the Iraqi government we have been nurturing for the past six years. Even with all of these uneasy truths in mind, it’s difficult to see how the release of the men behind the Karbala attack can be justified.

It seems unlikely that the Khazali outrage could have happened without President Obama’s authorization. I’m ready to hear him explain this… and then, considering his reputation as a liar, every thinking American should be ready to fact-check every word he says. I don’t mind admitting I’m a hostile audience. You should be, too. Nothing this President has done since taking office has earned him a shred of trust or faith, especially in the area of national security.

We just watched his utterly incompetent Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, stammer her way through a terrorist attack. Her only useful purpose was preparing the infamous Defense Intelligence Estimate that indicted “radicalized right-wing extremists” as potential terrorists, thus transforming an important security document into a piece of scornography to titillate the far Left. No one who takes the defense of America seriously would put an unqualified piece of bureaucratic furniture like Napolitano in charge of Homeland Security… and, a week after a defective set of exploding underwear was the only thing keeping her from standing trial for three hundred counts of negligent homicide, she’s still there. There is still no evidence Barack Obama takes defense issues seriously, or even understands them. His Administration stands by while Navy SEALs are persecuted for allegedly punching a terrorist in the mouth… while the enemy murders handcuffed hostages with head shots.

I can think of a hundred bad reasons Obama would let the murderers of Karbala go. He needs to help us imagine a good one. America’s military men and women pledge their last full measure of their devotion to our defense. We owe it to them to return that devotion.

I humbly devote this space to remembering Private Johnathon Millican, First Lieutenant Jacob Fritz, Private First Class Shawn Falter, Specialist Johnathan Bryan Chism, and Captain Brian S. Freeman, and I encourage you to join me in demanding the full story behind why the filth who orchestrated their murders are walking around free. We won’t get those answers unless we push for them, with the same courage and dedication our fallen heroes gave to their duty. This story will go away, unless you keep it alive. Love the warriors, by making it clear to Washington that their lives are worth more than any politician’s career.

If I may borrow a few words from Private Falter’s brother: Rest, my friends. You’ve done your part. Your countrymen will take it from here.

Authored by John Hayward

and posted as Doctor Zero to http://www.doczero.org/2010/01/love-the-warriors/

cross-posted to at http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/01/02/love-the-warriors/

return to All Missions

Footnote:

Freed hostage Peter Moore has said he is "delighted" to be released from captivity and looking forward to "getting to know" his family again.

The 36-year-old computer expert from Lincoln, who was kidnapped in Iraq in May 2007, landed at RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, on Friday evening.

Mr Moore said he was looking forward to "catching up" on what he had missed over the past two-and-a-half years.

He is also expected to start a period of counselling and medical care.

In a statement released through the Foreign Office, Mr Moore appealed for "space and time" with his family.

He said: "I am obviously delighted to have returned to the UK and to have been reunited with my family.

"I am looking forward to spending the coming days and weeks catching up on all the things I've missed over the past two and a half years."

Mr Moore's family said they were "thrilled" to have him back safely.

Earlier, a Foreign Office spokesman said the former hostage would be "easing back into life", and that no fixed plan for his return to normality and the debriefing process had been agreed.

Mr Moore, who was taken hostage along with his four British bodyguards while working in Baghdad for a US firm, was released on 30 December 2009.

During his period of captivity, three of the bodyguards were killed. A fourth is thought to be dead.

Mr Moore's return to the UK was veiled in secrecy following a request for privacy from his family.

Asking the media for space, his designated next-of-kin - stepfather Fran Sweeney and Fran's wife Pauline - said: "We would like to have time with Peter on our own."

They said they had "a lot of catching up to do".

BBC Middle East correspondent Jim Muir said Mr Moore's family wanted a "period of decompression" for him to "ease gently back into public life".

Following his release, Mr Moore has said he was subjected to "rough treatment" while in captivity but that he had been treated well in the final six months.

BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner said Mr Moore had told his family that from June he had effectively been placed under house arrest, with en suite facilities, access to satellite TV, a laptop - though not online - and a PlayStation.

The Guardian newspaper has claimed Mr Moore and his bodyguards were taken to a camp in Iran within a day of being seized.

General David Petraeus, the former US commander in Iraq, told the AFP news agency the hostage certainly had "spent part of the time, at the very least, in Iran", but the Foreign Office has said it has no evidence of this.

The Iranian foreign ministry spokesman described claims that the abduction had been masterminded by the elite Revolutionary Guards as "baseless".

Mr Moore had been working for US management consultancy Bearingpoint in Iraq, while the other men were security contractors employed to guard him.

The bodies of three of his bodyguards - Alec MacLachlan, 30, from Llanelli, South Wales, Jason Swindlehurst, 38, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, and Jason Creswell, 39, originally from Glasgow - were passed to UK authorities last year.

The fourth bodyguard, Alan McMenemy, 34, from Glasgow, is also believed to have been killed.

The kidnappers were understood to belong to an obscure militia known as the Islamic Shia Resistance, which demanded the release of up to nine of their associates held in US military custody since early 2007.

Several had already been handed to the Iraqi government and some have since been freed under the reconciliation process.

Qais al-Khazali, the leader of Asaib al-Haq, or the League of Righteousness, was transferred from US to Iraqi custody shortly before the release of Mr Moore.

But the Foreign Office said Mr Moore had not been released as part of any prisoner exchange scheme.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8438327.stm