Lorne E. Henry, Jr. reported killed in Iraq

A 21-year-old Niagara Falls High School graduate who mastered swimming in two years and went on to be a specialist in the Army died in Iraq when an explosion rocked the truck he was driving, a family priest said Tuesday night.

Spc. Lorne E. Henry Jr. had been home visiting his mother, Wendy Kovac, and stepfather, Charles Primerano, in Niagara Falls just a few weeks before and was slated to leave the Army in August, Father Stewart M. Lindsay said.

Henry, the second-oldest of four brothers, graduated from Niagara Falls High School in 2004 and was dating his high school sweetheart. He nearly always attended church at St. Charles Borromeo Roman Catholic Church on Lindbergh Avenue when he was home, Lindsay said.

“He always wanted to be a cop, always wanted to be helpful,” Amy Jones, Henry’s cousin, told the Gazette Tuesday night.

Jones said she learned of Henry’s death Tuesday afternoon. Her family believes the incident occurred sometime early Tuesday morning Iraq time. Henry’s job had been to drive a truck that picked up used bombs, she said.

“There are a lot of unanswered questions right now,” Jones said.

She described Henry as an energetic child whom she used to play ninja turtles with when the two were kids. He grew up, she said, to be a goal-driven young man who was very good with kids and was “funny, always smiling, always helpful.” Jones said Henry had wanted to get engaged to his girlfriend.

Henry’s younger brother is also serving in the Army and is stationed in Washington. His youngest brother is 11, she said.

“He looks up to him like his idol,” Jones said of Henry’s youngest brother. “It was really, really hard today.”

Henry is the second Iraqi War casualty from Niagara Falls. Army Staff Sgt. Aram J. Bass was killed during battle Nov. 23, 2005. Bass, who was born in Niagara Falls, played football and basketball at Niagara Catholic High School.

The U.S. Department of Defense had not confirmed Henry’s death Tuesday night. A spokeswoman for the department said it waits 24 hours after a family is notified to confirm details of a military death.

Stewart, who met with Henry’s family on Tuesday, said Henry was an altar server when he was younger and continued to attend church regularly with his family as he grew older.

“I was always impressed with him,” Stewart said. “He was just a nice kid.”

In a military portrait distributed Tuesday night, Henry, who has dark brown eyes and a sharp jaw, is wearing camouflage fatigues and sits in front of an American flag and an eagle.

Ed Maynard, the Niagara Falls High School swim coach, said he encouraged Henry to join the swim team when Henry was in his sophomore year Earth Science class. Within two years, Henry went from being a junior varsity swimmer to a member of one of his top varsity relays.

“For him to come out and be a brand new swimmer ... it did take a lot of guts,” Maynard said. “He just kept sticking with it and sticking with it. That’s just the kind of determination that kid had.”

Henry showed the same drive in the classroom.

“You just can’t ask for anything more,” Maynard said. “He showed me a lot of heart through the years.”

Stewart said Henry’s family had not received information Tuesday about when his body would return to the area.

Mayor Vince Anello instructed all city buildings to fly flags at half mast today in Henry’s honor.

“Certainly, our condolences go out to the family, and I plan on doing that personally tomorrow,” Anello said. “This is really close to home.”

From the Union

Brett Witteveen laid to rest

SHELBY -- When Brett Witteveen lost his mother to cancer several years ago, the boy was "taken in" by close friends and extended family who helped him and his father cope with their grief, friends said.

In many ways, he became everyone's brother, everyone's son.

And so, on Monday, when the hearse carrying the casket of 20-year-old Witteveen wound through his stomping grounds of Hart and Shelby, it was hard to decipher who among the dozens lining the route were friends and who were family.

Friends say the Hart High School graduate was so well-liked by so many in both Oceana County communities that the lines became blurred.

"He was a people person. He was always smiling. This is real hard ... We are just numb. We don't want to believe it," said former classmate Sierra Pangburn, one of those who turned out in the cold mist to pay their respects as Witteveen's body was carried to a Shelby funeral home.

The U.S. Marine reservist was killed Feb. 18 in Iraq when he was hit by a roadside bomb while on foot patrol near Fallujah, west of Baghdad. He served with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment out of Grand Rapids. He was been in Iraq since October, and was engaged to be married.

Several standing along the main streets in Hart and Shelby referred to the talented football player as "one of the family."

Mark Hodges was one of several veterans who lined the hearse's route near Hart High School.

"He was the toughest football kid," said Hodges, who served in Desert Storm and had coached Witteveen in football during his "pee wee" years.

Through tears, Hodges said Witteveen was taken "too soon."

"He was just a pup," he said. "He had so much heart. I'm sure he was the best solider there."

In nearby Shelby, a tearful Sandy Porter stood with her husband, Randy Porter, thinking back to the younger Witteveen they'd watched grow up "a few houses down."

"He was a good kid," she said. "He was full of life."

Meanwhile, among a circle of friends outside Hart High School stood Garrett Dennert, 16, whose brother, Jacob Dennert, 19, of Hart, is in Iraq with the same military company as Witteveen's.

The two went to Iraq together, Garrett Dennert said, with Witteveen completing boot camp soon after Jacob Dennert.

"This hits pretty close to home," Garrett Dennert said. "(Jacob) said it's been hard to cope with, and they had a funeral for Brett in Iraq."

From the Press

Related Link:
Brett A. Witteveen killed during combat operations

Brian Escalante laid to rest

FORT DODGE - That infectious grin.

Brian Escalante's military-issue photograph - like all such pictures - depicts a grim-faced military man, someone not apt to put up with much nonsense.

But as the 25-year-old Marine who grew up in Dodge City was laid to rest Tuesday, those who knew him drew a different picture, remembering his pearly white grin, his playful side and his quiet but gentle demeanor.

"He had such a big smile," recalled Daniel Nguyen of Newton, an in-law who thought of Escalante as a brother.

"He was always joking around, a comedian," chimed in Dennis Nevares, a cousin from Amarillo, Texas.

Escalante, a lance corporal, died Feb. 17 while on a combat operation in the Al Anbar province of Iraq after a roadside bomb blew up under his Humvee. Family, friends and others filled the pews at Dodge City's First Baptist Church for his funeral services, and he was buried at Kansas Veterans Cemetery in nearby Fort Dodge.

"Brian was a young man who loved life, a young man who loved his family and a young man who was proud of being a Marine," said the Rev. Dan Rhodes of First Baptist, who presided.

Still, the sobs and tears were plentiful, and the Rev. Jeff Turner of First Missionary Church, who helped officiate, called on Escalante's loved ones to hold on to their memories of the man as they struggle forward. Wife Crystal Escalante, 2-year-old son Aidyn, his parents and seven siblings survive.

"Over the next few days, weeks, months and beyond you'll go through a flood of different emotions, and that's normal," said Turner. "Be proud of the man he became while serving as a United States Marine."

Comments outside

Tuesday's ceremony unfolded amid calm, with around 110 members of the Patriot Guard Riders waving U.S. flags outside First Baptist during the funeral services. The Patriot Guard Riders, most of them motorcyclists, attend funerals all across the nation as a show of respect for fallen soldiers and their families.

"This country wouldn't be what it is ... if it wasn't for people like Brian, 200 years ago all the way up till now," said Stacia Crowley, a Guard rider from Dodge City who stood outside First Baptist. "He's a Marine, and he's the same age as my kids."

A block away, guarded over by seven law enforcement officers, three protestors from Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church worked to get their message out. The Westboro group, scorned by many, believes a vengeful God is behind the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and members protest at funerals all across the country.

"There's a dead soldier down there, and he's dead at the hands of an angry God because this country has given itself up to every filthy abomination it can commit," said Paulette Phelps, one of the trio on hand Tuesday.

Spirit will live on

Inside First Baptist, meanwhile, Escalante came to life as he was recalled and recounted. Family members say he was quiet but seemed to blossom after joining the military.

"That helped him open up," said Rhodes. "He was a dedicated soldier, and he loved the Marines."

Still, that's not the end of the story. He liked basketball and his prized Mustang automobile, and sister Ida Escalante, whose remembrances were recounted by Rhodes, recalled her brother's love of professional wrestling.

After watching wrestling on television, Escalante, Ida Escalante and their other siblings, as children, would hold tournaments of their own. "Brian was always Andre the Giant or sometimes Hulk Hogan," said Rhodes.

Nguyen, the in-law, remembered Escalante's love of video games while Nevares spoke of his cousin's even demeanor. "He got along with everybody," Nevares said.

Going forward, Rhodes said the Marine's spirit will live on, even as his body is put to rest.

"We're going to miss him, but we're going to allow him to live on through us," he said.

From the Hutchinson News

Related Link:
Brian A. Escalante dies of injuries from I.E.D.

John Rode laid to rest

WASHINGTON -- Sgt. John D. Rode died in Iraq as a Canadian in an American uniform. But the young soldier will be buried today as a U.S. citizen, in a cemetery where the nation puts its warriors to rest.

Last week, the United States granted citizenship to the 24-year-old, soon after the Army sergeant was killed on Valentine's Day. The honor adds to a Bronze Star and at least one Purple Heart, his family said.

"I think he'd say that's part of the job -- the medals," said one of his three older sisters, Peggy Rode-Storey. But becoming an American citizen "was something he always wanted."

She was in Washington on Tuesday to attend a brief ceremony recognizing her brother's new nationality. He is one of 91 military service members since Sept. 11, 2001, to receive posthumous citizenship.

Rode was born in Ontario but moved to the United States in 1999. He joined the service two years later, visiting his parents' home in Lake Mary as a stopover between deployments.

Through his military career, Rode took steps to become a full-fledged citizen, even bringing application information with him to Iraq.

Rode was killed in his second tour of duty, when a roadside bomb destroyed his armor-plated truck. Two other soldiers also died in the attack.

The three were on the way to help other soldiers when the bomb exploded, the third such attack Rode faced in recent weeks. They were part of a rapid-response team assigned to rescue troops from damaged military vehicles.

From the Sentinel

Related Link:
John Rode remembered

Related Link:
John D. Rode dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Branden Cummings laid to rest

COCOA - Army Pfc. Branden Charles Cummings was remembered as a soldier who was proud to serve his country and as a jokester who loved to make his friends laugh.

"What a life, what a life that has been lived by this man," the Rev. Joe Robinson said in his eulogy Tuesday before hundreds of Cummings' friends, family members and comrades in arms, and several total strangers, who packed into Brevard Memorial Funeral Home. "We had a young man who stood up and said, 'I'll go.' This young man, and so many others around the world, are doing great things."

Close to 1,000 people, some standing in different rooms and others near the entrance after the chapel quickly filled, attended 10 a.m. funeral services for Cummings, who was killed Feb. 14 in a roadside bombing in Baqouba, Iraq. The 20-year-old Army private from Titusville was the 10th service member from Brevard County or with close family ties here to die in the Iraq war.

Cummings had been serving in Iraq since October and had returned to war in January after a two-week break at home for Christmas. He served in the Army with the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Texas. He completed his basic training at Fort Hood in February 2006.

Eager to learn

Those who served alongside Cummings in Iraq said he was eager to learn everything about being a soldier.

"Every time there was any kind of information being put out, he'd lock onto every word," Army Spc. Jason Deteso told the assembled. "He was an outstanding soldier. He wore the title of infantryman with pride."

But there was a lighter side.

Cummings would do anything to make others laugh, said his uncle, Don Cummings, who referred to a slide show featuring the soldier that preceded the funeral.

"There were 90 pictures in the slide show. In 89 of them, he was smiling," Cummings said, drawing laughter from the crowd. "In the other, he was sticking his tongue out."

Procession

Outside the funeral home, about 200 veterans of all ages held American flags as they lined the entrance and parking lot. More than 120 Patriot Guard Riders from across the state and as far away as Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Michigan rode their motorcycles at the head of the funeral procession.

"We came to honor our hero," said Bobbie Bilotta, Florida state captain of the Patriot Guard Riders. "They've made the ultimate sacrifice for us. It's the least we can do for them and their families."

Dozens of corrections officers -- former colleagues of Cummings' father, Charles, a former state corrections officer in Orange County -- were scattered throughout the crowd, dressed in their brown and beige uniforms. Some served as pallbearers.

Small American flags lined every roadway through Brevard Memorial Park as the funeral proceeded with military honors, including the 21-gun volley and a rendition of "Taps" that pierced the graveside silence. Army honor guards folded the American flag over Cummings' casket.

Folded flags

Brig. Gen. James Nixon of Special Operations Command presented folded flags to Cummings' father, his mother, Melbaline, and his fiancée, Danielle Dennull.

After they completed duties as pallbearers, the corrections officers took off their white gloves and the red roses pinned to their shirts, and each placed his glove under the rose and put both on Cummings' casket.

Corrections officer Joey Morris added one other thing to his offering: his prized baseball glove.

"Me and Branden always played catch," he said after the ceremony. "He always wanted that glove and I would never give it to him. I left it for him."

And for them, Cummings left memories.

"Branden was my brother," close friend Daniel Jarolim told the crowd in the chapel. "At least he was the closest thing to a brother I ever had. Branden died a hero. Branden, you're my hero and I love you."

From Florida Today

Related Link:
Branden Cummings remembered

Related Link:
Branden C. Cummings dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Justin T. Paton laid to rest

The air of Walloon Lake Community Church was laden with sorrow and tears as friends and family gathered to pay their respects to Army Pfc. Justin Travis Paton Monday.

A few who knew Paton shared their thoughts of the Alanson soldier.

Friend Jacob Smith said he had many fond memories of things they had done together.

“Paton was a hero, my hero,” Smith said. “I loved him and I’m going to miss him.”

Paton, 24, was killed Feb. 17 in Iraq by a sniper.

He was a 2000 graduate of Inland Lakes High School who enlisted in the Army in 2005 and was deployed to Iraq Oct. 31. He had recently been named his unit’s leader.

The mother of a man who served with Paton said her son told her of Paton’s dedication.

“Justin was huge in our platoon,” she said on behalf of her son. “He loved us and we loved him.”

The Rev. Jeff Ellis, who officiated the service, said Paton was a man who was committed to his faith and he was certain Paton crossed the bridge to eternity.

