Thousands Of Sailors, Marines Return Home

[thedrifter]

Thousands Of Sailors, Marines Return Home

POSTED: 9:52 pm PDT October 26, 2004

SAN DIEGO -- More than a thousand sailors and Marines are back home safely with their families.

The USS Denver returned from a five-month deployment Tuesday night. Its homecoming was delayed because of mechanical problems.

The ship pulled into the 32nd Street Pier with hundreds of people waiting.

The ship spent time in the Northern Arabian Gulf supporting the war on terror.

The Denver was part of the same strike group as the USS Belleauwood and USS Comstock.

The other two ships returned home over the weekend.

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/3859122/detail.html

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Posted on Wed, Oct. 27, 2004





Marines from Saugus killed in Iraq

Associated Press


LOS ANGELES - A Marine from Southern California has died in Iraq from injuries suffered in a non-combat related vehicle accident, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

Lance Cpl. Richard P. Slocum, 19, of Saugus, died Oct. 24 after the crash near Abu Gharib, Iraq. The accident was under investigation, the Pentagon said in a brief statement.

Further details were unavailable.

Slocum was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, III Marine Expeditionary Force at Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay.

About 900 members of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment from Kaneohe were mobilized in August for combat duty in Iraq. They left for the Middle East from Okinawa, Japan, where they had been since early July as part of a regularly scheduled six-month deployment.

Slocum is the first Hawaii-based Marine killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan since the start of the war in Iraq in March 2003. Slocum had no family in Hawaii, military officials said.

The Marine's parents, Kay and Robert Slocum, were given few details on his death. They were told their son died when his Humvee overturned while he was maneuvering through barricades at a Marine base.

"He had a lot of friends. You wouldn't believe all the friends who have been here today," said his uncle, Keith Lair. "He liked to have fun; he was really popular."

Slocum, who graduated in 2003 from Saugus High School, broke his foot during boot camp, which delayed his Marine graduation by a week.

He is survived by his parents; sister, Kathy and brother Robert Jr.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/10023101.htm

Ellie

[thedrifter]

75 Idaho Marine reservists called up for Iraq



mtbfxxvar

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A Marine reserve unit based at Idaho's Gowen Field will be mobilized in January for eventual deployment to Iraq.

Marine Maj. Ben Brown said on Tuesday that Company C, 4th Tank Battalion, 4th Marine Division will become part of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, which will take over from the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force now on duty in Iraq.

In addition to the 75 Idaho reservists in the unit, there are 16 others from Oregon, Montana, Utah and Nevada.

The government also announced that the battalion's Company B based in Yakima, Wash., was being called up as well. It includes reservists from northern Idaho.

The Marine reserve units marked only the latest activation of troops from Idaho.

The 116th Brigade Combat Team, which includes 1,600 citizen soldiers from the Idaho National Guard, just completed its training for deployment late this year to Kirkuk in northern Iraq. Thirty Idaho Air National Guardsmen have been stationed in the Persian Gulf for months, flying cargo planes in and out of Iraq.

And Army Reserve officials in Seattle confirmed that in addition to eight Idaho reservists currently in Iraq as part of units based in other states, 50 Idaho reservists are training at Fort Lewis in Washington with the Spokane-based 659th Engineer Company for deployment to Iraq by year's end.

Brown, the tank company's training officer at Gowen Field, said the Marine unit would be split in two - just over half assigned to the tank duty they have been trained for and the rest as military police for convoy security and manning checkpoints.

The tank teams will train at Twenty-Nine Palms, Calif., and Camp Lejeune, N.C., while the Marines designated for military police duty will train at Camp Lejeune.

Brown said the training will take 30 to 60 days and be tailored to activity in Iraq. Deployment is set for March or April and was expected to run through 2005. He said tank tactics will focus on close support of infantry troops rather than more traditional confrontations with opposing armored forces.

http://www.casperstartribune.net/apdata/wire_detail.php?wire_num=24438

Ellie

[thedrifter]

.S. Acts Against General Who Saw a 'Christian' War

By Andrea Shalal-Esa

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Army has taken action against Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who embarrassed the Bush administration by giving speeches in which he described the war on terrorism as a Christian battle against Satan.



Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody declined to give any details of the action taken in response to Boykin's remarks, which violated Pentagon (news - web sites) rules, but said it was not "significant."


"I took the appropriate action based on the recommendations of the Inspector General," Cody told Reuters while attending the annual meeting of the Association of the U.S. Army.


He did not say when the action was taken.


"If it was something significant, it would be something we would talk about. So that should give you an indication," Cody said.


Boykin, who was at the meeting, declined comment.


The Pentagon inspector general concluded in an August report that Boykin should face "appropriate corrective action" because he failed to clear official data in some of the 23 religious-oriented speeches he gave after January 2002.


Although he initially described the war against terrorism as a "crusade," President Bush (news - web sites) has since worked to shore up relations with Muslim states and avoid the appearance of a Christian-Muslim struggle.


The Bush administration has come under fire from Muslim Americans for what they see as heavy-handed law enforcement in a crackdown against groups associated with al Qaeda, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.


ARAB AMERICAN ANGER


Recent polls have shown a strong swing against Bush among Arab Americans in the race to next week's presidential election in which Bush is neck-and-neck with Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites).


Boykin touched off a firestorm when he gave a series of speeches while in uniform in which he referred to the war on terrorism as a battle with Satan.


He said America had been targeted "because we're a Christian nation." He said later he was not anti-Islam or any other religion.


Muslim groups and lawmakers condemned Boykin's comments and Bush said the remarks "didn't reflect my opinion."


The Muslim groups also raised questions about what role Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, may have played in creating U.S. military interrogation policy before a scandal erupted over the abuse of prisoners in Iraq (news - web sites).


