Archive for the ‘Warfare’ Category

Navy honors fallen Littleton corpsman

April 30, 2009

The Navy has honored Littleton Hospital Corpsman Luke Milam, who was killed during a fierce battle with the Taliban in Afghanistan, by naming a new 504-bed, $60 million “Homeport Ashore” barracks for him at Naval Station Everett in Washington.

The building named in Milam’s honor, which will double the base’s current housing capacity, was dedicated Friday.

“While we know that Luke would absolutely hate the fuss made over him, we’re sure that he would love the building and the wonderful apartments,” said his father, Michael.

In October 2007, hundreds of mourners packed a Littleton church for services for Milam.

He was killed on Sept. 25, 2007, during a battle between U.S.-led coalition forces and Taliban forces near the city of Musa Qula, an area of Afghanistan known for opium-poppy cultivation.

At the time, Milam, a special amphibious reconnaissance corpsman, was assigned to Golf Company, 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion.

During a lengthy tribute at his Littleton service, the Columbine High School graduate was honored for being a “warrior” who fought bravely in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those who spoke said Milam was both an exemplary Navy corpsman and an excellent combat fighter.

They also said he was an exceptional human being, driven by compassion.

In Iraq, where he had served earlier, Milam received the Bronze Star for bravery after his platoon came under attack. He pulled injured soldiers from burning vehicles, arranged a defense perimeter and fought off attackers.

On April 20, 1999, Milam, then a senior at Columbine High School, lost his close friend Isaiah Shoels in the school shooting rampage. Milam was devastated by Shoels’ murder and vowed to go into the Navy, become a corpsman and prepare himself to help others so “he would never be in that position again.”

“Luke was an ordinary kid who fell in love with the Navy as an 8-year-old,” said his father. “He early enlisted at 17 years old, left for boot camp two weeks after high school graduation and never looked back.”

In addition to apartments, the building — called Charles Luke Milam Bachelor Housing — also features seven lounges available to sailors for viewing movies, studying or playing a variety of games, including pool, ping-pong, air hockey and video games.

SOURCE

The right to dissent abolished!

April 24, 2009

In a dark of the night move that would, and probably has Frank Lautenberg smiling your right to protest was abolished last Tuesday. For years I have been posting about not using terms like “law abiding citizen.” This is precisely what I saw coming. Welcome to the world of felons people!

Hat Tip to Anthony at The Liberty Sphere;

Bill Quietly Becomes Law That Forbids Opposition!

Have you ever heard of legislation in the United States of America that forbids any opposition to it?

Well, we now have it, and it is the law of the land, courtesy of the thugs in the White House and Congress.

Read all about it in my column at Columbia Conservative Examiner.

Thank-you.

Petty Officer Danny Dietz Memorial Highway

April 4, 2009

The story of Danny Dietz is one of courage and honor. I have it under the Valhalla heading for any that are interested in learning more about him. I recieved more hate mail for that piece than just about any other story I have ever posted about. I also got more then a few thanking me for getting the word out. Including three from current and former lawmakers.

Colorado stepped up to the plate and hit a home run by dedicating a much traveled road after him.

H/T the Denver Post, even broken clocks are correct twice a day! 😀

Lawmakers choked back tears Friday as they honored a slain naval officer by renaming a stretch of South Santa Fe Drive in his honor.

The road from C-470 to Interstate 25 will be known as Petty Officer Danny Dietz Memorial Highway.

Dietz grew up in Littleton and graduated from Heritage High School.

His family laughed when Sen. Mike Kopp R-Littleton, told how Dietz wanted to be Ninja warrior when he grew up. Instead, he became a Navy SEAL.

Kopp recounted Dietz’s death in 2005 after a gun battle with the Taliban in Afghanistan

Full Story Here

Profiles of Valor: U.S. Army Sgt. Malone

March 21, 2009

Profiles of Valor: U.S. Army Sgt. Malone

Malone

United States Army Sergeant First Class Ed Malone was serving with the 3rd Platoon, Grim Troop, 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment in 2005 and was conducting a joint combat patrol with the Iraqi Army in the extremely hostile Surai district of Tal’Afar, when the unit was attacked. Without immediate direct fire support from his Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Malone ordered his men to take a defensive position and return fire. He directed his grenadier to eliminate several enemy targets firing from a rooftop. Malone also repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire — once to retrieve important equipment, another time to evacuate women and children caught in the crossfire, and finally to drag a wounded soldier out of the line of fire. His actions sped medical treatment and evacuation, saving the soldier’s life. Malone refused to give ground until reinforcements arrived, and he and his unit held their position for more than an hour. He led a three-man team to clear a courtyard of enemy fighters, relieving pressure on his unit. There, while administering aid to an enemy combatant, Malone was shot in the foot. For his brave actions that day, Malone was awarded the Bronze Star with combat “V” for valor.