“I have hope and faith and confidence today that Justin crossed that bridge,” he said.

Ellis shared e-mail messages from Paton and a letter he wrote to his aunt, Joyce.

In the letter, Paton said he missed his family and friends, and hoped they knew how much he loved and appreciated them.

“I wouldn’t want any other life than the one I was raised with,” Paton wrote.

Paton added that despite missing home, he had become close with others he was serving with and that they helped each other through the good and bad.

A slide show with photographs of Paton with family and friends was shown, after which Army Brig. Gen. John R. Bartley shared messages by fellow soldiers from a memorial service for Paton.

Bartley said Paton’s company commander remembered Paton always was looking out for the safety of the platoon, was one of the most organized soldiers he had met and was a gentle giant.

“He would take the shirt off his back if you asked him,” the company commander said.

Paton’s parents were presented with honors Paton received for his service. He was awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.

Outside the church following the service, a volley of 21 shots was given in Paton’s honor and “Taps” was played. His parents, Donald and Shelley Paton, accepted a folded American flag in honor of their son. Paton was laid to rest at Ohioville Cemetery in Indian River.

From the Petoskey News

Related Link:
Justin T. Paton killed by small arms fire

Ethan Biggers remembered

INDIANAPOLIS — Liza Biggers blinked back tears and gently patted her brother Ethan's hand as he lay in his hospital bed, finally wearing the Purple Heart he earned in Iraq.

Ethan's family had held off on the medal ceremony, hoping he would emerge from his year-long coma.

When that didn't happen, his 22-year-old twin, Matt, made a phone call to make sure he received the award before he died.

Last Sunday's private ceremony was a poignant moment in a tumultuous journey that began the day Army Spc. Ethan Biggers was critically wounded in Iraq.

Biggers' family stopped trying to keep him alive on Feb. 13. His feedings were halted and all that was left were the goodbyes.

On Saturday, about 1:35 a.m., Ethan died, with Matt holding his hand and Liza at his side.

Ethan's last days were spent at the Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center. As three or four inches of snow blanketed the region last weekend, eight of Ethan's buddies from Beavercreek High School piled into two cars for the trip to Indianapolis.

"We're all here for him," said Mark Passage, 22, a former Army specialist who spent a year in Afghanistan.

Passage was one of five close friends — Ethan and Matt Biggers, Mike Mays and Jimmy Williams — who went into the Army straight out of high school.

All five went off to war.

Four came back safe.

Last Sunday, an Army lieutenant the family credits with helping save his life read aloud the brief, standard wording as Nathan Loper, a former barracks roommate, pinned the Purple Heart on Ethan's hospital gown.

In the quiet room, Ethan — his eyes open — loudly exhaled a breath.

'It's a miracle he's gotten this far'

Ethan was five months into his second tour of Iraq when he and a group of soldiers from B company, 1-502, 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Ky., were on a mission southwest of Baghdad. Ethan took a break from monitoring a radio and went up to a balcony to cool off and stretch his legs, his brother said.

The shot came out of nowhere.

"He was the only one hit," his father, Rand Biggers, said last spring as he kept vigil at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.

The bullet entered above Ethan's left ear and exited above his right, leaving him with what the military calls a traumatic brain injury, or TBI.

The sniper's bullet did more than pierce his skull. It also struck Ethan's family thousands of miles away — squarely and without warning.

When Ethan was shot on March 5, 2006, his then-fiancee, Britni Fuller, was six months pregnant with their first child.

Matt, who already had done one tour of duty in Iraq, was stationed in Germany and hearing rumblings that his unit would soon be sent back to Iraq.

His father, a physicist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, took leave from his job to be with his son. Devastated to see Ethan so gravely injured, he spent much of his time in a chapel at Walter Reed.

Ethan's sister, Liza, 25, would stand by her brother's bed for hours speaking quietly to him.

Many lives are touched when a soldier is wounded.

"It's not just the one person and the immediate family," said Charles An, Liza's husband. "It's so many people, and I never really even realized that before all this happened."

Brothers in arms

Growing up, Matt and Ethan — a fun-loving character tagged with nicknames like Bigg E and the Biggness — knew the military would be part of their futures.

Their father had flown C-130s for the Air Force during Vietnam and their grandfather was in the Navy in World War II.

Nobody was surprised when the twins enlisted in the Army the summer before their senior year at Beavercreek High School.

"The recruiter called up Ethan and Ethan said, 'Yeah, come over to our house, you can talk about it with us,' " Matt recalled. "When he came over, I just went with it. I always thought of it as an obligation."

Both brothers chose infantry.

Matt, a Bradley fighting vehicle driver, was in Iraq from February 2004 until February 2005.

His last five months were in Samara, north of Baghdad, which he called a hotbed. "But we had Bradleys and tanks. We were pretty lucky."

Ethan's light infantry unit was less protected, he said.

"The last time I talked to him, he'd lost nearly 20 percent of his company," Matt said shortly after Ethan was injured.

Despite the high casualty count, Ethan never filled out a living will — something Matt thinks he probably just ignored to avoid standing in a long line during Army pre-deployment.

"You're already there long enough, so people just blow it off," he said. "I didn't have a living will the first time I went."

Last spring, when Matt thought he might be sent back to Iraq, he decided to put down his requests on paper.

"I filled one out," he said, "but I knew about Ethan then."

'He's hanging in there'

Britni found out she was pregnant after Ethan left for Iraq.

"We were planning to get married when he came back home," she said last spring.

The two wrote each other often and picked out furniture and other items for the baby via the Internet.

After he was wounded, Britni prepared the baby's nursery, tried to stay optimistic about Ethan's recovery and visited him at Walter Reed — needing a medical clearance because of her high-risk pregnancy. When she couldn't see him in person, she would record herself talking to him and mail the tapes to Liza to play for him.

"He's hanging in there so I'm hanging in there," she said at the time.

Before Ethan departed for his second tour, he pulled his father aside and told him he didn't think he was coming back.

Ethan had wanted to get married before he left, but Rand urged him to wait.

His father would soon regret that advice. With his son in a coma, Rand Biggers organized a marriage from a Pennsylvania-based firm that arranged a double-marriage by proxy, where neither party had to be present.

Last March, Britni and Ethan legally became husband and wife.

Three months later, their son was born.

'Little E has finally come into the world'

Liza broke the news in the online journal she set up through CaringBridge, a service that helps people create a free personal Web site to keep family and friends updated during significant life events.

"Little E has finally come into the world," she wrote on May 27.

The boy's name — Eben — is a combination between Ethan and that of his friend, Benjamin Britts, who was killed in Iraq in 2005.

After a difficult pregnancy, the family saw the birth of a healthy baby boy as a beacon of hope, a lifeline.

There were other promising developments that day, too.

As Liza was helping turn Ethan, trying to move his head in a certain direction, this happened:

"Out of nowhere BIGG E growls at us!! The nurses just stopped and looked at him," Liza wrote in the journal. "That's a great sign."

Days later, Britni called Ethan and had Eben scream in his ear while she wished him a happy Father's Day.

Over the last year, Liza put her life on hold to help Ethan through his recovery, following him from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., to Walter Reed, on to a Veterans Affairs rehabilitation center in Tampa, back to Walter Reed and finally to the VA hospital in Indianapolis.

Each time he was transferred, Liza and her stepmother, Cheryl Alspaugh Biggers of Beavercreek, would take down the large photos the family had put up on the walls for Ethan to see if he ever woke up.

Then they would put them right back up again in his new room.

They are snapshots in time. A beaming Rand with his sons on his lap. Matt and Ethan after completing basic training. Britni and Eben.

Three stunning angels, sketched by Liza, a freelance artist in New York City, appeared to be watching over him from the wall behind his bed.

After Ethan was transferred to a VA center in Tampa, respiratory therapists said he was breathing through his mouth and nose.

In physical therapy, he was able to sit for nearly two hours, holding his head up on his own more often.

In a journal entry on July 18, Liza wrote that a radiologist who read Ethan's CAT scans was impressed at how much he had healed in the last month.

That same day, Britni flew in with 6-week-old Eben to meet his father for the first time.

"BIGG E has met Baby E!!" Liza wrote.

Still, the family's effort to get Ethan into Casa Colina, a private facility in California that specializes in TBIs, kept running into roadblocks.

"It's another fight and we're getting tired of fighting," Liza wrote. "However, we are sticking to our guns and getting BIGG E where he has the best chance at recovery and where we can be with him more easily."

Later that month, doctors from Casa Colina evaluated Ethan and decided to keep him at the Tampa VA.

"Until Ethan is following commands and able to make significant gains, we cannot go to Casa Colina," Liza wrote.

Ethan cried out with a grimace one day as he was being moved from the bed to a tilt table.

Liza was encouraged.

"Although we don't like to see Ethan hurting, it's a great sign that he let us know he is," she wrote. "We hope he continues this and soon (will) be able to say some words."

'When does it stop?'

Rand, his wife, Cheryl, and Liza watched Ethan around the clock. But with Ethan now sleeping through the night, they agreed to start taking two-week breaks.

Rand started the rotation by heading back to Beavercreek. It was his first time away from Ethan since April and he was anxious to welcome home Matt, who was coming in from Germany that week.

On Thursday, July 27, the 59-year-old Biggers was exiting Interstate 675 onto U.S. 35 when a car went out of control, traveled over an embankment, became airborne and collided with his Jeep.

The coroner broke the news to Liza over her cell phone.

Biggers and Doris "Dori" Naone, 51, of Riverside, the driver of the other car, both died in the crash.

"Words cannot express our devastation," Liza wrote in the journal the next day.

There was little time for grief, however. Liza returned to Tampa with Matt, who was fresh out of the Army and had arrived home two days after his father was killed.

"I think we just forged on because he knew Ethan needed us," Liza said. "I've never asked myself why Ethan got shot. A car landed on top of my Dad ... I have to think it had to have happened for a reason. And even if it didn't, I can't spend my energy on 'why, why, why, why, why?' because it will never get you anywhere."

Loper, 33, the former barracks roommate who pinned the Purple Heart on Ethan, knew how much his friend idolized his father.

"When we heard what happened to Ethan's dad," he said, "it was just like, when does it stop?"

Wednesday, Sept. 13, 2:11 p.m. online journal entry:

During physical therapy, we got Ethan on the standing frame: a contraption that uses harnesses and pads to hold him up. The BIGGness held his head up by himself for quite a while!

He was doing very well using his trunk muscles and neck muscles to hold himself up. A BIGG improvement from two months ago.

That day, they celebrated Ethan and Matt's 22nd birthday with cake, cookies and strawberry rhubarb pie. A speech therapist helped Ethan taste the pie by dabbing a bit on his lips.

Through October, Ethan would squeeze family members' hands.

He could sit up on a mat and hold his head up for a few minutes.

And he started following commands, twitching his right hand when asked by his speech therapists.

One day, a physical therapist brought him to the gym in a wheelchair and placed a large orange ball in his lap.

"He did very well with his right hand, pushing and relaxing on command," Liza wrote. "It's a very encouraging sign."

'The worst kind of injury'

On Nov. 1, Ethan underwent surgery at Walter Reed to have his skull replaced. Doctors had earlier removed large portions of his skull to reduce swelling.

Matt's skull served as a template for his brother's. He went through CAT scans in Tampa so that surgeons at Walter Reed would have precise measurements to use. Liza announced the results in her journal that evening.

SUCCESS!!!

Ethan came through surgery great!! They managed to get both sides replaced, no problem! The neurosurgeons said the prosthetics fit like a glove (thanks Matt.) Ethan looks like Ethan! He responded fine to the fluid draining and as of right now, they don't believe he will need a shunt. The surgery itself took 5 1/2 hours. Whew!

...An hour after his surgery we all went to see him and he immediately opened his eyes at the sound of our voices. He's still really drugged though. We probably won't see any real changes, however, for at least a week. All is good right now.

But a neurologist told Matt the surgery was only cosmetic.

"It is the worst kind of injury you can suffer, a brain injury," Matt said. "A bullet going through the head ... you don't recover from that."

Searching for an answer

As Thanksgiving arrived, the family still didn't know where they could move Ethan.

"Tampa won't take him back unless he has some 'significant changes,' Liza wrote. "This would include tracking us with his eyes or following a command consistently. So if Ethan doesn't start doing this in the next week or so, we are to take him to a 'Level 2 Sub-acute VA' center. Cleveland was mentioned, but it's not so close to our home in Dayton."

Indianapolis was closer to home. And the VA center there had opened a renovated rehabilitation wing in August, equipped to handle TBI patients like Ethan.

Right before Christmas, he was flown on a private jet to Indiana, where Loper began visiting daily.

"Ethan is apparently squeezing his hand and tracking him around the room (by his voice)!," Liza wrote on Dec. 31. "To have new friends visit is absolutely critical stimuli for Ethan."

Liza is convinced Ethan could hear voices, and points to an experience in Indianapolis when a therapist put Matt on one side of Ethan and Liza on the other. Each was asked to call Ethan's name.

Each time, he turned to the right person.

Liza learned to read Ethan's body language, sensing when he was uncomfortable or didn't like something.

He was able to swallow applesauce and pureed foods.

"He loved coffee," she said, telling how she'd dip a little green sponge in coffee and put it in his mouth.

She'd put gummy Life Savers on a string so he could suck them without choking.

And she discovered he didn't care for blueberry-flavored Dum Dums. She knew because when she tried to give him one, he made a face.

In January, Cheryl put a spoon in her stepson's hand and helped him raise it. "He would open his mouth when it got there," she said. Amazed, she called in the nurse.

She was excited about his progress but then watched it stop.

"Those are only little tiny baby steps," Cheryl said last week. "Could Ethan have gotten better than that? We wouldn't know, but I know in the last few weeks Ethan was not trying."

Liza noticed it, too, and attributes the sudden change to when she began asking Ethan to give her a sign if he wanted more time to get better or wanted to die.

Her brother also searched for an answer.

"Matt had talked about seeing him in his dreams a lot, trying to get Ethan to tell him what he wanted. Matt felt that Ethan would want to go," Liza said. "When I told Ethan that, I really saw him start to pull out more and more. The therapists noticed it and the nurses noticed it that he was less alert and not as interested in rehab anymore."

