A Great Read...well Worth Your Time, Marines...

[thedrifter]

Sent to me from Mark (Fontman)
He worked for and with this Marine...

Ellie



A GREAT READ...WELL WORTH YOUR TIME, MARINES...

A Letter of Apology from Lieutenant General Chuck Pitman, U.S. Marine Corps, Retired

For good and ill, the Iraqi prisoner abuse mess will remain an issue. On the one hand, right thinking Americans will harbor the stupidity of the actions while on the other hand, political glee will take control and fashion this minor event into some modern day massacre.

I humbly offer my opinion here:

I am sorry that the last seven times we Americans took up arms and sacrificed the blood of our youth, it was in the defense of Muslims (Bosnia, Kosovo, Gulf War 1, Kuwait, etc.).

I am sorry that no such call for an apology upon the extremists came after 9/11.

I am sorry that all of the murderers on 9/11 were Islamic Arabs.

I am sorry that most Arabs and Muslims have to live in squalor under savage dictatorships.

I am sorry that their leaders squander their wealth.

I am sorry that their governments breed hate for the US in their religious schools, mosques, and government-controlled media.

I am sorry that Yasir Arafat was kicked out of every Arab country and high-jacked the Palestinian "cause."

I am sorry that no other Arab country will take in or offer more than a token amount of financial help to those same Palestinians.

I am sorry that the USA has to step in and be the biggest financial supporter of poverty stricken Arabs while the insanely wealthy Arabs blame the USA for all their problems.

I am sorry that our own left wing, our media, and our own brainwashed masses do not understand any of this (from the misleading vocal elements of our society, like radical professors, CNN and the NY TIMES).

I am sorry the United Nations scammed the poor people of Iraq out of the "food for oil" money so they could get rich while the common folk suffered.

I am sorry that some Arab governments pay the families of homicide bombers upon their death.

I am sorry that those same bombers are brainwashed thinking they will receive 72 virgins in "paradise."

I am sorry that the homicide bombers think pregnant women, babies, children, the elderly and other non-combatant civilians are legitimate targets.

I am sorry that our troops die to free more Arabs from the gang rape rooms and the filling of mass graves of dissidents of their own making.

I am sorry that Muslim extremists have killed more Arabs than any other group.

I am sorry that foreign trained terrorists are trying to seize control of Iraq and return it to a terrorist state.

I am sorry we don't drop a few dozen Daisy cutters on Fallujah.

I am sorry every time terrorists hide they find a convenient "Holy Site."

I am sorry they didn't apologize for driving a jet into the World Trade Center that collapsed and severely damaged Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church -- one of our Holy Sites.

I am sorry they didn't apologize for flight 93 and 175, the USS Cole, the embassy bombings, the murders and beheadings of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, etc...etc!

I am sorry Michael Moore is American; he could feed a medium sized viallage in Africa.

America will get past this latest absurdity. We will punish those responsible because that is what we do.

We hang out our dirty laundry for the entire world to see. We move on. That's one of the reasons we are hated so much. We don't hide this stuff like all those Arab countries that are now demanding an apology.

Deep down inside, when most Americans saw this reported in the news, we were like--so what? We lost hundreds and made fun of a few prisoners. Sure, it was wrong! Sure, it dramatically hurts our cause, but until captured, we were trying to kill those same prisoners. Now we're supposed to wring our hands because a few were humiliated?

Our compassion is tempered with the vivid memories of our own people killed, mutilated and burned among a joyous crowd of celebrating Fallujahans.

If you want an apology from this American, you're going to have a long wait!

You have a better chance of finding those seventy-two virgins!

Semper Fi,

Chuck Pitman, Lt. Gen., U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.)

[thedrifter]

Fontman note: A little bit more about Chuck Pitman's stellar career follows from an article long ago...

Help Arrives

Source: http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/mark_essex/13.html?sect=8

Marine Corps Lt. Col. Chuck Pitman had been watching the drama at the Howard Johnson's unfold on television all afternoon. The big New Orleans television stations had camera crews and reporters at the scene.

Pitman was a helicopter pilot and the commander of the Marine air unit stationed across the Mississippi River, just south of New Orleans, near the town of Belle Chase. Pitman was recovering from a .50-caliber bullet wound he took in the leg in Vietnam, where he'd flown 1,200 combat missions and been shot down seven times.

Pitman and the U.S. Coast Guard commander had recently worked out a deal to assist local authorities with rescue efforts in case of a high-rise fire. Just a couple of months before, a fire at the Rault Center, across Gravier from the Howard Johnson's, forced four women to jump to their deaths from the 15th floor. Although the Coast Guard had primary responsibility for air rescue because of their sophisticated equipment, Pitman had seen on television that there was a lot of gunfire in and around the hotel, so he sent two Marine sergeants armed with M-14 rifles to fly with the Coast Guard. "Their mission was to protect the Coast Guard helicopter," Pitman says.