The Pentagon report said Boykin had been obliged to clear the speeches with the Pentagon, given "the sensitive nature of his remarks concerning U.S. policy and the likelihood that he would be perceived by his audiences as a DOD spokesman based on his official position and his appearance in uniform."


Boykin also failed to issue a required disclaimer at the speeches that he was not representing official Pentagon policy, and failed to report his receipt of one travel payment exceeding $260 from a non-government source, it concluded.





In its 10-month internal investigation the Pentagon did not address whether the substance of Boykin's remarks was appropriate for a senior Pentagon official or whether it compromised his fitness to perform his duties.

That question, it said, should be decided by senior Pentagon officials.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has praised Boykin's "outstanding record" and refused to reprimand the general, who played a role in a 1993 battle with Somali warlords and the ill-fated hostage rescue attempt in Iran in 1980.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1896&ncid=1896&e=1&u=/nm/20041027/us_nm/arms_boykin_dc

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Iraq Militants Threaten to Behead Japan Hostage -Site

DUBAI (Reuters) - A group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said it would behead a member of Japan's forces it had abducted in Iraq (news - web sites) if the Japanese government did not withdraw its forces from the country within 48 hours.


"We grant the Japanese government 48 hours to withdraw its troops from Iraq or this infidel will meet the same fate as Berg and the other infidels," Al Qaeda Organization of Holy War in Iraq said in an Internet video tape on Tuesday, which was also reported on Al Jazeera television.


It was referring to American Nick Berg who Zarqawi's group beheaded in May.


Japanese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hatsuhisa Takashima told Reuters: "Unfortunately, there is no independent report from our side."

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041026/ts_nm/iraq_japan_hostage_threat_dc


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Army Won't Shorten Combat Tours
Associated Press
October 27, 2004

WASHINGTON - The Army will not shorten combat tours in Iraq next year from 12 months to six or nine months, as some had hoped, because that would undermine the war effort, the Army's top general said Tuesday.

Gen. Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, told a group of reporters that he would prefer shorter combat tours in Iraq but believes that cannot happen as long as the U.S. military is required to maintain roughly the 135,000 troops there now to fight the insurgency.

The Army and Marine Corps are preparing to maintain that level at least through the end of next year. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that if U.S.-trained and equipped Iraqi security forces become available in larger numbers next year, as expected, then U.S. troops levels may be reduced.

On a related matter, the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Richard Cody, said the Army has not been asked to accelerate the deployment of a fresh rotation of troops into Iraq. These include four brigades of the 3rd Infantry Division, which is scheduled to go there in January.

Some have cited the possibility of getting some parts of the 3rd Infantry to Iraq sooner to bolster the force in the final weeks before Iraq holds elections in late January.

"He hasn't asked for that," Cody said, referring to Gen. John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East. If asked, the Army could speed up some of the deployments, Cody said.

The 3rd Infantry, which spearheaded the drive to Baghdad in March and April 2003, has been reorganizing this year and will be the first division to make a return deployment to Iraq.


When the war began in March 2003 there was little debate about the length of combat tours in Iraq because the Pentagon did not expect to keep large numbers of troops there for more than a few months after the fall of Baghdad, which occurred in April. By that summer, however, the 12-month rule was adopted for both active-duty and reserve units, and a few units have been ordered to stay even longer.

Schoomaker and Cody cited several drawbacks to shortening combat tours under current circumstances, which include an insurgency that continues to adapt its tactics of killing coalition and Iraqi forces.

Among them:

- The fight against the insurgents will be more effective if there is not a frequent turnover of American troops, in part because on-the-ground experience pays dividends in understanding the enemy.

- The effort to integrate U.S.-trained Iraqi forces into American fighting units in coming months will be more successful if they spend longer periods operating together.

- National Guard and Reserve forces have to put in the same amount of pre-deployment training and preparation for going to Iraq regardless of whether they stay for six months or 12 months. Thus shorter tours would mean mobilizing and training more Guard and Reserve units, if the overall force requirement remains the same.

"You also have the dilemma of the operational commanders over there who say, you know, if you go to six months (tours) you're only going to get about four months' use out of the force," because of the time it takes to get fully geared up for operations once arriving in Iraq, Schoomaker said.

"That means you're going to have constant handover of contacts with the local populace, which is exactly what you don't want to do in an insurgency," he added. "You want that continuity" that comes with longer tours.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

For former GIs, fitting in on campus a struggle

By Aamer Madhani
Chicago Tribune staff reporter

Lying on the hood of the Humvee he used as his bed for much of the war, Brandon Nordhoff would put on his earphones, turn up the volume on his Discman to drown out battlefield noises, and imagine himself at a party back on the Indiana University campus.

After one such dream, Nordhoff determined that when he returned to campus, he would pledge a fraternity and make up for the social life he lost while deployed with his Indianapolis-based Marine reserve unit.

He has made up for lost time with his social life, but for Nordhoff and many of the thousands of Iraq (news - web sites) war veterans, the transition from war zone to campus hasn't gone smoothly. They acknowledge they struggle to mend war wounds, mental and physical, while trying to readjust to the relative triviality of life as a student.

As the oldest pledge in this year's Acacia fraternity class, Nordhoff, 21, often feels awkward. Partying while many of his Marine buddies are still in Iraq now seems frivolous. And the occasional war protest on campus can make him furious.

"Going to war changes you," said the corporal, a junior from Kirksville, Ind., a small farming community near Bloomington. "I feel 200 percent different than the people in Bloomington and a lot of the kids at the university."

In the first few weeks of the school year, veterans affairs officers at campuses throughout the Midwest have reported being inundated with soldier-students looking for help collecting their education benefits under the Montgomery GI Bill.

The officers can help them straighten out their benefits, but universities have no one designated to help the GIs with the transition from battlefield to classroom.

Although the Iraq war hasn't generated the unrest on campuses that the Vietnam War brought in the 1960s and 1970s, divided opinion on the current conflict is obvious. Some returning soldiers complain that their classmates and professors often have a shallow view of the war and that they don't show enough support for the troops.