Matt said he didn't want his brother to suffer any longer.

"You can't fix what's not there," he said. "He'd never be the same and he'd never live a full life."

After Rand died, Ethan's medical guardianship was transferred to Britni. But while Britni, too, wanted to end Ethan's suffering, Matt said she told him she couldn't bring herself to do it.

She turned over guardianship to him.

"I hope Ethan doesn't hate me for leaving him alive so long," Matt said.

Monday, Feb. 12, 11:49 a.m. journal entry:

I don't really know how to even write this. Cheryl and I just don't know what to say. So I'm going to go ahead and put my thoughts up here. I don't presume to represent anyone else's personal opinion. This is how I view the events.

After a family discussion, and by family I mean Matt, Cheryl, and I (Liza), the decision has been made to remove Ethan's feeding tube beginning March 5. This is something Matt feels very strongly about, and I believe for unselfish reasons. Cheryl in no way agrees with this decision, but has agreed to disagree with Matt. If it were my decision, I would probably grant a little more time. Regardless, I will continue to support Matt. In the end it is his decision as he has medical guardianship of Ethan.

The decision to stop Ethan's feedings was made by Matt. He came to the decision earlier because of Ethan's 104 degree temperature and other declining health issues.

His mother, Millie Biggers of Fairborn, didn't agree with it.

"I don't think Matt gave Ethan enough time," said Biggers, Rand's ex-wife and the mother of their four children.

She had visited Ethan in Indianapolis four times. Because of health reasons, she was driven there on Saturdays by the Miami Valley chapter of Blue Star Moms, a group made up of mothers who have or have had children in the military.

She believes Ethan could have recovered if the family had followed through on a plan to move him back to Dayton and into hospice care next month.

"I believe in miracles. I believe in the power of prayer and I believe in the right to life," she said Thursday.

Her oldest daughter, Amanda Watkins of Enon, however, seemed to sum up the sentiment of the rest of the family.

"I feel, out of everyone in the family, Matt knew him the best," she said. "Whatever decision he felt Ethan would have wanted, I would support."

Saying goodbye

Through the CaringBridge journal, Ethan's story has reached far beyond the Biggers family.

Since Liza began her updates, the site has had more than 25,000 visits and 420 posted messages. Some are to the family, like one from a woman in New Mexico who said she knew how hard the decision was because she's been there.

"I know my words will never be enough to help you all through this but I know that Ethan is a hero and fighter and will be forever in our hearts," she wrote.

Other messages are to Ethan directly. One simply reads, "Thank you for my freedom."

Gerard Simon, Rand's best friend, used to check the site every week or two for an update. When he learned Ethan was dying, he drove from Dayton to Indianapolis last week to pay his respects.

The ordeal has split the family, in many ways torn it apart. But at the same time, there is a closeness that wasn't there before.

An inner strength.

"I feel like if God didn't give us a miracle, he gave us strength," Liza said. Doctors initially told family members that Ethan could live anywhere from seven to 10 days. He died 11 days after his feedings were stopped.

Liza is convinced everyone did everything they could for Ethan, including the soldiers who bandaged his head and had him flown to Balad, where surgeons worked to save his life.

She's thankful they did.

"A lot of the argument is, 'Are we saving guys that shouldn't be saved?' " she said recently. "At least he got to come home. His loved ones got to say goodbye and he gets to die with his family instead of dying out in the desert. But, at the same time, it's a perpetual state of grief."

In her journal entry on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 8:16 p.m., she wrote:

Please keep Ethan in your thoughts and prayers for a safe and comfortable passage on. Matt and I are here by his side 24/7 until the time he passes on ... Dad can take him from there."

On Saturday, as she and Matt watched Ethan take his final breath, they saw him smile.

Each viewed it as another sign.

"That he's OK," Liza said.

And to Matt: "That he saw Dad."

From the Daily News

Related Link:
Ethan Biggers passes away peacefully after 1 year in coma

Jeremy Barnett remembered

HARTVILLE – Sgt. Jeremy D. Barnett gave his life for his country. Then he gave his heart.

His mother, Michele Barnett of Hartville, was at his side in a military hospital in Germany last week as the Mineral City man lay dying, another casualty of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“I held his hand, and I put my head on his chest and I knew that that heart was going to continue to beat. His heart was going to live on,” she said Tuesday about the soldier’s plan to donate his organs if things went wrong.

“He saved the life of a 51-year-old person in Europe. Our son’s heart is beating in this person.”

Life support was removed Saturday from the 27-year-old soldier, ending his life and a military career that included service to both the Navy and Army.

“I’m proud of my son,” his mother said. “He gave his life twice. He did what a lot of us would never have enough guts to do, and he did it well.”

His father, Dave Barnett of Mineral City, said he would like anyone who recognizes someone in uniform to “stop and shake his hand. We see in the paper where someone got injured or someone got killed, and we think it’s a shame. We don’t realize how bad it really is until it hits home.”

It hit home hard this week for the Barnett family. Jeremy Barnett also is survived by three younger sisters, Natalie, Emily and Rebecca Barnett.

Natalie Barnett said her brother, a good-natured young man who used humor to break the most tense moments, would want people to know that “he took his job very seriously; he loved his job.”

Their mother agreed. “He loved his country; he loved his service to his country.”

Sgt. Jeremy Barnett and his father e-mailed one another at least twice a week, as the soldier looked forward to returning home to fish and hunt with his dad. And Dave Barnett said he warned his son not to volunteer for anything.

“The last time I talked to him, I told him to do what he was told to do and to do his job, ‘but do not put your hand up,’” the elder Barnett said.

One week ago, the young man suffered “wounds sustained from a land mine detonation,” according to an announcement this week by the U.S. Department of Defense. He had volunteered for a patrol mission as a “first observer” in Ad-Dujayl, Iraq, on his day off. His father explained that the job entailed going in ahead of others to call in for artillery or air strikes.

“There was an explosion,” Dave Barnett said. “The AP is saying it was a land mine. ... No one seems to have a definite answer as to what happened. He got out of his Humvee to check something out. ...”

Army representatives called the Barnett family last Wednesday.

“When I answered the phone and they said it was the Army, I knew that wasn’t good,” Dave Barnett said.

The family flew to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl to be by Jeremy’s side.

Family members praised the medical staff and military personnel, saying they worked hard to make the dying soldier as comfortable as possible. They talked about all the volunteers who carry hundreds of wounded soldiers in large buses that serve as ambulances all day, every day. And they talked about the people assigned to coordinate and schedule events to make everything run smoothly during their devastating loss.

The Barnett family also attended the ceremonies during which Sgt. Barnett posthumously was presented with his medals.

The purple medal – “That was something I never wanted to see,” his father said, struggling to hold back tears.

Michele Barnett acknowledged that the parents of every soldier worry while their grown children are fighting in a war.

“Everyone has an anxiety about being over there in Iraq. I thought it (the worst) would be an injury,” she said.

From the Reporter

Related Link:
Jeremy D. Barnett dies of injuries from land mine

David Berry remembered

ANTHONY - Almost improbably, their lives followed an arc.

Only months separated David Berry and Jerrod Hays in age. They grew up in Anthony, graduating in the Class of '87 from Chaparral High School in Harper County.

"Happy and fun-loving guys," recalled fellow classmate Dan Bertholf, Medicine Lodge.

For a time, Berry and Hays even worked at the same foundry in Norwich. They also served in the Kansas Army National Guard, and as part of Bravo 1st Battalion 161st Field Artillery, they went to Iraq.

But their lives split in different directions Thursday after an improvised explosive device erupted, killing Berry and critically wounding Hays.

Berry, 37, who enlisted in the Kansas Army National Guard even before he collected his high school diploma, had more than 16 years' military service. The staff sergeant's accumulated honors included the Soldiers Medal, the highest peacetime recognition that a soldier can receive.

Hays' condition has been upgraded to serious and he was in a hospital in Germany on Friday. He has suffered trauma to his right eye and will undergo an operation Saturday to remove shrapnel, said Jerrod's brother, J.D. Hays, Anthony.

"He's alert, conscious," Hays said, and the family has been told that Jerrod's left eye "has the appropriate response."

Hays, 38, is scheduled to return Sunday to the U.S., where he will be hospitalized. Family members plan to fly to the East Coast to be with him.

Funeral plans for Berry, who had been living in Wichita and leaves a wife, Kathleen, a stepdaughter and two stepgrandchildren, have not been announced.

"It's unimaginable. As far as our grief is, I can't fathom what the Berrys are going through," said J.D. Hays on Friday, able to see Berry's parents' home from his workplace.

"Pretty tough day for the families," said Janett Ballard, Anthony, whose husband, Yancy, is with the same unit in Iraq.

Janett Ballard noted that she had known Berry and Hays longer than she had known Yancy.

Ballard said her husband and another Anthony man in Iraq, Rick Kenmore, were not injured.

As she communicated by e-mail with her husband Friday afternoon, Ballard tried to get him to think of other things and succeeded when she informed him she would have to take down the flag because of the wind.

He shifted the topic to the weather.

Berry was the first son of Anthony to die in the Iraq war. But Harper is only 9 miles away, and Anthony hardware store owner John Schott considered the death in Iraq four months ago of soldier WillSun Mock, now buried in Harper, like a death in the family, too.

On Friday morning, the city of Anthony put American flags on poles lining Main Street and along the highway leading into town. A sign outside the hardware store read: "God Bless the Berry and Hays Families."

"The response from the people has just been phenomenal," Hays said.

Berry and Jerrod Hays considered the mission in Iraq worthy, he said.

When classmate Bertholf heard the news from Iraq, he said he felt admiration for "their patriotism and sense of duty."

Soldiers who hear American politicians talk about failure in Iraq take it to heart, Hays said.

"I would encourage people to contact the VFW, find out who is serving overseas, and send them a letter of encouragement. It would sure help," Hays said.

From the Hutchinson News

Related Link:
David Berry dies of injury from I.E.D.

Perspective: Failing in Baghdad -- The British Did It First

Above: Frederick Stanley Maude (pictured left) enters Baghdad in 1917.

At the center of Baghdad's neglected North Gate War Cemetery, near the edge of the old city walls, stands an imposing grave. Sheltered from the weather by a grandiose red sandstone cupola, it is the final resting place of a man from whom George W. Bush could have learned a great deal about the perils of intervening in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Stanley Maude was head of the British army in Mesopotamia when he marched into Baghdad on a hot, dusty day in March 1917. Soon thereafter, he issued the British government's "Proclamation to the People of Baghdad," which eerily foreshadowed sentiments that Bush and his administration would express 86 years later: British forces, Maude declared, had entered the city not as conquerors, but as liberators.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

Opinion (James Dobbins): My enemy's enemy

WASHINGTON: Somehow, the United States has maneuvered itself into a position were most Shiite and most Sunni, most Arabs and most Persians alike seem to regard America as their enemy.

In fact, one of the few things the warring factions have in common is their opposition to the United States.

American forces in Iraq are being attacked on one side by Sunni insurgents, ex-Baathists and Al Qaeda operatives, and there is no sign their hostility to the U.S. is abating.

These groups are also hostile to Iran, which is backing the other side in the civil war — Shiite parties that dominate the current Iraqi government and their armed militias.

How has the United States managed to provoke opposition from all sides in this conflict?

Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune

Opinion (Linda Heard): Mideast Is Plagued by Covert Operations

Iraqis have long suspected the finger of the occupying forces has stirred the pot of sectarian violence with the ultimate aim of splitting their country into three separate provinces.

Suspicions were particularly heightened in 2005 when British military agents in Arab garb were caught at a checkpoint with explosives in their booby-trapped vehicle, which according to a member of the Iraqi National Assembly Fattah El-Sheikh was destined to explode in a marketplace.

We can never know the truth of this claim since following the agents’ arrest and detention, the British Army used tanks to topple the walls of the jail and extricate their men before they could be interrogated.

Read the rest at the Arab News

Opinion (Niall Ferguson): Why our enemies -- and friends -- hate us

George Orwell (standing, third from left) in Mandalay, Burma in 1923. Of his experience there, Orwell wrote that he, 'hated the imperialism I was serving with a bitterness which I probably cannot make clear'. Orwell went on to write 'Animal Farm' and '1984'.

BEING HATED IS NO FUN. And few people hate being hated more than Americans. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been asked, "Why do they hate us?" — and another for each of the different answers I've heard. It's because of our foreign policy. It's because of their extremism. It's because of our arrogance. It's because of their inferiority complex. Americans really hate not knowing why they're hated.

The best explanation is the simplest. Being hated is what happens to dominant empires. George Orwell knew the feeling. As a young man he served as an assistant police superintendent in British-run Burma, an experience he memorably described in his essay, "Shooting an Elephant." Called upon to kill a pachyderm that had run amok, Orwell was suddenly aware "of the watchful yellow faces behind" him: "The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh."

Read the rest at the LA Times

Opinion (Anna Badkhen): What if there had been no war?

As a Shiite living in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Thanaa al-Taee eked out an existence in a totalitarian state that oppressed her religious sect, cracked down on ethnic minorities, and silenced dissent by torturing and executing opponents who dared criticize the despotic regime.

Now, watching sectarian bloodshed rip apart her country, al-Taee wonders if the war that toppled Hussein's dictatorship was worth it.

"I have a conflict with myself about what happened to us, Iraqis," al-Taee, 38, who had worked at a Baghdad art gallery before fleeing to Bahrain in 2004, wrote in a recent e-mail after visiting her parents in Baghdad. "Do you think this is better for us?"

It is also the question on the minds of scholars and military experts in the United States, including the architect of the "shock and awe" campaign that helped bring down Hussein's regime. Four years after the United States invaded Iraq, these observers contemplate what Iraq would have looked like today had the Bush administration decided not to go to war.

Read the rest at the SF Chronicle

Opinion (Christopher Dickey): Demolition of the Willing

Feb. 23, 2007 - Four years ago a million people poured into the streets of Britain to march against the war they feared was coming in Iraq. I was in London, and I remember being struck by how decent, sincere and solid the protesters were. Many had come as families—mom and pop and the kids—just to stand up and be counted in favor of reason and diplomacy over sophistry, war and occupation.