Comparision Contrast: A look at organizational Responsibility

March 12, 2009

A look at organizational responsibility and just how things are handled when things don’t go as planned is the subject of the essay below. All too often over the years I have seen situations where the buck was passed. Be it in Emergency Medical Services, the Fire Service, or in Public Safety and seemingly all the way up the ladder. It is refreshing indeed to see that the United States Marine Corps plays the leadership game in a more responsible manner.

I looked in sheer horror at the television screen that morning. Seeing what had happened right next to where I had worked many years ago at University City Arco. This is what happened, and how the Marines are addressing it.


“It’s Dec. 8, 2008, 11:11 a.m., and a young Marine pilot takes off from an aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, on a routine training flight. The carrier is maybe 90 miles southwest of San Diego. Lt. Dan Neubauer is flying an F/A-18 Hornet. Minutes into the flight, he notices low oil pressure in one of the two engines. He shuts it down. Then the light shows low fuel for the other engine. He’s talking to air traffic control and given options and suggestions on where to make an emergency landing. He can go to the naval air station at North Island, the route to which takes him over San Diego Bay, or he can go to the Marine air station at Miramar, with which he is more familiar, but which takes him over heavily populated land. He goes for Miramar. The second engine flames out. About three miles from the runway, the electrical system dies. Lt. Neubauer tries to aim the jet toward a canyon, and ejects at what all seem to agree is the last possible moment. The jet crashed nose down in the University City neighborhood of San Diego, hitting two homes and damaging three. Four people, all members of a Korean immigrant family, were killed — 36-year-old Youngmi Lee; her daughters, Grace, 15 months, and Rachel, 2 months, and her 60-year-old mother, Seokim Kim. Lee’s husband, a grocer named Dong Yun Yoon, was at work. The day after he’d lost his family, he humbled and awed San Diego by publicly forgiving the pilot — ‘I know he did everything he could’ — and speaking of his faith — ‘I know God is taking care of my family.’ … The Marines launched an investigation — of themselves. [Last] Wednesday the results were announced. They could not have been tougher, or more damning. The crash, said Maj. Gen. Randolph Alles, the assistant wing commander for the Third Marine Aircraft Wing, was ‘clearly avoidable,’ the result of ‘a chain of wrong decisions.’ … Twelve Marines were disciplined; four senior officers, including the squadron commander, were removed from duty. Their military careers are, essentially, over. The pilot is grounded while a board reviews his future. … A young Naval aviator [who also flies the F-18] said the Marine investigation ‘kept me up last night’ because of how it contrasted with ‘the buck-passing we see’ in the government and on Wall Street. By contrast, he says, when the economy came crashing down, ‘nowhere did we see a board come out and say: “This is what happened, these are the decisions these particular people made, and this was the result. They are no longer a part of our organization.” There was no timeline of events or laymen’s explanation of how a credit derivative was actually derived. We did not see congressmen get on television with charts and eviscerate their organization and say, “These were the men who in 2003 allowed Freddie and Fannie unlimited rein over mortgage securities.” Instead we saw … everybody against everybody else with no one stepping forth and saying, “We screwed up.”‘ There is no one in national leadership who could convincingly ‘assign blame,’ and no one ‘who could or would accept it.'” –columnist Peggy Noonan

SOURCE

Profiles of valor: United States Army Sgt. Hernandez

February 14, 2009

Well done Sergeant, carry on.

Profiles of valor: United States Army Sgt. Hernandez

Hernandez

United States Army Sgt. Omar Hernandez came to America from Mexico with his family when he was six months old. He joined the Army Reserve when he was 19, deploying to Iraq in 2003. He changed to the regular Army in 2004 and returned to Iraq as an infantryman, earning his citizenship after his second tour. On 6 June 2007, during his third tour in Iraq as part of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Hernandez, three other American soldiers and nine Iraqis left Joint Security Station “Maverick” in Ghazaliya on a census patrol.