"Inevitably in classes, you have these kids who criticize the war and criticize the president and don't know what they're talking about," said Cpl. Daniel Rhodes, a Marine reservist from west suburban La Grange and a senior in political science at the University of Illinois in Champaign. "I want to say to them, `Do you realize that you're sitting here in a classroom, living freely, because we're willing to fight?'"

Other veterans have returned to campus with doubts about the necessity of the war in Iraq. From lectures in his Chinese history class about how emperors sold war to their people, to a local business' toy-soldier display representing Americans who have died in combat, Bradley Rehak, a senior at the University of Iowa, said he is constantly reminded of the war.

"We can say that we got rid of a terrible dictator by going to war," said Rehak, 24, a medic with the Iowa National Guard. "The argument misses the far greater points that we haven't found that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction and we haven't found links between Al Qaeda and Iraq."

Steve Asche, 24, another student at Illinois and a veteran of the Iraq war, echoes many of the criticisms from war opponents on his campus--the astronomical cost to fight, the loss of American and Iraqi lives, and what he sees as questionable planning by the architects of the war. Still, it angers him when he sees classmates make sweeping criticisms of the war, which he said belittle the sacrifice he and other soldiers made.

"I don't mind if people are against the war and want to speak out against the war, but I don't like it when they don't support the soldiers," said Asche, a civil engineering major carrying 27 credit hours this semester to complete his degree.

Since returning to campus last spring, Asche, who served south of Baghdad with the Illinois National Guard's 333rd Military Police unit, said that at times he has been consumed by bitterness and frustration.

About three months after arriving in Iraq, Asche was badly burned in an explosion. During a chase of an Iraqi vehicle that raced past a U.S. checkpoint, a Humvee crashed into the one Asche was riding in. He spent several days in a drug-induced coma after being airlifted to a military hospital in Germany.

At 6-foot-4 with a football player build, Asche looks the picture of health and youth. But his hands, repaired by skin grafts, are as wrinkled and leathery as an elderly man's.

"I just want to be over with it," the former sergeant said of college.

Barry Romo, national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, recalled that perhaps the most turbulent, emotional time in his life was when he returned to campus in San Bernardino, Calif., after serving in Vietnam in the late 1960s. It was difficult to relate to classmates who had not served in Vietnam, Romo said.

"One of the things that bothered me was that people were going about their daily lives without even noting that people are dying" in Vietnam, Romo said. "There was just this feeling that people were detached from what you went through."

Rhodes, 23, who was a junior when he left for Iraq, said he has grown disillusioned by campus life. After war, he said, most of what's taught in the classroom seems unimportant.

Over the summer, Rhodes completed Officer Candidates School at Quantico, Va., and as soon as he graduates, he will go on active duty as a second lieutenant. He's taking Arabic, Hebrew and Spanish this semester because he thinks the languages might come in handy in future military operations.

Before heading to Iraq, he was an underachieving student scraping by with a 2.0 grade-point average. Since coming back to school, he has regimented his lifestyle and dramatically raised his grades.

Rhodes has shut himself off from campus life in part, he said, because most of his civilian classmates wouldn't understand things about his war experience, and they would shun him if he tried to explain.

Sitting in a coffee shop near campus between classes recently, Rhodes recalled how he almost killed a man in front of the man's wife and child last year on a southern Iraq road.

At the beginning of the war, he and his Marine reserve unit were guarding an essential fuel line supplying gasoline to U.S. military tanks and vehicles as they made their way toward Baghdad. The area was off-limits to non-U.S. military personnel, but a man in Bedouin clothing, riding a donkey, and a woman and child were coming toward his platoon.

His sergeant gestured to the family to stop, but they kept coming. Because the fuel line was a valuable asset, Rhodes said there was great concern that Iraqi fighters might send someone in civilian clothing to attack.

Rhodes said his sergeant told him to prepare to gun down the man and told another Marine to be ready to shoot the woman and child. As the family moved closer to the fuel line, the sergeant told Rhodes that if they came another few meters, the Marines must kill them.

Just a step or two before that arbitrary boundary, the family turned around.

"If I would have killed him, I would have been totally justified," Rhodes said. He nodded to a nearby table in the coffee shop where another student was playing guitar and flirting with an undergraduate.

"Now, if I said that to any of the students sitting in this coffee shop, there would be an uproar. They would be outraged."

While Rhodes said the war experience helped him mature, Nordhoff said his time in Iraq made him long for Bloomington's parties and bar scene. In phone calls and e-mail, his friends on campus asked him whether he was safe and how he was coping. He replied with questions about parties, the bars they were frequenting and who was dating whom.

For all his anticipation about returning to a normal college life, things haven't turned out as he expected.

In one of the first rituals at the fraternity, pledges were lined up in a row similar to the ones he stood in during boot camp, Nordhoff recalled. One of his fraternity brothers was pacing the line of pledges and screaming at them, like his drill sergeant in the Marines had. The idea of parodying the military seemed silly to Nordhoff, so he told the frat brother that he should use his "big-boy voice" if he had to dress down pledges.

During Nordhoff's Vietnam War history class, a discussion about the use of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the 1950s to hunt for communists quickly shifted to whether it was un-American to oppose the war in Iraq.

One of Nordhoff's classmates chimed in derisively that disagreeing with the president after Sept. 11, 2001, is now considered un-American. Another student criticized the U.S. government for imposing its values on Iraqi society.

Finally, the graduate assistant leading the discussion turned to Nordhoff. His classmates knew from previous discussions that Nordhoff had served in Iraq.

"I don't know if I am for the occupation, but I do think we did the right thing in getting rid of Saddam," he said defensively.

Though he's certain that the Iraqis are better off now that Hussein has been overthrown, Nordhoff said he's disappointed that President Bush (news - web sites) hasn't spelled out an exit strategy. A staunch Republican, he vowed to sit out this election rather than vote against the president.