Maybe you remember what President George W. Bush had to say about those folks. It tells you a lot about why the United States has so few friends left in the world; why its political allies have been weakened, deposed or defeated and why the public in Europe, especially, is unwilling to believe almost anything Washington says.

Read the rest at Newsweek

Perspective: Beyond Baghdad, Beyond ‘the Surge,’ War Still Simmers

Police in Samarra

SAMARRA, Iraq --The letter from Al Qaeda in Iraq to the members of the local police was clear.

Come to the mosque and swear allegiance on the Koran to Al Qaeda, the letter warned, or you will die and your family will be slaughtered. Also, bring $1,200.

It had the desired effect on American efforts to build an Iraqi security force here.

Nearly a third of the local police force went to the mosque, paid the money and pledged their allegiance. Another third was killed. By late October, only 34 local police officers were left to try to maintain order in this city of 100,000.

Read the rest at the NY Times

Perspective: Troubles for the Iraq Oil Deal

Barely two days have passed since Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki hailed the country's new petroleum law as a "solid base for unity of all Iraqis" — a rare boast these days. President Bush has also trumpeted it as proof that Iraq has a viable future. But parliamentarians and Iraq's oil unions have already begun mobilizing against the draft legislation, arguing that it is a desperate attempt by al-Maliki's government to satisfy Western demands, which could damage Iraq's economic future and speed the country's ultimate disintegration.

Read the rest at Time

Perspective: The life and times of Jalal Talabani

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraq's President Jalal Talabani, evacuated on Sunday to Jordan after falling ill, has a reputation as a peacemaker for trying to broker consensus between the country's bitterly divided factions.

Himself a Kurd, the 74-year-old former outlaw is the first non-Arab to lead an independent Arab majority state.

He became president in April 2005 after the first election in Iraq since a US-led invasion overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, his sworn enemy.

Talabani was re-elected to the post a year later, cementing his people's powerful role on the national stage after suffering years as second-class citizens.

Read the rest at Yahoo News

Perspective: Sadr reigns in militia, but motives unknown

Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric and founder of the Mahdi Army militia, discovered recently that two of his commanders had created DVDs of their men killing Sunnis in Baghdad. Documents suggested that they had received money from Iran.

So he suspended them and stripped them of power, said two Mahdi leaders in Sadr City, the heart of Mr. Sadr’s support here in the capital.

But did he do so as part of his cooperation with the new security plan for Baghdad, which aims to quell the sectarian violence tormenting the city? Because his men had been disloyal, taking orders from Iran, whose support he values but whose control he fights? Or was it just for show — the act of an image-conscious leader who grasped the risk of graphic videos and wanted to stave off direct American action against him?

Read the rest at the NY Times

Perspective: Baghdad wary of Kurdish deployment

The deployment of Kurdish brigades in Baghdad neighborhoods controlled by followers of firebrand Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr has prompted hopes that the forces will bring peace, as well as fears that the move will stoke ethnic and sectarian tensions.

Around 3,000 Kurdish soldiers are deploying in Baghdad as part of the new security plan, which got under way this week. It's the first time Kurdish troops have been sent to the city in such numbers.

On 16 February, full-scale battle broke out in the southern city of Basra between British forces and the Mahdi Army militia, which is loyal to al-Sadr, raising the possibility that such all-out fighting may soon be seen in Baghdad.

For the past four years, relations between Kurds and al-Sadr followers have been sensitive at best. This is partly because the Sadr movement opposes federalism and article 140 of the Iraqi constitution calling for normalization in the ethnically mixed and oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Normalization refers to returning Kirkuk to its state before the Saddam regime, which imported Arabs and expelled Kurds. Many Sadrists believe the policy is being used to drive out Arabs and Turkomen.

Read the rest at ISN

Perspective: Iraq Rebuilding Short on Qualified Civilians

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad at the formal inauguration of a PRT in Iraq in November, 2005. "Think of the tourism potential here," he said.

In Diyala, the vast province northeast of Baghdad where Sunnis and Shiites are battling for primacy with mortars and nighttime abductions, the U.S. government has contracted the job of promoting democracy to a Pakistani citizen who has never lived or worked in a democracy.

The management of reconstruction projects in the province has been assigned to a Border Patrol commander with no reconstruction experience. The task of communicating with the embassy in Baghdad has been handed off to a man with no background in drafting diplomatic cables. The post of agriculture adviser has gone unfilled because the U.S. Department of Agriculture has provided just one of the six farming experts the State Department asked for a year ago.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

Perspective: Insurgents aim for wider-scale attacks, may mass-produce EFPs

BAGHDAD — Troops from Maj. Jeremy Siegrist's battalion were following up a tip recently when they came across something odd: two restaurant-sized freezers sitting in the middle of a palm grove.

The freezers' contents were even more surprising. Inside, the troops found 150 copper plates, C-4 plastic explosive and plastic tube sections — key ingredients in making the deadly, armor-piercing roadside bombs known as explosively formed projectiles, or EFPs.

The amount of Iran-made material suggested Iraqi militants have learned how to mass-produce EFPs, rather than only import them pre-made from Iran, Siegrist said Monday. "It's a huge step" for the militants, he said.

The increased use of EFPs, which can shoot molten metal through tanks and cause heavier casualties than normal bombs, may be part of a broader tactical shift by Iraqi insurgents, U.S. military officials and analysts say. Since an increase in U.S. troops patrolling Baghdad under President Bush's new security plan, extremists have launched fewer but deadlier attacks to kill Americans and terrify the Iraqi population.

Read the rest at USA Today

Perspective: Army sets goal of specializing in electronic warfare by 2008

An elecontronic counter-measures UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)

The Army wants soldiers to take the war on terrorism to the electromagnetic spectrum.

The Army hopes to make electronic warfare its own Military Occupational Specialty by March 2008, the chief of the Army’s Electronic Warfare Division said.

Ultimately, the Army hopes to have thousands of soldiers trained in electronic warfare, which includes jamming enemy communications and preventing insurgents from detonating roadside bombs, said Col. Laurie Moe Buckhout.

Read the rest at Stars and Stripes

Perspective: Army Helicopter School Uses Iraq Lessons

A helicopter pilot practicing at Fort Rucker

FORT RUCKER, Ala. -- At a sprawling base set amid the wiregrass pastures of southern Alabama, the Army is teaching its next class of helicopter pilots how to avoid getting shot down when it's their turn to go to Iraq.

Sometimes you fly high, they learn, and sometimes you go low. Vary your speed, and don't fly the same route too often. And always -- always -- know what's going on around you. That's because it doesn't take much more than a single gun on the ground to take down even the most advanced U.S. helicopter.

"Self-preservation is what the key is," said Chief Warrant Officer Troy A. Wyatt, an instructor.

Read the rest at the LA Times

Security Summary: February 28, 2007

A woman stands in front of rubble from a car bomb explosion in a Baghdad market today which killed at least 10

MAALEF - U.S.-backed Iraqi forces found a weapons cache in Maalef, near Mosul, that including 194 mortar rounds, 14 mortar tubes, 18 rocket-propelled grenade launchers, 160 rockets, a suicide vest and other gear for making bombs, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Mortars wounded nine civilians in southwestern Baghdad in a residential area, a police source said.

BAGHDAD - The body of a police colonel who had been kidnapped two months ago was found in northern Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed 10 people and wounded 21 near a vegetable market in Bayaa district in southern Baghdad, police said.

NEAR TAJI - U.S. forces killed eight insurgents and detained six suspects during operations targeting foreign fighter facilitators and the al-Qaeda in Iraq network northeast of Taji, 20 km (9 miles) north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said.

MUQDADIYA - Gunmen killed two brothers of prominent Sunni politician Saleem al-Jubouri in the insurgent stronghold of Muqdadiya, north of Baghdad, police and Jubouri said.

BAGHDAD - A suicide car bomber attacked a police station in Nahdha district in central Baghdad, killing two policemen and wounding another two, police said.

BASRA - A British soldier was killed by gunfire while on patrol in Iraq's second city Basra, the British Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday.

MAHMUDIYA - Mortars killed one civilian and wounded another four from the same family in the town of Mahmudiya, 30 km (20 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

RIYADH - At least four Iraqi soldiers were seriously wounded when a roadside bomb struck their patrol in the town of Riyadh, 60 km (40 miles) southwest of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, an army source said.

TIKRIT - Gunmen shot dead a man inside his car on Tuesday in Tikrit, 175 km (110 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

HIMREEN - Police found a body shot in the head in the town of Himreen, 120 km (75 miles) south of the northern oil city of Kirkuk, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed Abdul-Hadi Mahmoud, the head of a government office in Mosul that issues identity cards, in a drive-by shooting in the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

ISKANDARIYA - Several mortar rounds landed in a residential district, killing a man and woman, in the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

From Reuters/Alternet

DOD Intelligence Director Maples: Attacks on forces match record high in January

WASHINGTON — Attacks against coalition forces in Iraq averaged nearly 180 a day in January, the highest level since major combat operations ended and more than double the rate one year ago, according to intelligence officials.

Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday said the attacks matched the previous high, set in October 2006.

Attacks on civilians also reached a new high, with almost 50 per day in January, according to the agency. Attacks on Iraqi Security Forces remained consistent with recent months, at about 30 a day.

Read the rest at Stars and Stripes

Iranian military threatens to cross into Iraq to pursue Kurdish fighters

Above: PKK fighters

Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Iran's forces may cross into Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish rebels if the government in Baghdad can't expel the militants from border areas, an Iranian commander said.

"I warn Iraq's Kurdish movements and anti-revolutionary armed insurgents who are linked with foreigners that Iraq's government must oust them from the region," Revolutionary Guards leader Yahya Rahim Safavi was cited as saying today by state-run Mehr News. "Otherwise the Revolutionary Guards, to protect the security of the country and Iranian people, will consider it as their right to chase and neutralize them beyond the borders."

Iran's armed forces have regular clashes with Kurdish rebels in the northwest of the country, mainly members of the Party of Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK. Iranian forces killed three local PJAK chiefs Feb. 26, Agence France-Presse reported.

Read the rest at Bloomberg

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Perspective: From Iraqi mountains, Kurds train for battle with Iran

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Perspective: Will Turkey attack in Iraq?

U.S. Set to Join Iran and Syria in Talks on Iraq

WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 — American officials said Tuesday that they had agreed to hold the highest-level contact with the Iranian authorities in more than two years as part of an international meeting on Iraq.

The discussions, scheduled for the next two months, are expected to include Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her Iranian and Syrian counterparts.

The announcement, first made in Baghdad and confirmed by Ms. Rice, that the United States would take part in two sets of meetings among Iraq and its neighbors, including Syria and Iran, is a shift in President Bush’s avoidance of high-level contacts with the governments in Damascus and, especially, Tehran.

Read the rest at the NY Times

Army cuts training of 100 NCOs 5 weeks short to support Iraq surge

FORT BLISS, Texas — About 100 senior NCOs will be released early from the nine-month resident Sergeants Major Course to support the troop surge in Iraq.

Col. David J. Abramowitz, commandant of the Sergeants Major Academy, said graduation ceremonies will be held April 13 for sergeants major designated for immediate deployment to Iraq. The rest of the 649-member Class #57 that began studies late last summer will graduate May 22, the regularly scheduled date.

Abramowitz, who leaves here Friday to become chief of staff for the Iraq Assistance Group, said the soldiers designated for early graduation will not participate in the course’s culminating command post exercise.

Read the rest at the Army Times

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2 Army units will forgo desert training in rush to Iraq

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Perspective: In rush to surge, soldiers sent in with little training

Gates: U.S. in Iraq for 'a number of years', but no desire for permanent bases

The U.S. has been 'upgrading' its major bases in Iraq over time. The 14-square mile Balad Air Base (pictured above) includes an olympic-sized swimming pool, five dining halls and a car dealership. The 19-square mile al-Asad Air Base includes a Burger King, a Pizza Hut and a car dealership. At Tallil, there's a mess hall for 6,000. The bases are tied into Iraq's electrical grid, another sign of permanence. But the U.S. insists that bases for 'long-term access' is a different thing than 'permanent'.

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday the United States may have a military presence in Iraq for a "prolonged period" and drew a comparison with U.S. bases in Germany and South Korea.

Gates, however, also said the United States had no desire for permanent bases in Iraq and any long-term military presence in the country would be far smaller than the current force level of some 140,000 U.S. troops.

"I think that at a very much reduced level we will probably have some presence in Iraq, as we have had in Korea and Germany and a variety of other places around the world where we've been at war, for a prolonged period of time, a number of years," Gates told the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

Related Link:
Report: U.S. building massive permanent base in north Iraq

Iraqi Gov't: Report of 18 children killed in bombing yesterday not true

A man and boy walk past the site of a bombing in Ramadi which destroyed a police station and killed 15 on Monday.

BAGHDAD, Feb 28 (Reuters) - A report of a bomb killing 18 people, mostly children, on Tuesday in the Iraqi city of Ramadi was wrong and stemmed from confusion over a similar attack the day before, police officials and residents said on Wednesday.

The reported killing of so many children drew swift condemnation from the president and the prime minister, but Colonel Tariq al Theibani, security adviser for Anbar province, said the report of the bombing on Tuesday was wrong.

"It happened the day before yesterday," he told Reuters.

He said 18 people, many of them children, were killed on Monday by a suicide car bomb, as previously reported. The U.S. military had put the death toll from that attack at 15.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

Related Link:
Conflicting reports over bomb killing or injuring children in park in Ramadi

Perspective: The phone is always on

Lance Cpl. Benjamin Ford reacts last week moments after an insurgent shot at his unit

MONROE -- Denise Ford ignores requests to shut off her cell phone at the doctor's office and at movie theaters. When she leaves home, she forwards her calls. She drives back home if she forgets her phone.

"You are paranoid about missing a call," Denise said.

Denise's son Ben, 21, is in Iraq.

Denise is no stranger to the military, having served in the Air Force for five years in the 1980s. But that doesn't stop her from worrying.

Her son, Ben, a Marine lance corporal, has been near Haditha, Iraq since late last year, serving with the Second Battalion, Third Marines, Echo Company. It is his second deployment.