Just outside the station, however, the team was ambushed. Two Iraqi police were immediately shot. Hernandez returned fire, but was soon shot in the thigh himself. He later said it was “like Forrest Gump — where he goes, ‘Somethin’ jumped up and bit me.'” Indeed — the bullet entered the back and exited the front, just missing his femoral artery, but taking a third of his quadriceps with it. Despite his wound, Hernandez made it to the intersection where the two Iraqi police officers were down, dragging one 15 feet to safety. He then went back for the second, picking him up and carrying him on his shoulder. Hernandez made sure first aid was administered and then resumed firing on the enemy, only later accepting treatment himself. His actions saved the lives of the two Iraqis that day. “I couldn’t let anyone die out there,” he said. For his heroism, Hernandez received the Silver Star.

THE OBAMANISTA REGIME’S SCAMS

February 1, 2009

Leave it to a Marine to call it as he sees it.

THE OBAMANISTA REGIME’S SCAMS, SCANDALS, CONTROVERSIES, LIES, DECEPTIONS AND EMBARRASSMENTS

Attorney General Eric Holder, revealed to be the man who, as Clinton’s deputy AG, was the driving force behind the sentence commutation of 16 murderous FALN terrorists.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s law firm represents 17 Gitmo terrorists and he is a driving force behind the closing of Gitmo.

On Inauguration Day, Obama granted only ABC News an interview, after they paid him $2 million to sponsor his DC Neighborhood Ball.

After three days in office, Obama ordered an attack on homes in Pakistan. Twenty-one people were killed but only five were reported to have been terrorists; the rest of the incinerated and dismembered victims were children, their moms and dads, and other civilians, according to the New York Times, the AFP, the AP and many other news sources.

On 23 January 2009, Obama demanded that GOP leaders stop listening to Rush Limbaugh or else things would not go well for them during his regime.

William Lind, a powerful defense industry lobbyist, was appointed by Obama to be deputy defense secretary, despite all the rants and promises Obama made about never appointing a lobbyist to a position of power in his regime.

On 23 January 2009, Obama lifted the ban on federal tax dollars funding abortion mill operations in Third World countries where eugenics are now again used to control the population.

Two days after seizing power, Obama signed an executive order to close Gitmo, making it clear that the comfort and happiness of the terrorists therein, and Europe’s opinion of us, are far more important than national security and the lives of American families.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton refuses to reveal all of the big foreign donors to her husband’s “foundation,” but the Washington Times says huge sums of money came from the People’s Republic of China via a secret 2006 stock transaction.

On 24 January 2009, despite his hundreds if not thousands of pledges and promises of total transparency in his regime, Obama held a secret closed-door meeting with his economic advisors as anger over his $1 trillion “economic stimulus” spending scheme, refusing to allow the media and American people access to what was discussed.

On 26 January 2009, Rep. John Boehner revealed that Obama and his Obamanistas in the Congress had added language in the Democrats’ stimulus bill that would allow Obama’s infamous voter fraud organization, ACORN, to receive billions of dollars in federal funding under the farcical guise of “neighborhood stabilization activities.”

On 26 January 2009, U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, stated that the Obama regime seeks direct negotiations with the terrorist regime of Iran.

In a shocking insult to our military’s heroes, on 20 January 2009, Barack Obama became the first president in 56 years–since its inception–to skip the Salute to Heroes Inaugural Ball, which is held in honor of Medal of Honor recipients, Purple Heart recipients, paralyzed veterans and other military heroes. Obama did, however, find time to attend the Neighborhood Ball, which was filled with Hollywood’s ultra elite.

On 26 January 2009, with hat in hand and apologizing for the United States, Obama gave his first formal television interview as president not to an American network, but Al-Arabiya, saying America must stop “dictating,” a move and statement that was immediately seen by extremist Muslims as a sign of sure weakness and fear.

James B. Steinberg, whom Obama nominated to be deputy secretary of state, told the Foreign Relations Committee in writing that Americans have a free speech right guaranteed by the Constitution to taxpayer funded abortions.

On 26 January 2009, Timothy Geithner was sworn in as Obama’s secretary of the treasury despite having serious tax problems and having had an illegal alien housekeeper.

On 27 January 2009, Obama, for some reason confused, attempted to walk through a window to get back into the White House rather than using a door. There were no calls from liberals to have him take a urinalysis to determine why he did this.

The Obamanistas added $325,000,000 to the economic stimulus bill for a program to teach Americans how not to get the clap and other STDs. More additions:

The Obamanistas added $1.5 billion to run a contest to capture carbon.

The Obamanistas added $45 million for ATV trails.

The Obamanistas added $572 million to create 1,235 Coast Guard civilian jobs at $460K each.

The Obamanistas added $4 billion for Obama’s voter fraud unit that is under federal investigation for massive fraud.

The Obamanistas added $3.5 billion for new education facilities.

The Obamanistas added $200 million for DoD alternative energy vehicles.