As he wandered through downtown Bloomington between classes one day recently, he was stopped by a woman who tried to register him to vote. He politely dismissed her but didn't consider explaining that he doesn't plan to vote.

"She wouldn't understand," Nordhoff said, "and I am not looking for someone to lecture me about the war."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Life in Iraq Beats Vietnam, Veterans Say
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Monte Morin
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 27, 2004

BAGHDAD - Before Staff Sgt. Carlys Peters flew home from his first war more than 30 years ago, the Army gave him some advice: Don't wear your uniform in public.

"Coming back from Vietnam, people considered us drug addicts, alcoholics, rapists, murderers," Peters said. "At LAX, they were shouting and spitting on us…. After that, I didn't tell people I was in Vietnam."

Now, at the age of 52, the California National Guardsman finds himself in Baghdad, midway through his second war. This time around, though, Peters said he was received very differently when he returned home to California on leave a few months ago. "People said hi to me and waved. It's nice to have people welcome you back. I'll say that much."

For Vietnam veterans like him, the Iraq war has been more a study of contrasts than an episode of deja vu. Whether it's the terrain, the technology, the food or the enemy's skill, there's little that's similar between the two, they say. Maybe the only thing that hasn't changed is Peters' fatalism.

"I'm not as nervous as these younger guys are," he said. "My philosophy is, if anything happens, it's gonna happen. Like we said in Vietnam, 'It ain't nothing but a thing.' "

About 40,000 of the U.S. troops in Iraq are from the National Guard, a force whose members are older on average than regular Army troops and more likely to include Vietnam veterans. According to Pentagon statistics, only 6% of regular Army troops are older than 40, compared with 22% of Guard members. Military spokesmen in Iraq said they had no statistics on how many Vietnam vets were serving there.

Peters is one of two Vietnam veterans assigned to the Riverside-based Bravo Company of the 1-160th Infantry Regiment, a group of 97 men known as "Maddogs." The company's first sergeant, Paul Balboa, 57, served four combat tours in Southeast Asia as well and spent much of that time with the Special Forces.

Attached to the 1st Cavalry Division, the Maddogs provide armed escorts for U.S. Embassy personnel, Iraqi officials and truck convoys. They ride Iraq's most dangerous roads on a regular basis and have encountered their share of roadside bombs and mortar attacks, rocket-propelled-grenade ambushes and small-arms fire. But after more than five months in Iraq, the Maddogs have yet to suffer a fatality.

Balboa, a Moreno Valley resident, said that in Iraq, the enemy is far less skillful than in Vietnam. However, the insurgents are learning from their mistakes.

"Their attacks are well planned but poorly executed, and they're not very good shots," he said. "But they're getting better and better. Here and there, they're acquiring one or two really good ones."

Balboa worked for Pacific Bell more than 30 years, retiring a month after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to work full time in the Guard. The patriotism that inspired him and many others in the company to volunteer has resulted in high morale, he said - another contrast with the Vietnam War.

"People were in Vietnam because they had to be. They were drafted," said Balboa, who volunteered for the military. "Nowadays, we're here because we want to be here. Whether it's because they want to do their duty or they're looking for adventure."

The Maddogs are quartered in an underground parking garage that reportedly housed a fleet of cars plundered from Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusai. Unlike the field tents that Peters and Balboa used in Vietnam, the platoon bays in Iraq are loaded with modern conveniences - televisions, DVD players, videogames, leather couches and seats, refrigerators, stereos and Internet connections.

Instead of the leftover World War II C-rations and stringy water buffalo that soldiers often ate in Vietnam, GIs in Iraq enjoy hot meals in air-conditioned dining facilities. The Maddogs' chow hall offers a weekly Surf and Turf night, with steak and lobster tails.

And although Peters and Balboa would wait months for mail to find them in Vietnam and were rarely afforded the chance to call home, troops in Iraq are in constant contact with their families.

"It's a little bit too much, but it's good for the soldiers because they're not dwelling on things," Balboa said. "Also, if there is a problem at home, you can take care of it right away."

After a day of riding shotgun with truck convoys, Bravo Company soldiers are likely to unwind by popping a movie into a DVD player or playing videogames - more wholesome forms of release than those relied upon in Vietnam. In that war, beer was sometimes brought to troops in the bush by helicopter. But Iraq has been declared a no-booze zone, and troops face harsh punishment if caught drinking.

"Back then, every base had a sin city," Balboa said. "Drinking, smoking and womanizing was the way we were then. Now, that's unheard of."

Many members of Bravo are decades younger than Peters and Balboa, and Peters endures constant ribbing about his age. Soldiers ask him to describe famous Civil War battles and call him Grandpa. Behind all the joking, however, is a deep respect, soldiers say.

"I look up to him," said Spc. Brandon Doyel, 22, of Palm Springs. "I don't tell him that, because I don't want to pump him up too much, but I take what he says to heart.

"When I first saw him, I said, 'Who is this old bastard?' But then I saw his combat patches and realized he'd been through a lot."

Peters is scheduled to return home, along with Balboa and the rest of the Maddogs, in about six months. His stint in Iraq has been very different from his service in Vietnam, but he hopes one thing ends up the same - that he makes it back without a Purple Heart.

"I made it through Vietnam without a scratch," he said, "and I'm going to make it through this without a scratch."


Ellie

[thedrifter]

Recon Honors Fallen Brothers-in-Arms
by Sgt. Robert E. Jones Sr.
Marine Corps News
October 25, 2004

Camp Fallujah, Iraq - As if obeying a direct order, the wind blowing steadily paused so men could listen. Inside Camp Fallujah's theater was a sergeant major leading a solemn event. The air was still but possessed a sharp chill in Iraq.

Today, LtCol. Derric M. Knight, Commanding Officer of 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion and his Marines, remembered and honored their brothers-in-arms killed 21 years ago in Beirut, Lebanon.