Read the rest at the Monroe Times

Perspective: Brothers in more than spirit, 3 sons head to Iraq

ALANSON - Melody Bradley recently shared a few hugs and tears with her son, John McClellan, who leaves for Iraq in a few weeks.

In the next year, she will swallow back more tears and say goodbye as two more of her sons will leave for Iraq.

“I pray and cry,” Bradley said. “I'm proud of them for serving. But when they leave, it gets harder.”

Brothers John McClellan, 27, Dominic McClellan, 25, and Will Bradley, 20, are part of a greater brotherhood in the Marines.

“We're best friends, brothers and Marines,” John said. “We can relate on another level, not just as brothers.”

Read the rest at Petoskey News

Perspective: Building on a police force of one

Marines conduct a house-to-house search in Barwanah

If the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment is going to rid the town of Barwanah violent insurgents, it depends on 80 men from the Nimrawi tribe huddled in one dark room of a large house down the street. It is protected by concertina wire, tanks, Marines, soldiers, and one 19-year old Barwanah police officer who searched them when they came in. He is the only police officer on the entire force.

His name is Wahad. He wears a black ski mask to hide his face. His neighbors believe he was arrested and detained by the Americans; they don't know he joined the police force in December. He has only been home twice in two months, and then under cover of night and with a phalanx of Marines to protect him.

"They're scared all the time," said Buck, a police officer from Florida helping to organize the new force. "This is the time when they are hit, when they are killed, when there is a screening like this. This is the typical beginning of a police department in a hot area, just kind of going through the steps."

Read the rest at UPI

Perspective: 'I'd take a bullet for them'

Members of the 6th Iraqi Army Division, patrol through the streets of Mahmudiyah in joint mission with U.S. forces

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq Feb. 26, 2007 — "I'd take a bullet for them and I know they'd take a bullet for me," says U.S. Army Maj. Alvaro Roa. He calls them "my guys" and takes pride that they are the best in the brigade. It's obvious there's a friendship — the type forged in combat — between Roa and his men, the soldiers of the Babylon battalion of the Iraqi 6th Army.

"I get about 50 man kisses a day," Roa says, referring to the traditional Iraqi greeting, "and it doesn't bother me at all." Roa is the chief of one of more than 400 transition teams — American soldiers that live, work and fight with Iraqi security forces.

Read the rest at ABC News

Security Summary: February 27, 2007

Children watch as an unidentified Iraqi holds up an empty cannister from a 'stun grenade' used in a raid in Baghdad.

RAMADI - Iraqi police and a community leader said a bomb blast near a soccer field in Ramadi killed 18 people, mostly children, but the U.S. military said it was unaware of such an attack. The U.S. military said its soldiers had carried out a controlled explosion in Ramadi, also near a soccer field, that slightly wounded 30 people, including nine children.

Two Iraqi police sources said 18 people had been killed in the bomb attack. Tribal leader Hamid Farhan al-Hays from Ramadi told Iraqiya state television that 12 children and six women were killed in a bomb he blamed on al Qaeda.

BAGHDAD - Four bodies were found shot dead around Baghdad, a police source said.

BAGHDAD - Mortars killed three people and wounded six in Wehde, south of Baghdad, a police source said.

DIWANIYA - The U.S. military announced the death of another U.S. soldier, killed on Monday by a roadside bomb near Diwaniya, 180 km (110 miles) south of Baghdad. Two more soldiers were wounded by the bomb.

BAGHDAD - Three U.S. soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on the outskirts of Baghdad and one more was wounded, the U.S. military said.

MOSUL - A suicide truck bomber targeting an Iraqi police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul killed seven policemen and wounded 47 people, including 32 civilians, police said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb in Karrada killed five people and wounded 10 when it exploded shortly after an official convoy passed by, a police source said.

AL-BAAJ - A suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt killed four people and wounded six others in the reception of a company specialising in manufacturing cement barriers for the Iraqi security forces in the town of al-Baaj, about 100 km (60 miles) west of Mosul, police said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed two people and wounded four others in a busy commercial street in the predominantly Shi'ite district of Karrada in central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb in Tayaran Square in central Baghdad killed two people and wounded 11, police said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb wounded three policemen in Zayouna in eastern Baghdad, a police source said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed a university student in Mosul, police said.

BAGHDAD - A total of 25 bodies were found shot dead in different districts of Baghdad on Monday and most showed signs of torture, police said.

BAGHDAD - U.S. forces detained 12 insurgents, including a suspected local al Qaeda leader, during raids targeting people who help foreign fighters and the al Qaeda in Iraq network, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Two Iraqi journalists working for the Shi'ite Furat television channel were wounded in Monday's bomb attack that wounded Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and killed six people, an official said. Correspondent Abdul-Razzaq Raheem suffered from wounds to the head and cameraman Haider Qabil sustained shrapnel wounds in his hand.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Army special forces backed by U.S. military advisors detained 16 suspected militiamen in operations in the northeastern Sadr City district of Baghdad against what the U.S. military described as "rogue" Mehdi Army militia cells.

RAMADI - The U.S. military put the final death toll from Monday's suicide truck bomb targeting a police station near Ramadi at 15 people killed, including two policemen, and nine wounded. The blast was in a village near the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad.

NEAR DIWANIYA - Iraqi police and army arrested 157 people they said were members of the Soldiers of Heaven, a group involved in a major battle with U.S. and Iraqi forces last month in which around 260 members of the group were killed. They were arrested in a town near Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, police brigadier Abdul-Khaliq al-Bedrani said.

From Reuters/Alternet

U.S., Iraqi forces stage pinpoint raids on Sadr City

Sadr City children stare through a window broken during the raids.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi forces staged raids in Baghdad's main Shiite militant stronghold Tuesday as part of politically sensitive forays into areas loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Troops have held back on broad sweeps through the teeming Sadr City slums since a major security operation began earlier this month, targeting militant factions and sectarian death squads that have ruled Baghdad's streets.

Al-Sadr withdrew his powerful Mahdi Army militia from checkpoints and bases under intense government pressure to let the neighbor-by-neighbor security sweeps move ahead. But Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and others have opposed extensive U.S.-led patrols through Sadr City, fearing a violent backlash could derail the security effort.

The pre-dawn raids appeared to highlight a strategy of pinpoint strikes in Sadr City rather than the flood of soldiers sent into some Sunni districts.

At least 16 people were arrested after U.S.-Iraqi commandos - using concussion grenades - stormed six homes, police said. The U.S. military had no immediate details of the operation.

``My sons and wife were very terrified,'' complained Muhand Mihbas, 30, who said his brother and six cousins were taken in the sweeps. ``Does the security plan mean arresting innocent people and scaring civilians at night?''

Read the rest at the Guardian

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Inelligence Chief McConnell: Iran training Iraqi insurgents in I.E.D. use at sites in Lebanon, Iran

WASHINGTON, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Iran is training anti-American Iraqi Shi'ites at sites inside Iran and Lebanon in the use of armor-piercing munitions blamed for the deaths of 170 U.S. troops in Iraq, the top U.S. intelligence official said on Tuesday.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, newly installed U.S. intelligence chief Mike McConnell said it was "probable" that Iranian leaders including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were aware that weapons known as explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, had been supplied to Iraqi Shi'ites.

But McConnell, in his first congressional testimony as the U.S. director of national intelligence, stopped short of saying Iran was directing the EFP attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

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Intelligence Officials: Iraq security and politics heading in the wrong direction, violence has become 'self-sustaining'

Iraqi children survey the scene of one of yesterday's car bombings in Baghdad

Top U.S. intelligence officials told a Senate committee today that Iran is likely to develop a nuclear weapon by the early to middle part of the next decade and that security and political trends in Iraq are moving in the wrong direction, with Iraqi leaders facing nearly impossible challenges in curbing sectarian violence that has become "self-sustaining."

Delivering the intelligence community's annual threat assessment at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the officials also painted a grim picture of developments in Afghanistan and in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan near the Afghan border, where they said a resurgent Taliban is gearing up for a spring offensive and the al-Qaeda terrorist network continues plotting to kill large numbers of Americans.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

Conflicting reports over bomb killing or injuring children in park in Ramadi

Men stand beside a destroyed police station hit by a suicide truck bomb attack in Ramadi yesterday. 15 people died.

BAGHDAD, Feb 27 (Reuters) - Iraq's government and police said a bomb blast near a soccer field in the city of Ramadi on Tuesday killed 18 people, mostly children, but the U.S. military said it was unaware of such an attack.

The U.S. military said its soldiers had carried out a controlled explosion in the volatile western city, also near a soccer field, that wounded 30 people, including nine children.

"I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," said Major Jeff Pool, a spokesman for U.S. forces in western Anbar province. The wounded had cuts and bruises, he said...

Pool said the controlled blast in Ramadi was "stronger than we had expected". He said it was carried out in the courtyard of a building where bags of explosives had been found. Windows from a nearby building were blown out, causing the wounds.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

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Baghdad bans parking on main streets

A traffic jam in Baghdad

Baghdad - Baghdad motorists were banned on Sunday from parking on any of the war-torn Iraqi capital's main streets in order to prevent car bombs and free up the movement of military forces.

Baghdad operation command, which is overseeing a major security sweep by Iraqi and US forces to quell sectarian violence in the capital, warned in a statement that those ignoring the law will have their cars confiscated.

They also face prosecution under anti-terrorism laws.

"For the sake of preventing terrorists from carrying out criminal acts in markets and important public areas, and to facilitate the movement of forces... we warn citizens that it is completely forbidden to park a car in all main streets of Baghdad," the statement said.

Read the rest at News 24

2 Army units will forgo desert training in rush to Iraq

A Soldier from the 25th Infantry Division takes aim at an “insurgent” during the battle for Gahr Albai and Millawa Valley, a war game scenario at the National Training Center, Fort Irwin

WASHINGTON- Rushed by President Bush's decision to reinforce Baghdad with thousands more U.S. troops, two Army combat brigades are skipping their usual session at the Army's premier training range in California and instead are making final preparations at their home bases.

Some in Congress and others outside the Army are beginning to question the switch, which is not widely known. They wonder whether it means the Army is cutting corners in preparing soldiers for combat, since they are forgoing training in a desert setting that was designed specially to prepare them for the challenges of Iraq.

Army officials say the two brigades will be as ready as any others that deploy to Iraq, even though they will not have the benefit of training in counterinsurgency tactics at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., which has been outfitted to simulate conditions in Iraq for units that are heading there on yearlong tours.

Read the rest at the Denver Post

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Odierno: Execution-style sectarian killings drop in Baghdad since security plan

Bodies collected overnight in Baghdad in January

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Execution-style killings have fallen sharply in Baghdad since the security crackdown began this month, the No. 2 U.S. commander said Tuesday.

Figures compiled by The Associated Press from police reports show that the number of bullet-riddled bodies found in the streets this month totaled 628 as of Monday night. That was down from the 1,079 in January and 1,379 in December.

Such killings have generally been attributed to sectarian death squads – including Shiite militiamen, Sunni insurgents or rogue elements within the mostly Shiite army and police. The security crackdown officially began Feb. 14, although some U.S. and Iraqi units had been stepping up patrols and searches since earlier in the month.

“We have seen a decrease in the past three weeks – a pretty radical decrease,” Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno told reporters. “I'm not willing to draw any conclusions yet though because it's only (been) three weeks.”

Read the rest at the San Diego Tribune

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Report: Pace warns Congress of signifcant decline in military readiness, 'may take several years' to reverse

WASHINGTON - Strained by the demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a significant risk that the U.S. military won’t be able to quickly and fully respond to yet another crisis, according to a new report to Congress.

The assessment, done by the nation’s top military officer, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, represents a worsening from a year ago, when that risk was rated as moderate.

The report is classified, but on Monday senior defense officials, speaking on condition on anonymity, confirmed the decline in overall military readiness. And a report that accompanied Pace’s review concluded that while the Pentagon is working to improve its warfighting abilities, it ”may take several years to reduce risk to acceptable levels.”

Read the rest at the Boston Herald

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Ethan Biggers passes away peacefully after 1 year in coma

DAYTON, Ohio - A soldier shot in the head while serving in Iraq lingered in a coma for nearly a year before his twin brother made the decision to disconnect his feeding tube earlier this month.

Army Spc. Ethan Biggers, 22, a native of suburban Beavercreek, died Saturday in an Indianapolis hospital 11 days after his feedings were stopped. The decision fell to his brother, Matt, after the death of their father, Rand, who initially made medical decisions for his son, in a car accident last July.

Ethan Biggers, a radio operator, was on his second tour of duty in Iraq when a sniper shot him on March 5, 2006. The bullet entered above his left ear and exited above his right, resulting in a traumatic brain injury.

"It is the worst kind of injury you can suffer, a brain injury," said Matt Biggers, who joined the Army with his twin straight out of high school and completed two tours of duty in Iraq. "A bullet going through the head ... you don't recover from that."

Through his treatment at a handful of Veterans Affairs and military hospitals, Biggers' family kept hoping to see positive signs. An occasional eye movement or facial expression would give them hope, but never led to the kind of recognition and progress that doctors said would indicate a recovery was possible.

"You can't fix what's not there," Matt Biggers said. "He'd never be the same and he'd never live a full life."

At the time of his injury, Ethan Biggers and his then-fiancee, Britni Fuller, were expecting their first child. Shortly after his injury, the couple married with the help of a firm that conducted the ceremony by proxy. A few months later, Fuller gave birth to a son, Eben.

After Biggers' father died, the responsibility for his medical care fell to Fuller, but Matt Biggers assumed medical guardianship after she told him she couldn't make the decision whether to discontinue the life-preserving treatments. In early February, as the anniversary of Ethan Biggers' injury approached, Matt Biggers made the decision to disconnect the feeding tube.

It was a decision with which other family members - including his mother and stepmother - disagreed.

"This is something Matt feels very strongly about, and I believe for unselfish reasons," his sister, Liza Biggers, wrote in an online journal entry.

"If it were my decision, I would probably grant a little more time. Regardless, I will continue to support Matt. In the end it is his decision as he has medical guardianship of Ethan," she wrote.

His mother, Millie Biggers, felt her son could have recovered if he was brought home to the Dayton area and given hospice care.