The Obamanistas added $600 million for new government cars.

The Obamanistas added $134 million for hospices.

The Obamanistas added $50 million for the Endowment for the Arts.

The Obamanistas added $650 million for digital TV coupons.

Obama’s economic stimulus bill includes his plan to force all American to have their entire health care history recorded in a government electronic database that privacy experts say could result in your most private medical issues being shared and viewed by no-one-knows who.

After the House passed what conservative watchdog Michelle Malkin calls the Generational Theft Act of 2009 worth $1 trillion + in debt to the American people and loaded with leftist pork like $335,000,000 for training Americans how not to catch the clap, Obama, who promised to lead a “new era of responsibility,” served up $100/ounce wagyu steak for some pals at the White House as shocking numbers of American homeless and jobless struggled to survive.

On 19 May 2008, Obama chided Americans that it is wrong for them to keep their thermostats on 72 degrees and stated, “That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.” On 21 January 2009, Obama’s chief political advisor, David Axelrod, said Obama will be keeping the Oval Office thermostat so high that “You could grow orchids in there” because “He likes it warm.”

President Obama went to bat for accused USS Cole attack mastermind Abu al-Nashiri and told military judge James Pohl to postpone the terrorist’s trial. On 29 January 2009, Pohl refused the presidential order. The attack killed 17 American sailors and wounded several dozen.

On 29 January 2009, it was learned that despite his many repeated promises, Obama was stacking his regime with lobbyists, such as William Corr (finance industry) and Mark Patterson (anti-tobacco industry, despite Obama being a heavy smoker), in addition to William Lynn of the defense industry.

In January 2009, more than 1 million homes from Texas to Maine were without power after a winter storm; dozens of people died in the storm. Estimates for some areas said it could be two weeks or more before power would be restored. Obama did nothing to save lives and restore power, instead cranking up the heat in the Oval Office, according to David Axelrod, to tropical levels. No liberals complained about Obama total lack of response to the calamity, as they did after Katrina about Bush.

SOURCE

Profiles of valor: U.S. Marine Corps Sgt. Montoya

January 30, 2009

During the Battle for Baghdad in April 2003, United States Marine Corps Sgt. Scott Montoya was serving as a Scout Sniper, Scout Sniper Platoon, 2d Battalion, 23d Marines, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, in Support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. At one point, enemy fire had Montoya’s sniper team pinned down, and he directed his team to return fire while he ran into an open roadway to rescue an Iraqi civilian trapped in a vehicle. Montoya spotted a wounded Marine on the same roadway and led him to safety, and then another wounded Marine, and then another, who was unconscious, and then a fourth, all while shooting at the enemy with his free hand. Later, when Montoya was asked how many bullets went by him as he rescued four fellow Marines, he answered, “About 300.” He added, “I saw a hurt Marine and all my training came into play. It wasn’t a cognitive thing; I just saw the situation and cared for my Marines.” For his “extraordinary heroism,” Sgt. Montoya was awarded the U.S. military’s second-highest honor, the Navy Cross.

Well done Marine.

Some cool pics!

January 20, 2009

Got these links from a friend. Enjoy!

one

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Don’t ask, don’t tell coming to an end..?

January 13, 2009

I personally could care less what people do to entertain themselves so long as that behavior does not affect others, and is done with consenting adults. Others would disagree with me, and that’s fine.

Here, is what some of those that might be most affected are saying. Hopefully wordpress will not “spam” me for bringing all these different “links” to a single post. I believe that this issue is of such importance though that it needs to have more than one or two players in the games ideas floated.

http://cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp?docID=339

http://cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp?docID=337

http://cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp?docID=332

http://cmrlink.org/HMilitary.asp?docID=326

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/obama_military_gays/2009/01/08/169333.html
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/surveillance/basic.htm

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/factsheets/msm.htm
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090107/ts_alt_afp/usmilitarygays_newsmlmmd

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1707545,00.html

http://www.heritage.org/research/nationalsecurity/em359.cfm

http://www.health.mil/dhb/meetings/2007-12/


04_Walker_Emergency%20Blood%20Transfusions.pdf

http://www.health.mil/dhb/recommendations/2008/


EmergencyBloodTransfusionCombatTheaters.pdf

http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_account/different_hiv_rates_among_homosexuals_and
_heterosexuals_ignores_risky_behavior_data

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=JrcYGJ1CQdx8wxjl923nnkQhwy6bbT4BYTZk0dCrG4rwn
L19qGk6!1746175250?docId=5001267771

http://www.avert.org/usastatg.htm