The remembrance ceremony, hosted annually by 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion, home-based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. was attended by more than 400 I Marine Expeditionary Force service members. Also attending were LtGen. John F. Sattler, Commanding General, I MEF, BGen. Dennis J. Hejlik, Deputy Commanding General, I MEF and SgtMaj. Carlton W. Kent, Sergeant Major, I MEF.
Sergeant Major Robert R. Terry, 2nd Recon Bn.'s Sergeants Major and coordinator of the event, read the Department of the Defense report of the bombing.

Also participating were 2nd Recon Bn Marines who read the final roll call of the 16 fallen Marines and one Sailor killed that day in the catastrophic attack.
Master Sgt. Burnham K. Matthews, then LCpl. Matthews, was present during the bombing. Then a member Company C, 3rd Platoon, 2nd Recon Bn, he shared with the audience his experience:

"As the sun made it's slow ascent giving rise to another slow Sunday morning in Beirut, Lebanon, a two-vehicle convoy returned from patrol. At 0608, the vehicles passed by posts, number 5 and 6 turned the corner, passed the Sergeant of the Guard shack and made their way to the rear of the Battalion Landing Team's Headquarters. The eight weary Reconnaissance Marines made their way into the headquarters building and set about their daily tasks. The Team Leaders were set to debrief with the Platoon Sergeant, one Marine went to shave, another to clean his rifle, and the rest went about their individual tasks.




The day was October 23, 1983. I was a 20-year-old lance corporal riding in one of those vehicles with little more than two years in the Marine Corps. We were supposed to be peacekeepers in a land that seemed to enjoy being at war. We did not know exactly what a peacekeeper was or how to go about the task at hand.

At 0621, a 5-ton Mercedes truck breached the perimeter right between posts 5 and 6. Picking up speed across the parking lot, it crashed over the Sergeant of the Guard shack and drove straight into the building. At 0622, a religious fanatic completed his cowardly act, self-detonating 12,000 pounds of explosives and in an instant, 241 United States service men paid the ultimate price for freedom. Among them were 17 of our fellow Reconnaissance Marines of the 3rd Platoon, Company C, 2d Reconnaissance Battalion.

We are here today to remember and honor them for their sacrifice and for their dedication. We should remember them because their sacrifice should not be forgotten. We remember them to learn from the lessons they taught us. We remember the best of the World's Finest.
Most people do not know that Marines of "Charlie Three' were all hand picked volunteers. The Commanding Officer at the time said that the only Marines serving in Beruit would be on a voluntary basis and, of course, the list of volunteers was long.

Marines competed in special events to help the decision process on who would go. Charlie Three was truly some of the best Marines that 2nd Recon Battalion had to offer.
The Marines of Charlie Three were more than just my brothers-in-arms; they were my brothers in spirit.

The Marines of 2nd Recon Bn have gathered together every year since 1983 to remember the Marines of 3rd Platoon, Company C, 2 nd Reconnaissance Battalion. The Battalion has a memorial (at Camp Lejeune) dedicated to these Marines and we have placed paddles on the wall of the lounge to honor them. We gather here together today, in a distant land called Iraq, to honor them once more."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Military Fighter Jet Drops Errant Bomb
Associated Press
October 25, 2004

FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa. - Military officials are investigating why a jet fighter accidentally dropped a 25-pound practice bomb on a hiking trail a mile from its intended target in southeastern Pennsylvania.

No one was injured when the grapefruit-sized, cast-iron bomb fell on the trail Oct. 13 during a training mission for a pair of A-10 Thunderbolts. The bomb created a crater about 6 inches wide in the trail along an abandoned rail line in Schuylkill County.

At least one hiker was close enough to hear the thud.

"It took a while for me to realize what had occurred," the hiker said in an e-mail to the state Game Commission. "Couldn't believe it! Retraced my steps. Still couldn't believe it!"

The plane that dropped the bomb was assigned to the 111th Fighter Wing at Willow Grove Naval Air Station, said Col. Chris Cleaver, spokesman for Fort Indiantown Gap, an 18,000-acre military training site managed by the Pennsylvania National Guard.

The plane has been grounded while officials investigate what caused the bomb to drop incorrectly. Investigators have ruled out pilot error as the cause, Cleaver said.

The dropped bomb is "a significant concern on all fronts," Cleaver said. "Whether it's in peace time training environment or on the front lines of war, when you have a bomb that hangs up, that is a significant safety concern."

The National Guard has been seeking permission to acquire 2,100 acres of Pennsylvania Game Commission land to act as a buffer zone for a new tank range. The base is located about 25 miles northwest of Harrisburg.

In 1997, officials closed a tank range after rounds ricocheted over the top of a mountain and fell on state game lands. A fisherman reported a near miss from one errant round from a tank gun.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Tape: Hassan Urges British to Leave Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A kidnapped British humanitarian worker made another plea for her life in a video aired Wednesday, urging Britain to withdraw troops from Iraq (news - web sites) and asking for the release of all Iraqi female detainees.


The tape, broadcast on Al-Jazeera television, showed a distraught and frightened Margaret Hassan, the 59-year-old head of CARE International in Iraq, blinking back tears as she spoke into the camera. No gunmen were visible in the footage.


"Please don't bring the soldiers to Baghdad... Please, on top of that, please release the women prisoners from prisons," she said.


No group has claimed responsibility for her abduction. But followers of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi made the same demand for the release of female prisoners in the abduction of two Americans and a Briton last month. All three were beheaded.


It was the third video released since Hassan — who also holds Irish and Iraqi citizenship — was kidnapped on her way to work in Baghdad a week ago. The first video, which had no audio, showed her sitting in a bare room. In the second, Hassan pleaded with Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) to act to save her life, saying she faced the same fate as Kenneth Bigley, the decapitated Briton.