"I believe in miracles. I believe in the power of prayer and I believe in the right to life," she said Thursday.

It was a difficult decision for Matt Biggers, who originally planned to have the feeding tube removed on March 5 - one year to the day after the sniper attack. But Ethan Biggers' health declined, and when he spiked a 104-degree fever on Feb. 13, his brother decided the time had come.

Biggers' family and two fellow servicemen held a somber ceremony five days later and pinned his Purple Heart on his chest. The family had put off the medal ceremony in the hopes Ethan Biggers would emerge from the coma.

He died in Indianapolis' Richard L. Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center 11 days after his feedings were stopped. Liza Biggers said that while the ordeal has tried her family, she thought that the doctors had done everything they could to help her brother.

"I feel like if God didn't give us a miracle, he gave us strength," she said.

From the Palladium Item

Anthony Aguirre reported killed in Iraq

The knock on the door came before dawn Monday morning.

The Channelview woman who answered knew she was about to get bad news about her baby brother.

"I knew when the doorbell rang at 6, that it was kinda odd because nobody visits at 6 in the morning," said Christina Castillo. "The minute I saw them I knew, I knew what they were there for. I knew."

She was right.

Representatives from the U.S. military informed Castillo that her brother had died in Iraq hours earlier.

Anthony Aguirre, 20, was killed by a roadside bomb around 1:30 a.m. Houston time.

The young Marine was one of three siblings abandoned at an early age and raised by his sister and brother.

"He was a proud Marine.... When he came home for leave, he paraded his uniform around. I would have to tell him, 'Anthony, honey, you're home. You can take it off and put regular clothes on,'" said Christina Castillo.

"He always asked me, 'Do you think I'm doing the right thing?'" said Ernest Salinas, Aguirre's brother. "He would always ask me and I'd tell him 'You're doing a good job. Keep it up.'"

Being a Marine was all he dreamed of.

Still, leaving for Iraq last year on September 11th was difficult.

"When he left, he turned around, he was crying," remembered Salinas. "He got on the airplane and that was it. The last time we'd see him."

Aguirre was deployed to Iraq in September of last year. He was due to come home in April.

He would have turned 21 in three weeks and was recently engaged to another Marine.

From KHOU 11

Pedro J. Colon killed in attack

Pedro J. Colon was homeless as a teenager in Cicero, eating at local food pantries and keeping his possessions in plastic garbage bags.

At Morton East High School, from which he would eventually graduate, he looked to the military for security and a sense of belonging. He enlisted in the Army in August 2001, a month before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

On Monday, Colon, 25, a sergeant, was killed in Baghdad after his unit came under enemy fire. As of late Thursday, military personnel could not say where he would be buried.

Such transience marked much of his short life. He had been kicked out of his parents' home in the Bronx when he was 18, according to school officials. What caused the family rift wasn't clear. Colon's family could not be reached for comment.

The teenager landed in Cicero, where a friend's family said he could stay temporarily. He enrolled as a senior at Morton East and joined the track team. When Colon had to move on from the friend's home, he landed at a youth shelter on Chicago's North Side. He commuted to Morton East until a social worker at the school found him emergency housing closer to school.

Many of his teachers, even his track coach, said Thursday that they had no idea Colon had been living such a precarious existence.

"I never, never knew," said Michael Weber, former head track coach and a current guidance counselor at Morton East. "I think it's remarkable if he was living in a shelter."

Colon's guidance counselor, Michael Neberz, now at Glenbard West High School, said he tried to reach out to Colon's family in the Bronx but said they rebuffed his efforts. He could not recall the reason for the estrangement.

"They were over him," Neberz said of the teenager's immediate family. "He was on his own."

Neberz, like a handful of other adults, tried to help. He invited Colon for Christmas dinner. He recalled how humbled the teenager seemed by the attention and that Colon talked at length to Neberz's father, who was a veteran, about basic training.

By all accounts, Colon aspired for a career in the military. He talked of becoming an Army Ranger and working in Special Operations.

Morton East's military liaison, guidance counselor Michael Kennedy, wrote a letter of recommendation to help Colon get into the service.

Kennedy described Colon on Thursday as a humble kid who wore a big grin and who was well-liked by staff. He remembered buying him a CTA bus pass at one point so that he could get back to his shelter.

"He was the kind of kid that gets very little notice," Kennedy said. "He never causes any trouble."

Shelter closer to school

When Morton East social worker Michelle Murray learned of Colon's long commute, she helped secure emergency shelter closer to the high school. Helping him move, she spotted his luggage: overflowing plastic garbage bags. He got his food from a local pantry. He had to give up track to get a part-time job, she said.

"Getting a high school diploma was the most important thing to him," she said. "That and the military. I guess if you are a kid who has no family, I guess it makes sense."

Brandy Gill, a military spokeswoman at Ft. Hood, Texas, said it was still is unclear where Colon would be buried. She said she did not know if he had left a will or what the wishes of his family were. The military covers burial costs, she said, adding that his body was expected to arrive in the United States by early next week.

Details about his Army career trickled in slowly from the military. As of late Thursday, a prepared release from the Department of Defense said he was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division; worked as a power generation equipment repairer; and had been on this tour in Iraq since November. He received six service medals.

In the 2000-2001 school year, Mary O'Donnell began her first year as an English and history teacher at Morton East.

"I thought he was amazing," she said. "He was incredibly hard-working. He had kind of an old soul."

Marcela Porras, too, found Colon inspiring. Now an insurance broker, she was reporting for Lawndale News, a bilingual newspaper based in Cicero, when she met Colon his senior year while researching a story about students overcoming great obstacles.

"The thing I remember most was his positive attitude," she said. "He talked about being homeless but more that he wanted to be an Army Ranger. It wasn't if he could do it, it was he will do it."

In 2001, Hector Freytas was a junior on the track team. He remembered Colon as a sweet guy who ran long-distance. Now a Spanish teacher at Morton East, Freytas heard about Colon's death in an e-mail from a colleague.

`A happy individual'

"I remember him being such a happy individual," Freytas said. "Every day, he was always punctual. Always arrived with a great smile. Always had his head up high."

Colon graduated from Morton East in spring 2001. A few months later, he was in the Army.

Social worker Murray said she was so proud to learn that Colon had risen to the rank of sergeant.

"It's a shame he couldn't come back and tell his story to the kids here," she said. "He'd be such a role model."

From the Chicago Tribune

Jeremy D. Barnett dies of injuries from land mine

Those who knew Sgt. Jeremy D. Barnett, 27, of Mineral City say it was typical for him to volunteer for the kind of duty that cost him his life.

Barnett answered the call for a volunteer to help on patrol Wednesday at Ad-Dujayl, Iraq, which is north of Baghdad.

“It was his day off, but he volunteered, even though I’d told him not to before he left,” his father, David Barnett of Mineral City, said Monday night. “He was a good kid.”

“He told me he was not going to be a 20-year man who retired without ever seeing combat duty,” said Jeremy’s uncle, Craig Barnett of New Philadelphia.

Jeremy’s mother is Michele Barnett of Hartville, the former Michele Fiddler of Mineral City. He also is survived by three sisters, Natalie of Mineral City and Emily and Rebecca of Hartville.

The soldier died Saturday in Landstuhl Regional Medical Center at Landstuhl, Germany, from “wounds sustained from a landmine detonation,” according to an announcement Monday by the U.S. Department of Defense, which stated he died supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Barnett was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. He leaves behind his wife of six months, Stephanie, who is a member of the Texas National Guard and resides at Fort Hood. She is from Texas, and they met in the service, David Barnett said.

“It was an explosion, but no one seems to know exactly what happened,” Barnett said. “I’m assuming they were out on patrol. I know he got out of the Humvee to check on something and got hit. I heard that it was a rocket propelled grenade. I don’t know if anybody else got hurt.”

Barnett had been staying in contact with his son via e-mail, last being in contact last week.

“We were just talking,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot they can say. He was talking about hunting and that when he would get home, he had a lot of hunting and fishing to catch up on. Deer hunting was his favorite. He hadn’t done any good (hunting) around here on leave, but he did all right while in Texas. Hunting and fishing, that was his life.”

Jeremy attended Sandy Valley High near Magnolia until his junior year and graduated in 2000 from Warren G. Harding High at Warren. He signed up to join the Navy and went in right after graduation, his father said.

“He spent four years on the aircraft carrier George Washington and said he’d seen enough ocean,” his father recalled.

Six months after getting out of the Navy, Jeremy went into the Army. He was in his third year of a four-year hitch and had spent a year stationed at the Demilitarized Zone in South Korea.

Jeremy had earned medals for serving in Korea and other medals for his Navy service, his father said.

“He enjoyed the service, and he did well at it,” Barnett said.

From the Times Reporter

Blake H. Howey dies of injuries from I.E.D.

GLENDORA - Marine Pfc. Blake Howey of Glendora died in Iraq on Sunday at age 20, becoming the second person from Glendora to be killed in Iraq.

Howey was only a few weeks into his first deployment when his convoy was struck by a roadside bomb in Fallujah, said family friend Karen Butterfield. Howey's family asked her to speak for them after they were notified of his death Monday.

"They're just not ready to talk yet," she said. "Even for me it's like losing a family member. It's awful."

Howey is survived by his parents, stepfather and younger half-sister.

He and several close friends joined the Marines directly out of high school, Butterfield said. He followed Butterfield's younger brother, Marine Cpl. James Eckels, from Glendora High School to Whitcomb High School so they could graduate early together and join the Marines as soon as possible. Eckels graduated early, and Howey and a few other friends soon joined him after a June graduation.

"They were a good group of kids," recalled Whitcomb Principal Marc DuBois. "Howey was the quiet one in that group that was going into the service. This guy was great - and funny, too."

He was never in trouble and made the honor roll as well, DuBois said. His former science teacher, Tom Paegel, said Howey was an extremely determined student. Whitcomb will post a tribute to him on the school's marquee, Paegel said.
The city is also working to arrange a small ceremony in Howey's honor, said Councilwoman Karen Davis.

An impromptu memorial to the Marine has already appeared beneath his banner north of the Grand Avenue and Foothill Boulevard intersection, Butterfield said.

Because of Howey's friendship with her brother, Butterfield said Howey was like another little brother to her.

"He was kind of quiet, kind of shy, always a real sweet kid," she said. "He loved paintball and snowboarding."

Eckels and Howey's other friends were practically adopted by Howey's mom, Audrey Nichka, Butterfield said.

"She's an amazing lady," Butterfield said. "She calls them all her sons, and they call her mom.

"The biggest thing she wants now is to have the other boys come home," she continued. "It's scary, knowing that my brother's still over there."

The Department of Defense had not yet confirmed Howey's death late Tuesday, but Butterfield said the explosive killed Howey while he was traveling in a Humvee from Fallujah to Baghdad.

Nichka plans to have a memorial service for her son Sunday or Monday at Oakdale Cemetery in Glendora. She is setting up a fund in Howey's honor to send helmets, flak jackets and other necessities to soldiers in Iraq. "Her boys have helmets and flack jackets, but there's things they don't have, like magazines for their guns or cold weather gear, and we've sent that stuff," Butterfield said.

"To know that someone can just be taken - Howey wasn't even in combat - it's crazy," she said. "I wouldn't take a bit of support away from my brother, but I wish they gave them all the things that they need."

From the Tribune

Brett A. Witteveen killed during combat operations

SHELBY -- The bedroom in Brett Witteveen's rural home is just as he left it when he went to Iraq. Dirty clothes that he shed after a day of tagging trees with his forester father, Rick, remain piled high in a corner.

A dusty shelf displays all of his favorite things -- a signed football from his playing days at Hart High School, a picture of Trisha Kokx, the woman he proposed to last July, and a faded silk rose in a vase.

Over the doorway is a shiny license plate that reads: U.S. Marine Corps.

But the door to Brett Witteveen's room is closed now.

The 20-year-old, happy-go-lucky private in the Marine Reserves will not be coming home.

He was killed Sunday while on patrol with his unit near the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Kokx said the family was told he died while on patrol with 13 other men.

She said her fiance was the point man in the squad and was returning to base when he stepped on something that set off a bomb, killing him instantly. No other troops were killed.

"He was proud to be a Marine," said Kokx. "But he hated it over there."

"The last time I talked to him was (Feb. 14). He called 20 minutes before midnight and when I answered the phone, he said, 'Happy Valentine's Day.'"

The last time Rick Witteveen talked to his son was Feb. 11.

"He didn't like the country, but he knew what they were doing was a good thing," the father said. "He was happy on the phone. He talked about football and wedding plans and coming home for a leave the last part of March or first of April.

"He was excited. He said he was looking forward to coming home to 'Witteveen's Happy Place,' which is what he called it here."

Brett Witteveen lived the past several years with his dad and half-brother, Jason, in a pole building they built together.

Last summer, Brett Witteveen left the house for what his father thought was a trip to sign up for college. Instead, he came home and announced proudly that he had joined the Marines.

"It was a shock, but that was Brett," he said. "After chewing him out for a half-hour, I congratulated him and told him I understood."

Rick Witteveen said his son was inspired to serve his country because of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the fact that some of his hometown friends were in military service.

He completed training in September and shipped out with Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 24th Regiment out of Grand Rapids in October.

Kokx said when Brett's mind was made up, there was no stopping him.

"I didn't know he was going to sign up and I didn't like it. I worried about him," said Kokx. "He told me not to watch the news because they only show the bad stuff."

Last week, after talking to her fiancee, Kokx went window shopping for a wedding dress. The couple hadn't set a date, but they were looking forward to marrying and possibly someday taking over her father's farm.

"He was so outgoing, not quiet and shy like me," said Kokx. "He could talk to anyone."

The loss of his son has made Rick Witteveen question the way the war is being fought.

"I don't have anything against the service," said Rick Witteveen. "But the government -- I have a lot of problems with that. No war is a good war, but if you're going to do it, don't pull back and just police it.

"You go over there to win and get out of there. If you're going to go there, you know what needs to be done and you need to do it."

The Marines expect to return Brett Witteveen's personal effects and fly home his body for burial next week.

The shared some memories of the young man with his father.