As the afternoon wore on, Pitman grew more anxious. He'd heard nothing back from the Coast Guard. "I kept waiting to see [the Coast Guard] on TV," he says, "but they didn't show up."

By late afternoon the two sergeants returned. Pitman asked what the Coast Guard plan was.

"They say they can't fly," one of the Marines reported. "The weather is too bad."

Pitman glanced outside. It was getting dark. The airfield was completely socked in by fog and low-hanging clouds. Visibility was terrible. "****," he said. "It's not too bad for me. I can fly up the river."

Pitman ordered his operations officer to call the New Orleans Police Department and offer their assistance. An hour later, an NOPD desk sergeant called back. "If you've got a searchlight, come on down," he said.

The visibility was so bad that Pitman couldn't just take off and fly straight to New Orleans. He had to "air taxi" toward downtown. Hovering just a few feet off the ground and creeping forward, Pitman took his twin-rotor Sea Knight helicopter out over the Mississippi River and turned left. "We were looking up at some of the ships in the channel," he says.

The mile-long Greater New Orleans Bridge, which spans the Mississippi River, was shrouded in fog. When he reached it, Pitman saw car headlights crossing above him. Somehow he missed a string of high-tension wires near the bridge that he didn't even know were there. Pitman took a right at the bridge and followed the expressway into downtown. He set the Marine helicopter down in a parking lot, between the under-construction Superdome and City Hall.

While his crew - a copilot and two sergeants with M-14s - waited, a police car drove Pitman to Loyola Avenue. Police vehicles were scattered everywhere. Gunshots were popping up and down the street. "The fire trucks were sitting there pumping water, but all the firemen were inside so they wouldn't get shot," Pitman says.

The policeman driving the car pointed to another police cruiser sitting in front of the hotel. "You see down there at the next block, the car with the door open?"

"Yes," Pitman said.

"That car has a radio in it that you can use to reach the chief."

"Wait a minute," Pitman said. "You want me to walk down that street, with gunfire going overhead, the police hiding in every doorway, and get on a car radio?"

The policeman nodded.

Pitman walked down the street. He was afraid that if he ran he'd attract a bullet. When he reached the second police car, he picked up the radio microphone and identified himself as the helicopter pilot. A voice on the radio told him to come into the command post.

"Where's that?" Pitman asked.

"In the hotel?" the voice said.

"You've got to be kidding me?"

Pitman strolled into the hotel. The lobby was dark, lit only by a few feeble emergency lights. Many of the guests were jammed into a corner of the restaurant just trying to keep warm. "There were a lot of nervous people," Pitman says.

Chief Giarrusso waved him over and said, "You're the guy with the armored helicopter, right?"

"It's not really armored," Pitman explained. "It's got a little boilerplate over the engine."

"What can you do for me, then?" the chief said, but then, before the pilot could respond, Giarrusso snapped his fingers. "I know," he said. "I want you to pick up my armored car and put it down on the roof?" NOPD had an old armored personnel carrier that weighed close to 16,000 pounds. Pitman explained that his Sea Knight could only lift about 5,000 pounds.

"Well, what can you do?" Giarrusso said.

Pitman told the chief that he could carry a load of police officers above the roof to see what was going on. "We'll try to root him out," he added.

Giarrusso picked one officer to go as his communications man; then he put out a radio call for volunteers with specialized weapons to go on a dangerous mission. Tom Casey, Frank Buras, and Antoine Saacks came into the command post and signed up.

Since his arrival early that afternoon, Saacks had been across

Gravier Street in the Rault Center, the location of the deadly high-rise fire two months before. He had found a position opposite the cubicle that sat on top of the Gravier stairwell. A solid cinderblock wall shielded the sniper from Saacks' view, but he could hear the gunman shouting obscenities and firing his big gun. Saacks occasionally saw the sniper flick out still-burning cigarette butts. Less than 100 yards separated the two men. "I periodically would pepper the cubicle just to let him know somebody was close by," Saacks says.

Eventually, the sniper tossed a crumpled red and white cigarette pack onto the roof. "I shot the pack a couple of times and bounced it around on the rooftop," Saacks says. He was trying to send the sniper a message: He wasn't the only one who knew how to shoot.

I had the pleasure of knowing Chuck when he was a LtCol back during the period of 1974-1977 while a pogue in the Aviation Department at HQMC. Chuck was, and always will be a "Marine's Marine," to say the very least!

Semper Fidelis, Marines, and friends!
Mark, aka fontman



Ellie

Mark is My Boyfriend..Retired Master SGT

[thedrifter]

Bumping

Good Read!

Ellie