Her captors have not identified themselves in any of the videos — no gunmen or banners with slogans have appeared as they often do in other hostage videos. Al-Jazeera, which sometimes receives separate statements along with videos, has also not identified the group holding her.


A spokesperson in Britain's Foreign Office did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Wednesday's video, and a spokesman at Prime Minister Tony Blair's office could not be reached immediately.


In the video, Hassan also called on CARE International to close its offices in Iraq.


Amber Meikle, a spokeswoman for CARE International in London, said the group had temporarily suspended its operations in Iraq shortly after Hassan's kidnapping. She said she had not seen the video and could not immediately comment further.


Britain began redeploying some 800 troops toward the Baghdad area Wednesday, in a move aimed at freeing up U.S. forces for an assault on insurgents areas north and west of the capital.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_hostages

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Marines embraced
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By LAUREL JORGENSEN
The Orange County Register

NEWPORT BEACH - For the Marines and families of Camp Pendleton's 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, Mess Night holds much more meaning than a traditional military dinner.

The 1,000-Marine unit is preparing for redeployment to Iraq in December, and Mess Night is usually held before troops go off to battle.

Tuesday night in Newport Beach, the community and the military came together - "not something you see very often," noted Platoon Sgt. Juan Hernandez - for a different kind of Mess Night. More than $10,000 was raised to help Marine families in need.

"A lot of people don't know that a lot of junior (Marines) go through financial hardships (during deployment)," 1st Sgt. Billy Williams said. "This money helps ease the minds of the family and the service member."

The 1st Battalion of the 1st Marine Regiment - known as "1/1" - returned from its first tour of Iraq in March after a five-month deployment. The battalion is scheduled to stay overseas for a minimum of six months - a period when some of the families could face unexpected financial challenges.

"It always happens that there's a hiccup while (the Marines) are gone," said John Rhodes, a retired Marine lieutenant general and a member of the 1/1 Adoption Committee, which plannedthe event. "Unfortunately the ones who can least afford it are the ones that get hit."

"Cars break down, kids need clothes and washing machines go on the fritz," said Councilman Steven Bromberg, chairman of the committee. "That's where we are going to spend this money."

All 400 seats, at $200 a ticket, were filled for Mess Night at the Balboa Bay Club.

"It's one of those events that people just embrace," Bromberg said. "Once they found out about it ... people just lined up for it."

More than 150 commissioned and noncommissioned officers attended the black-tie affair, which included toasts to those who fought in previous wars and lively banter between the residents and the Marines.

During the cocktail hour that preceded the prime rib dinner, many Marines snapped photos with actor Jon Voight, who said he "came out for these guys."

"When you're doing a lot of movies, you don't get a chance to meet the real thing," he said. "I had to come down here and be reminded of what the real thing is."

About half the battalion has been to Iraq before, said Hernandez, the platoon sergeant. When the battalion heads back in December, Hernandez, 30, will be leaving behind his wife of eight years and his two children for the second time.

"I think the worst part is just not being there with them," he said. "But they understand what I do."

When asked what they thought about going back to Iraq, many of the Marine officers said it wasn't something they thought about.

"I've got to go do my job," said Williams, 36.

Newport Beach resident Richard Brown said he appreciated the chance to chat with the Marines.

"I asked one sergeant, 'How do your troops feel about going to Iraq?' He said, 'They can't wait. They want to get over there and get the job done,'" Brown said.

The event was the first to raise money for the 1/1 Adoption Fund, established after Newport Beach adopted the 1st Battalion, 1st Marines in December 2003.

Some people donated money without attending the event, Bromberg said. Others paid more than the $200 ticket price.

City Councilman John Heffernan gave $1,000 for his seat. "Writing the check is a lot easier than doing the physical training those soldiers had to do at Camp Pendleton," he said.

The "adoption" of the battalion was the start of a partnership between the Marines and the city. This summer's Balboa Island Parade was dedicated to the battalion, and Bromberg said he hopes to organize events to involve the Marine families.

The decision to support the battalion was easy, Bromberg said, partly because of the number of retired Marines living in Newport Beach.

Heffernan said reaching out to the Marines financially is important because "we're a wealthy community, and they're doing our work in a dangerous place."

"I don't care what your position is on the war - whether we should be there or not," he said. "These are the people who are there."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Signs Point to Imminent Showdown in Iraq

By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq - An uptick in airstrikes and other military moves point to an imminent showdown between U.S. forces and Sunni Muslim insurgents west of Baghdad — a decisive battle that could determine whether the campaign to bring democracy and stability to Iraq (news - web sites) can succeed.


American officials have not confirmed a major assault is near against the insurgent bastions of Fallujah and neighboring Ramadi. But Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has warned Fallujah leaders that force will be used if they do not hand over extremists, including terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.


A similar escalation in U.S. military actions and Iraqi government warnings occurred before a major offensive in Najaf forced militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to give up that holy city in late August. And U.S. and Iraqi troops retook Samarra from insurgents early this month.


Now U.S. airstrikes on purported al-Zarqawi positions in three neighborhoods of eastern and northern Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, have increased. And residents reported this week that Marines appeared to be reinforcing forward positions near key areas of the city. Other military units are on the move, including 800 British soldiers headed north to the U.S.-controlled zone.


The goal of an attack would be to restore government control in time for national elections by the end of January. However, an all-out assault on the scale of April's siege of Fallujah would carry enormous risk — both political and military — for the Americans and their Iraqi allies.


A series of policy mistakes by the U.S. military and the Bush administration have transformed Fallujah from a shabby, dusty backwater known regionally for mosques and tasty kebabs into a symbol of Arab pride and defiance of the United States throughout the Islamic world.


A videotape obtained Tuesday by Associated Press Television News featured a warning by masked gunmen that if Fallujah is subjected to an all-out assault, they will strike "with weapons and military tactics" that the Americans and their allies "have not experienced before."