"Brett was raised properly, you could tell that right from the beginning," said Scott Richardson, a staff sergeant out of Grand Rapids, who helped train Witteveen for Iraq combat. "He respected his elders and respected his rank and had that team spirit that he probably got from his football years that is so valuable in the Marines.

"That's probably why he was put out in a dangerous place to serve."

The Witteveens have known loss. Brett's mother, Edie, died of cancer when he was 11. Brett Witteveen immersed himself in football, eventually playing for his dad, who was the Hart offensive coordinator.

"He loved football more than anything," said Kokx. "All he ever wanted to talk about was football."

Witteveen said on the football field, he was tough on his son.

"I told him in the beginning how it was going to be and he knew it," said Rick Witteveen. "I remember early in practice one time, I told him to apologize publicly to me or he would run the entire practice. He ran the entire practice.

"Then it was forgotten. We did not talk about the football team at home. But Brett was not afraid to tell you what he thought about things."

Brett wore the No. 84 jersey of his older brother, Trent.

Trent Witteveen remembers talking to Brett last month in Iraq and telling him that a pine tree had fallen on their father while he was cutting it down and it had put a gash in his head.

"He laughed hysterically for about 1.5 seconds and then asked if (their dad) was all right," said Trent Witteveen. "When I said he was, he laughed for about five more minutes.

"He just loved to laugh and have fun."

From the Grand Rapids Press

Travis W. Buford dies of injuries from I.E.D.

The mother of a 23-year-old Fort Carson, Colo., soldier who was killed in Iraq said her son was an opinionated man who signed up for the Army because the war compelled him to take action.

Army Pfc. Travis W. Buford deployed to Iraq in October, about a year after enlisting in the service along with a cousin, said his mother Janet Buford.

The native of Douglass, a small East Texas town, died Friday of injuries suffered a day earlier when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Ramadi, military officials said.

Buford was killed along with two other soldiers also stationed at Fort Carson: Staff Sgt. Joshua R. Hager, 29, of Broomfield, Colo., and Pfc. Rowan D. Walter, 25, of Winnetka, Calif.

Janet Buford said her son was an industrious young man who showed up for work on time, even if it was bad job that he didn't like. She said her son enjoyed spending time outdoors and golfing with his father, Anthony Buford of New Braunfels.

Travis Buford had not always wanted to be a soldier, but he couldn't get the Iraq war out of his mind, she said.

"It bothered him severely," Janet Buford said. "He and his cousin decided they had to take action."

She said he moved to Galveston as he prepared for the military.

"He was excited to go. He wanted to make sure that those people who caused 9/11 and those who want to kill Americans don't get the chance to come over here," Janet Buford said. "He wanted to do what was right."

Janet Buford said she wrote her son daily letters over the course of his five months in Iraq.

"Last time I talked to him, I asked him if he wanted me to stop," she said. "He said, 'Oh God no, Mama. It wouldn't hurt my feelings if you wrote three times a day."'

Janet Buford said she was thankful she'd taken the time to write the letters.

"I'm glad they brought him some joy," she said.

From CBS 4

Joshua R. Hager dies of injuries from I.E.D.

A wife and son in Pueblo and a mother in Broomfield are mourning the loss of Staff Sgt. Joshua Hager, who they said had found a perfect role as a military leader and devoted family man.

Hager, 29, died in Iraq on Friday of injuries he suffered a day earlier when an explosive device detonated near a vehicle he was in, military officials said.

"He was a born leader and a great husband," said Heather Hager, Joshua's wife of seven years.

Hager said her husband had found a focus and source of pride when he enlisted in the military nine years ago and immediately met with success, becoming an Army Ranger and reaching the rank of staff sergeant.

"From the second he joined, he was promoted so fast," she said. "He was amazing. He was just such a good soldier."

Hager said a member of her husband's platoon called her Friday night to "make sure I knew he was a hero, and that his soldiers had all lost a piece of themselves."

Pfc. Travis W. Buford, 23, of Galveston, Texas, and Pfc. Rowan D. Walter, 25, of Winnetka, Calif., also died Friday from injuries suffered in the explosion, military officials said.

All were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson.

Hager's charisma and contagious sense of humor always attracted people in his direction, said his mother, Lois Knight.

"He would always put everyone around him at ease," she said. "He had the natural ability to warm people up to him."

The Hagers had closed on a house in Pueblo the day he was deployed to Iraq in October. They planned to settle down with their 9-year-old son, Bayley, three horses and two dogs.

Heather Hager said her husband took Bayley everywhere with him.

That meant hours of fishing, biking or any other outdoor activity the weather permitted.

"He was magnetic," Hager said of her husband, "always up for anything."

Joshua Hager first developed a love for Colorado's outdoors taking trips into the mountains with his mother, who raised him on her own in Broomfield.

She said his easy-going nature was perfect for the hit-or- miss days spent beside a plodding river.

"He didn't care if he only caught a minnow," she said. "He was always out there, enjoying being alive."

From the Post

David Berry dies of injury from I.E.D.

A Kansas National Guardsman was killed in Iraq this week. Sgt David Berry served with the 161 Field Artillery Unit out of Kingman and had been stationed in Iraq since March.

The 37-year-old Berry grew up in Anthony. KAKE News brought viewers his story in November, when he came home just before Thanksgiving for a surprise visit.

The military said he died when he was struck by an improvised explosive device.

Family members say Sgt. Berry's unit was called to check out a mortar explosion Wednesday night. An explosive went off when they arrived and Sgt. Berry was killed. Seven soldiers were injured, including Jared Hays, a good friend of Berry's. He is in critical condition. There were two other soldiers from Anthony in that unit, and their families are awaiting word of their conditions.

"Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Staff Sgt. Berry," said Governor Kathleen Sebelius. "He has made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our country and I ask Kansans to join me in offering prayers and sympathy to his family, friends and fellow soldiers."

"This is a sad day in the Kansas National Guard as we mourn the tragic loss of Staff Sgt. Berry," said Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family. We will do everything we can to support them through this challenging time."

In April 1986, Berry enlisted in the Kansas Army National Guard with Detachment 1, Battery C, 1st Battalion, 161st Field Artillery, at Kingman, Kan., as an ammunition team chief. He graduated in 1987 from Advanced Individual Training as a Heavy Anti-armor Weapons Infantryman at Fort Benning, Ga. In 1997, he completed the Primary Leadership Development Course at Camp Ashland, Neb. In 2001, Berry completed his Basic Non-Commissioned Officer course for Field Artillery. In 2003, he completed the Multiple Launch Rocket System Crewmember course.

He had a total of more than 16 years of military service. In February 2005, Berry was awarded the Soldiers Medal, which is the highest peacetime honor that a soldier can receive. Berry was serving on active duty at Fort Leavenworth during Operation Enduring Freedom and while at home on leave came upon a single vehicle accident in Kingman County. The driver had lost control of the vehicle and crashed off the highway and the vehicle was on fire. Berry, at great personal risk, pulled the driver from the burning vehicle, saving his life. Maj. Gen. Bunting presented Berry with this medal while at his pre-mobilization station at Camp Shelby, Miss., prior to his deployment to Iraq.

His other awards include the Army Achievement Medal, Army Reserve Components Achievement Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Armed Forces Reserve Medal, Global War on Terrorism Medal, Army Service Ribbon, Kansas National Guard Meritorious Service Ribbon, Kansas National Guard Commendation Ribbon, Kansas National Guard Emergency Duty Service Ribbon and the Kansas National Guard Service Medal.

Berry is survived by his wife, Kathleen, one stepdaughter, two stepgrandchildren, his mother, father, and sister.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

From KAKE 10

Richard L. Ford dies of wounds received in combat operations

EAST HARTFORD, CT -- The Army's elite White Falcons was a regiment built on readiness, able to deploy within 18 hours of notification and parachute in among the enemy.

Sgt. Richard L. Ford, of East Hartford, joined the Fort Bragg, N.C.-based unit in 2004 and was on his third tour of duty in Iraq when he died of combat wounds on Tuesday, the military said.

"Sergeant Ford honorably served with the White Falcons distinctly for the three years," his commander Lt. Col. Richard Kim said in a statement. "Richard possessed all the qualities of a great paratrooper. He contributed immensely to the readiness of the organization will be sorely missed.

Ford was the 37th person with Connecticut ties who has died since March 2002 in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ford, 40, joined the Army National Guard 1995 and entered active duty in 2004. That's when he was assigned to the White Falcons, the 2nd Battalion, 325th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.

The unit traces its beginning to an infantry regiment activated in 1917 in Georgia that was known as the "All-American Division." Since then, the regiment has played key roles in major U.S. military operations, according to the unit's Web site. The group helped provide security for the October 2005 Iraqi national referendum and two months later Iraq's national parliamentary election.

A decorated soldier, Ford had previously served in Iraq from December 2004 and March 2005. His second tour was from September 2005 through December 2005. He was a recipient of the Army Medal of Valor, the Bronze Star and Purple Heart among several other honors.

His son, Michael Patrick, of Bridgeport, called Ford his "greatest hero."

"I would like everyone to know that I'm extremely proud of my dad's service to our country," Patrick said in a statement. "I love him deeply and will miss him terribly."

In addition to his son, he is survived by his father Mason Ford, of Colchester, a brother and a sister. Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

From WCVB 5

Montrel S. Mcarn killed in attack

A 21-year-old soldier from Raeford died Monday in Iraq after his unit came under attack, the military said.

Spc. Montrel Shante Mcarn was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, according to a statement from the Defense Department.

Another soldier, Sgt. Pedro J. Colon of Cicero, Ill., also died in the attack. He was 25.

Both soldiers were assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. They had deployed to Iraq in November.

Their unit came under attack in Baghdad by “enemy forces using multiple weapons,” the statement said.

Mcarn joined the Army in February 2005 as an armor crewman, officials at Fort Hood said. His awards and decorations included the National Defense Service Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.

Word of Mcarn’s death spread quickly through Raeford by Tuesday evening. Relatives, described as distraught over his death, declined through a family friend to be interviewed.

From the Fayetteville Observer

Louis G. Kim killed by small arms fire

WEST COVINA - Army Spc. Louis G. Kim, 19, of West Covina died Tuesday from wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire in Ramadi, Iraq, according to the Department of Defense.

Kim was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, Schweinfurt, Germany.

West Covina Mayor Mike Touhey said Kim is the first West Covina resident killed in Iraq.

"It is a tragedy," said Touhey, who did not know Kim personally.

"I feel deeply for the family. My family and the city's hearts and prayers go out to them. Whatever we can do for them, we look forward to contacting them in the near future."

Touhey added that he would have staff change the city's Blue Star Video, a tribute to West Covina servicemen and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan that is aired at the beginning of each council meeting.

"We will be altering our video to make sure we honor this individual who gave his life," he said.

The city flag will be flown at half-staff for one week in honor of Kim, Touhey said.

Read the rest at the Tribune

Rowan D. Walter dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Rowan Walter, a 25-year-old medic from Clovis was killed in Iraq on Friday February 23rd. He was on his way to help other wounded soldiers when a bomb exploded near his vehicle in Ramadi, Iraq.
Walter was a 1999 Buchanan High School graduate. He leaves behind his wife Priscilla.

Walter is the fourth soldier from Buchanan High School to die in the Iraq War.

From CBS 37

Ronnie G. Madore dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Army Spc. Ronnie G. Madore Jr., 34, San Diego; died Wednesday in Baqouba, when an explosive detonated near his vehicle. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

From the Plain Dealer

Christopher K. Boone dies from non-combat injury

Christopher K. Boone, 34, of Augusta, Ga.; specialist, Army National Guard. Boone died of a noncombat-related injury Feb. 17 in Balad, Iraq, north of Baghdad. He was assigned to the 121st Infantry Regiment (Long Range Surveillance) at Ft. Gillem, Ga.

From the LA Times

Leeroy Camacho laid to rest

Corporal Lee Roy Apatang Camacho was finally laid to rest yesterday afternoon with his three sons-Lee Roy, Jr., 8, Layton, 7, and Leven Joe, 3-offering their last salute to their hero, their role model, their father.

The three boys, dressed in black coats and black neckties, stood in front of their father's brown casket, and in seconds offered their salute to their father before the military pallbearers brought Lee Roy to his grave at the CNMI Veterans Cemetery in Marpi.

Military Veterans Affairs Office director Ruth Coleman said the boys really practiced the salute, which their father had taught them when he was still alive. She said the salute was the interment's most moving scene.

Hundreds of CNMI community members, including government officials led by Gov. Benigno R. Fitial and first lady Josie Fitial, graced the event. Washington Rep. Pete A. Tenorio, former Gov. Froilan Tenorio, and Sen. Luis Crisostimo also attended the memorial service.

At 2:57pm yesterday the funeral cortege reached the recently completed Veterans Cemetery escorted by Department of Public Safety police officers. Flowers and wreaths filled the memorial chapel for the fallen soldier.

Lee Roy's wife Velma and mother proceeded to the chapel escorted by Sgt. Alfred Camacho, Lee Roy's brother.

Seven soldiers from the U.S. Army Reserve in Guam and the 9th Regional Readiness Command with Headquarters in Hawaii carried the casket to the chapel.

Coleman presided during the brief ceremony by introducing visiting U.S. Army Adjutant Douglas Goldhorn and the visiting soldiers. Rev. Fr. Nonoy Recaido led the Gospel reading, invocation, and blessing for Lee Roy.

The soldiers then hoisted the U.S. flag when the three U.S. Army men fired gunshots for the 21-gun salute. The event became more solemn when taps was sounded.

Goldhorn presented two U.S. flags to Lee Roy's wife and mother. He knelt down and extended his appreciation to Lee Roy's bravery.

Gov. Fitial followed with the presentation of the NMI flag to Velma and Lee Roy's mother. “For your son's service and sacrifice for his country. For his legacy as a great American soldier to the CNMI,” he said to Lee Roy's grieving family.

Gov. Fitial earlier said he is saddened by the death of Lee Roy, which happened not long after the fourth NMI combat fatality in Iraq, Lance Adam Quitugua Emul, was killed in action.

“I hope that the federal government is looking at the sacrifices that our boys are committing to fight for freedom and democracy [in Iraq],” he added. Gov. Fitial said the CNMI is part of the U.S. political family as it upholds and supports democracy and freedom. “We will continue to support the U.S.,” he said.