Regardless of whether the threat was an empty boast, insurgents elsewhere in Iraq could be expected to step up attacks to try to relieve pressure on fighters in the Fallujah and Ramadi areas.


But the main problem an assault would pose for both the U.S. military and Allawi's government is political, such as a widespread public backlash. A nationwide association of Sunni clerics also has threatened to urge a boycott of the January elections if U.S. forces storm Fallujah.


So Iraqi officials appear anxious to convince the public that they have made every effort to solve the Fallujah crisis peacefully. The government spin is that the people of Fallujah are held as virtual hostages of armed foreign terrorists. Although Fallujah leaders insist there are no more than a few foreign fighters in the city, Arab journalists who have visited say they heard non-Iraqi accents at some checkpoints.


U.S. and Iraqi officials hope the Iraqi people are so fed up with suicide attacks, assassinations and kidnappings — many of them believed orchestrated from Fallujah and Ramadi — that they will acquiesce to the use of force.


"There are terror groups in this city who are taking human shields," Iraq's deputy prime minister for national security, Barham Saleh, said Wednesday, referring to Fallujah. "We are working hard to rid the people of Fallujah of them and to let security and stability prevail across Iraq."


In the event of an attack, Iraqi insurgents, who have skillfully used the Internet as a propaganda tool, would likely attempt to muster opposition in the Arab world with graphic accounts of the suffering and death of innocent women and children caught up in the fighting.


It's a tactic that worked when Marines attacked in Fallujah last April seeking to root out foreign fighters and capture the killers of four American security contractors whose mutilated bodies were hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River.


The attack was called off within weeks — reportedly on orders from the White House — after a wave of outrage among Sunni Muslims in Iraq and elsewhere over reports that hundreds of civilians had been killed. Ghazi al-Yawer, now the interim president, and other leading Sunni politicians threatened to resign from the then-Iraqi Governing Council if the assault did not stop.


After the Marines pulled back, the city fell under the control of extremist clerics and their mujahedeen allies, who had defended Fallujah against the Americans. The Fallujah Brigade, organized from residents to assume security duties, melted away within a few months.


Weeks after the siege ended, Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi and others complained that the April agreement enabled insurgents to transform Fallujah into a sanctuary. The wave of car bombings and the beheading of foreign hostages that accelerated after the end of the Fallujah fighting seemed to validate those criticisms.





To avoid a repeat of the April political disaster, the Iraqi government has been preparing the public for a showdown. On Wednesday, Allawi said more extremists were flooding into Fallujah.

Although negotiations with Fallujah clerics broke down this month, government ministers maintain they are still in contact with community leaders in hopes they will hand over al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian whom the clerics insist is not in the city.


http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041027/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_showdown_ahead

Ellie

[thedrifter]

No. 1073-04
Oct 27, 2004
IMMEDIATE RELEASE




National Guard and Reserve Mobilized as of October 27, 2004
This week, the Army and Air Force announced an increase in the number of reservists on active duty in support of the partial mobilization, while the Navy, Marines and Coast Guard had a decrease. The net collective result is 2,332 more reservists mobilized than last week.

At any given time, services may mobilize some units and individuals while demobilizing others, making it possible for these figures to either increase or decrease. Total number currently on active duty in support of the partial mobilization for the Army National Guard and Army Reserve is 149,763; Naval Reserve, 3,574; Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, 10,121; Marine Corps Reserve, 11,466; and the Coast Guard Reserve, 1,120. This brings the total National Guard and Reserve personnel, who have been mobilized, to 176,044 including both units and individual augmentees.

A cumulative roster of all National Guard and Reserve personnel, who are currently mobilized can be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Oct2004/d20041027ngr.pdf.


Ellie

[thedrifter]

For ex-GIs, fitting in on campus a struggle

By Aamer Madhani Tribune staff reporter

Lying on the hood of the Humvee he used as his bed for much of the war, Brandon Nordhoff would put on his earphones, turn up the volume on his Discman to drown out battlefield noises, and imagine himself at a party back on the Indiana University campus.


After one such dream, Nordhoff determined that when he returned to campus, he would pledge a fraternity and make up for the social life he lost while deployed with his Indianapolis-based Marine reserve unit.


He has made up for lost time with his social life, but for Nordhoff and many of the thousands of Iraq (news - web sites) war veterans, the transition from war zone to campus hasn't gone smoothly. They acknowledge they struggle to mend war wounds, mental and physical, while trying to readjust to the relative triviality of life as a student.


As the oldest pledge in this year's Acacia fraternity class, Nordhoff, 21, often feels awkward. Partying while many of his Marine buddies are still in Iraq now seems frivolous. And the occasional war protest on campus can make him furious.


"Going to war changes you," said the corporal, a junior from Kirksville, Ind., a small farming community near Bloomington. "I feel 200 percent different than the people in Bloomington and a lot of the kids at the university."


In the first few weeks of the school year, veterans affairs officers at campuses throughout the Midwest have reported being inundated with soldier-students looking for help collecting their education benefits under the Montgomery GI Bill.


The officers can help them straighten out their benefits, but universities have no one designated to help the GIs with the transition from battlefield to classroom.


Although the Iraq war hasn't generated the unrest on campuses that the Vietnam War brought in the 1960s and 1970s, divided opinion on the current conflict is obvious. Some returning soldiers complain that their classmates and professors often have a shallow view of the war and that they don't show enough support for the troops.


"Inevitably in classes, you have these kids who criticize the war and criticize the president and don't know what they're talking about," said Cpl. Daniel Rhodes, a Marine reservist from west suburban La Grange and a senior in political science at the University of Illinois in Champaign. "I want to say to them, `Do you realize that you're sitting here in a classroom, living freely, because we're willing to fight?'"


Other veterans have returned to campus with doubts about the necessity of the war in Iraq. From lectures in his Chinese history class about how emperors sold war to their people, to a local business' toy-soldier display representing Americans who have died in combat, Bradley Rehak, a senior at the University of Iowa, said he is constantly reminded of the war.


"We can say that we got rid of a terrible dictator by going to war," said Rehak, 24, a medic with the Iowa National Guard. "The argument misses the far greater points that we haven't found that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction and we haven't found links between Al Qaeda and Iraq."


Steve Asche, 24, another student at Illinois and a veteran of the Iraq war, echoes many of the criticisms from war opponents on his campus--the astronomical cost to fight, the loss of American and Iraqi lives, and what he sees as questionable planning by the architects of the war. Still, it angers him when he sees classmates make sweeping criticisms of the war, which he said belittle the sacrifice he and other soldiers made.


"I don't mind if people are against the war and want to speak out against the war, but I don't like it when they don't support the soldiers," said Asche, a civil engineering major carrying 27 credit hours this semester to complete his degree.


Since returning to campus last spring, Asche, who served south of Baghdad with the Illinois National Guard's 333rd Military Police unit, said that at times he has been consumed by bitterness and frustration.


About three months after arriving in Iraq, Asche was badly burned in an explosion. During a chase of an Iraqi vehicle that raced past a U.S. checkpoint, a Humvee crashed into the one Asche was riding in. He spent several days in a drug-induced coma after being airlifted to a military hospital in Germany.


At 6-foot-4 with a football player build, Asche looks the picture of health and youth. But his hands, repaired by skin grafts, are as wrinkled and leathery as an elderly man's.


"I just want to be over with it," the former sergeant said of college.





Barry Romo, national coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, recalled that perhaps the most turbulent, emotional time in his life was when he returned to campus in San Bernardino, Calif., after serving in Vietnam in the late 1960s. It was difficult to relate to classmates who had not served in Vietnam, Romo said.

"One of the things that bothered me was that people were going about their daily lives without even noting that people are dying" in Vietnam, Romo said. "There was just this feeling that people were detached from what you went through."

Rhodes, 23, who was a junior when he left for Iraq, said he has grown disillusioned by campus life. After war, he said, most of what's taught in the classroom seems unimportant.

Over the summer, Rhodes completed Officer Candidates School at Quantico, Va., and as soon as he graduates, he will go on active duty as a second lieutenant. He's taking Arabic, Hebrew and Spanish this semester because he thinks the languages might come in handy in future military operations.

Before heading to Iraq, he was an underachieving student scraping by with a 2.0 grade-point average. Since coming back to school, he has regimented his lifestyle and dramatically raised his grades.

Rhodes has shut himself off from campus life in part, he said, because most of his civilian classmates wouldn't understand things about his war experience, and they would shun him if he tried to explain.

Sitting in a coffee shop near campus between classes recently, Rhodes recalled how he almost killed a man in front of the man's wife and child last year on a southern Iraq road.

At the beginning of the war, he and his Marine reserve unit were guarding an essential fuel line supplying gasoline to U.S. military tanks and vehicles as they made their way toward Baghdad. The area was off-limits to non-U.S. military personnel, but a man in Bedouin clothing, riding a donkey, and a woman and child were coming toward his platoon.

His sergeant gestured to the family to stop, but they kept coming. Because the fuel line was a valuable asset, Rhodes said there was great concern that Iraqi fighters might send someone in civilian clothing to attack.

Rhodes said his sergeant told him to prepare to gun down the man and told another Marine to be ready to shoot the woman and child. As the family moved closer to the fuel line, the sergeant told Rhodes that if they came another few meters, the Marines must kill them.

Just a step or two before that arbitrary boundary, the family turned around.

"If I would have killed him, I would have been totally justified," Rhodes said. He nodded to a nearby table in the coffee shop where another student was playing guitar and flirting with an undergraduate.

"Now, if I said that to any of the students sitting in this coffee shop, there would be an uproar. They would be outraged."

While Rhodes said the war experience helped him mature, Nordhoff said his time in Iraq made him long for Bloomington's parties and bar scene. In phone calls and e-mail, his friends on campus asked him whether he was safe and how he was coping. He replied with questions about parties, the bars they were frequenting and who was dating whom.

For all his anticipation about returning to a normal college life, things haven't turned out as he expected.

In one of the first rituals at the fraternity, pledges were lined up in a row similar to the ones he stood in during boot camp, Nordhoff recalled. One of his fraternity brothers was pacing the line of pledges and screaming at them, like his drill sergeant in the Marines had. The idea of parodying the military seemed silly to Nordhoff, so he told the frat brother that he should use his "big-boy voice" if he had to dress down pledges.

During Nordhoff's Vietnam War history class, a discussion about the use of the House Committee on Un-American Activities during the 1950s to hunt for communists quickly shifted to whether it was un-American to oppose the war in Iraq.

One of Nordhoff's classmates chimed in derisively that disagreeing with the president after Sept. 11, 2001, is now considered un-American. Another student criticized the U.S. government for imposing its values on Iraqi society.

Finally, the graduate assistant leading the discussion turned to Nordhoff. His classmates knew from previous discussions that Nordhoff had served in Iraq.

"I don't know if I am for the occupation, but I do think we did the right thing in getting rid of Saddam," he said defensively.

Though he's certain that the Iraqis are better off now that Hussein has been overthrown, Nordhoff said he's disappointed that President Bush (news - web sites) hasn't spelled out an exit strategy. A staunch Republican, he vowed to sit out this election rather than vote against the president.

As he wandered through downtown Bloomington between classes one day recently, he was stopped by a woman who tried to register him to vote. He politely dismissed her but didn't consider explaining that he doesn't plan to vote.

"She wouldn't understand," Nordhoff said, "and I am not looking for someone to lecture me about the war."


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2027&ncid=2027&e=1&u=/chitribts/20041027/ts_chicagotrib/forexgisfittinginoncampusastruggle

Ellie