At 3:28pm Lee Roy was brought to his final resting place after his three sons last salute escorted by Goldhorn. Velma held her youngest son, L.J., as she watched the funeral service crew haul the casket down to the ground. She suddenly broke into tears when finally the casket was completely placed into the ground.

Closed casket

Before Lee Roy's interment at the Veterans Cemetery, local officials and lawmakers gathered at the Mt. Carmel Cathedral to present plaques and certificates to the fallen soldier. Fitial also led the presentation of the plaques and certificates.

At least three life-size paintings and portraits of Lee Roy were displayed inside the church. Hundreds of community members also paid their last respect to the fallen soldier whose casket was closed during the entire funeral service.

Coleman said the casket was close from its arrival until its internment. “It's tragic,” said Coleman, adding that the cause of the accident has not been disclosed even to the family.

From the Saipan Tribune

Related Link:
Leeroy A. Camacho killed in explosion during breaching operations

Carl Seigart laid to rest

PICAYUNE — Staff Sgt. Carl Leonard Seigart sent his wife a Valentine’s Day card from Iraq earlier this month. It arrived Wednesday, the day before his funeral.

Family, friends and fellow soldiers honored Seigart today. His words to his wife — written before a roadside bomb killed him — echoed at his funeral.

“It was like a message from heaven,” Susan Seigart said of the card from her husband. “He said he loved me and he said, ’Your love for me makes me confident you are waiting for me.”’

Seigart, 32, was awarded a Bronze Star posthumously. The tank mechanic and three others based at Fort Hood, Texas, died in the Feb. 15 blast in Baqubah. They belonged to the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division.

The native of San Luis Obispo, Calif., was in the Army 14 years and was serving his first tour in Iraq when he was killed. He is one of some 50 members of the military with ties to Mississippi killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Seigart received a 21-gun salute and his wife was given his Bronze Star and the flag used to drape his coffin.

Brig. Gen. Leon Collins, who also served in Iraq, said he did not personally know the fallen soldier.

“But that does not dampen the empty feeling I have,” Collins said. “We have something in common because we each raised our hand and uttered the same oath to protect this country and the people of this country.”

From the Ledger

Related Link:
Carl Seigart remembered

Related Link:
Carl Leonard Seigart reported killed in Iraq

John Rode remembered

LAKE MARY -- All John D. Rode wanted was to become a U.S. citizen and fight for his adopted country. He was able to accomplish only one in life.

The 24-year-old Army sergeant died on Valentine's Day in Iraq when a roadside bomb obliterated his truck.

But the Canadian-born soldier, who had taken steps toward becoming a citizen, is expected to be laid to rest next week at Arlington National Cemetery -- as an American. Services are tentatively set for Wednesday.

Getting his citizenship was "one of the first things his parents asked the [Army] bereavement officer," said his aunt, Catherine Brooks. Found among his personal papers at his parents' home in Lake Mary was contact information for immigration officials.

Since the U.S. began military action following the terrorist attacks in 2001, 58 soldiers have received citizenship posthumously, according to the Department of Defense.

Applications are fast-tracked under defense and immigration policies. The aim is to have an official certificate granting citizenship ready at the funeral of the fallen soldier, said Leslie Lord, the Army's liaison officer to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

Rode, who moved to the U.S. in 1999, came from a military tradition. His father, Tom, served in the Canadian air force for 25 years.

"He bled Army green," said his uncle, Eddie Brooks. "He literally was born to be a soldier. There's no other thing in this world that he could have done better."

It was during his last leave around Christmas that Catherine Brooks teased Rode about completing his citizenship. Rode joked back that he had been a little busy.

Indeed, Rode was in his second tour of Iraq as part of the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division based at Fort Hood, Texas. His first deployment had been for 15 months in Baghdad.

His latest, which began in October, was in Baqouba, Iraq, as part of a rapid-response unit that rode to the rescue of troops in trouble. He drove a heavy-duty truck designed to drag or haul damaged military vehicles off the battlefield.

His truck was blown out from under him twice in the weeks before he was killed, Eddie Brooks said. Rode emerged unscathed after the first attack, though his truck was thrown 30 feet off the ground. Rode suffered a concussion and took shrapnel in his leg in a second attack Jan. 20.

After each attack, Rode welded armor plates onto his vehicle to provide himself and his men additional protection, his uncle said. But on Feb. 14, even the additional armor could not protect Rode and two other soldiers killed by a roadside bomb as they raced to the aid of their comrades.

Family described Rode as an easygoing guy who loved to play with his young nieces and nephews. Members of the close-knit family, who live in Mississippi and North Carolina as well as Central Florida, made sure to travel to Lake Mary when Rode was home on leave, Catherine Brooks said.

Since his death, his family has learned of the strong bonds Rode created in the little time he spent in Central Florida. He had become friends with the staff at Fast Break Billiards in Longwood and endeared himself to everyone.

"He was just a person you felt comfortable with," said Rick Davis, who handles security at the pool hall. "He was human when he came back [from Iraq], not edgy about the war."

Even with strangers, Rode showed unexpected compassion.

Just before Christmas, Rode accompanied his uncle to a class on Kumdo, Korean martial-arts fencing. He noticed one of the students had hurt his wrist and was struggling with warm-up exercises. Without being asked, Rode left and returned with a bandage and wrist brace.

Seung Hag Woo said the unexpected kindness exploded a negative stereotype he had held. He concedes that he was intimidated when he first spied Rode with his pale complexion, buff build and close-cropped hair.

"I thought he was a skinhead," Woo said.

But Rode's kindness at their lone meeting will have a long-term effect.

"It kind of broke a barrier in my mind," Woo said. "That's a pretty awesome experience."

In addition to his father; stepmother, Cheryl; and aunt and uncle, Rode is survived by three sisters, Peggy Rode-Storey of Pineville, N.C., and Kelly Rode and Julie Green, both of Canada.

From the Sentinel

Related Link:
John D. Rode dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Clinton Ahlquist remembered

CREEDE - This community is mourning the loss of a young Marine who was killed Tuesday while fighting in Iraq.

Marine Sgt. Clinton Wayne Ahlquist, 23, a member of Creede High School’s class of 2003, was killed in Ar Ramadi in the Iraqi province of Anbar when he stepped on an improvised explosive device.

His mother, Barbara Ahlquist of Scottsdale, Ariz., said she was at work when she was called back home about 10 a.m. Tuesday. Her husband, Rex, was waiting for her with two Marines.

Ahlquist died after tripping an IED while guarding a Medivac helicopter, Mrs. Ahlquist said from her Scottsdale home Thursday.

Mrs. Ahlquist said her son wanted a military life from the time he was 4.

“At Halloween, Clint would always dress up as GI Joe. He decided to join the Marines because they were the best of the best, he said,” his mother recalled.

She said Ahlquist enlisted in the Marines on June 23, 2003, shortly after graduating from school in Creede.

“He was tough. He ranked quite high in his class at boot camp at Camp Pendleton (near San Diego) even though he completed his final humps with a broken foot. He re-enlisted when he was in Iraq the last time,” Mrs. Ahlquist said. “Clint was proud to be a Marine, to fight for his country, to protect us and freedom.”

His mother noted that Ahlquist was among seven or eight Marines selected from 600 during his first tour of duty to train with the Army Special Forces and received a commendation from the Army for his outstanding work.

At the time of his death, he was in charge of a Marine infantry squad that would go out on night raids.

Mrs. Ahlquist said she and her husband spoke with their son on Sunday and he was upset because he had lost his master sergeant a couple of days before.

“He was a good kid, such a good kid,” she said.

When Ahlquist was a sophomore in high school in the Scottsdale area, he told his parents, “ ‘I am just a number here. The kids are only interested in BMWs, Corvettes and the GQ (Gentlemen’s Quarterly) look. I want to go to school where I can see what I can do,’ ” Mrs. Ahlquist recalled.

At the suggestion of her sister, Ahlquist came to live in Creede with a cousin, Liz Sawatzky, and her family, who operated Blessings Inn.

Almost immediately, the big, good-looking kid was the big man on campus. In his 10-member class, he was one of only three boys.

“He loved Creede. He blossomed there,” Mrs. Ahlquist said.

The next year, the family bought a home in Creede, where Ahlquist lived until graduation.

Ahlquist and classmate Karly Kolish, a year his junior and daughter of Mineral County Commissioner Carl Kolish and school librarian Frances Kolish,, became an item at the school.

Frances Kolish considered Ahlquist part of the family. Her daughter, now a political science major at University of California at San Diego, is devastated by Ahlquist’s death although the two went their separate ways several years ago, she said.

Ahlquist spent three-fourths of the time with the Kolishes, Mrs. Kolish said.

When Ahlquist enlisted, he left his dog, Grinchy, a Queensland heeler, with the Kolishes. Mrs. Ahlquist said with a laugh that she and her husband have to visit Creede often to see their “granddog.”

Creede schools Superintendent Buck Stroh recalled Ahlquist. “He was full of energy, very outgoing,” Stroh recalled, looking over the 2003 yearbook and its 11-member boys’ basketball team, with five of those young men in the service in some capacity.

Stroh noted that Ahlquist was in journalism all three years he was at the school and was editor of the yearbook and school paper his senior year. As a junior and senior, he was class vice president. He was active in Future Business Leaders of America, was prom king his junior year and was on the Arby’s All-Star Basketball team his senior year.

His coach, Aaron Christensen, recalled, “Clint was very conscious of what was going on around him and of people’s feelings. He was respectful, a model citizen; he was never one of those kids who gets in trouble and one of those young men the younger kids looked up to.

“He really thrived on a team. . . he wanted be part of the team and was happy to be around a group of guys. That might have been one of the reasons he went to the Marines. I am really sad to see him go,” Christensen said.

“It’s a small town. We all know everybody. This affects the whole community, not just the school,” Stroh said, adding that there will be a memorial service for Ahlquist and the school will erect a plaque to the young Marine’s memory.

Ahlquist was born Dec. 1, 1983, in Scottsdale. He was in the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force stationed out of Camp Pendleton.

Ahlquist did two tours of duty in Iraq and one in Okinawa.

The Ahlquists plan to bury their only child in the family plot in a Phoenix-area cemetery. He was the only grandson of both sets of grandparents, and family members said he will be missed greatly.

From the Chieftan

Related Link:
Clinton W. Ahlquist killed during combat operations

Matthew Bowe remembered

A young man from Moon who joined the Army upon graduating from high school with hopes of beginning a medical career was killed in Iraq Monday.

According to family members, Army medic Pvt. Matthew Bowe, 19, was killed with another American serviceman in a firefight about 30 miles north of Baghdad.

Lori Lynn Bowe said her son graduated from Moon Area High School in 2005, where he was a wide receiver on the football team, and immediately enlisted in the Army.

She said both of her son's grandfathers were military veterans, but Pvt. Bowe's motivations were more about his future than about his family's past.

"He wanted to go in the service, he wanted to be a doctor," Mrs. Bowe said. "He talked about it for years."

Mrs. Bowe, who runs Bowe's Family Day Care in Moon, said she had watched children for years, and her son took an interest in becoming a pediatrician. He spent time helping his younger brother and sisters with their homework and took child development classes in high school.

"He was a very good student. We never had a problem with him at school," Mrs. Bowe said. "All his teachers liked him and his football coaches loved him."

Mrs. Bowe said she had reservations about her son joining the military, but she could see how important it was to him.

He enlisted on July 5, 2005. After more than a year of training at Fort Benning, Ga., and in Texas and New York, Pvt. Bowe was deployed as a medic to Iraq in October. It was a dangerous assignment that he had difficulty discussing with his mother.

"He tried to smooth it over because I was always watching CNN and I'd always question him," she said. "And, of course, he's talking to Mom, so he'd candy-coat it and try to say everything was fine and he was good. He knows I'm emotional and I worry constantly. I'd pray constantly that he'd come home safe. But he'd tell his dad things.

"The only thing [negative] he'd say was that they didn't get much sleep, because they were going for 36-, 72-hour straight shifts. And he was a medic, so they were constantly busy."

Mrs. Bowe said that when her son first joined the Army, he'd phone home two or three times a week. Once he went to Iraq, the phone calls came less frequently.

"In Iraq, he would call once a week, usually on Sundays after the Steelers played," she said. "He would watch the games over there and talk to my husband and his brother and his sisters."

The last time they spoke, she said, was when he called to wish her a happy birthday on Dec. 27. After that, she said, his unit moved to another base, and the communications were limited to e-mails, the last one coming a week ago to wish his mother a happy Valentine's Day.

Pvt. Bowe had been scheduled to return home for a visit this month, but that trip was delayed.

"He was supposed to be home, but they kept bumping him out of his leave," Mrs. Bowe said. "He was supposed to be home right now, and they bumped him again. And now my son is dead."

In addition to enjoying hunting and fishing, Mrs. Bowe said, her son was an aspiring singer and songwriter.

"He was very talented," she said. "That's what he did for his senior project for school. And then he and a couple of his Army buddies cut three CDs while they were in New York and Texas."

Pvt. Bowe is survived by his mother and his father, John Bowe Sr.; four sisters, Melinda Shirey, Amanda Bowe, Megan Bowe and Tiffany Bowe; a brother, John Bowe Jr.; and a grandfather.

Funeral arrangements are pending.

From the Post Gazette

Related Link:
Matthew C. Bowe dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Kelly Youngblood remembered

A 19-year-old Mesa soldier told his mother before he went to Iraq, “I’ll do what I gotta do and I’ll be home.” U.S. Army Pvt. Kelly David Youngblood arrived in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, 76 miles west of Baghdad, on Feb. 2. Sixteen days later, he was killed by a sniper as he exited the tank he’d been driving.

He’d served in the military for one year, one month and one day.

Army officers hand-delivered Youngblood’s last letter to his sister, in which he called Ar Ramadi “terrorizing” and described the fear and horror he experienced.

“There are no phones where I’m at so I can’t call, and no Internet, so I can’t write,” Youngblood typed to his 16-year-old sister, Melaney, several days before his death. “I’m afraid to leave the building to (go to) the tank because there are snipers everywhere.”

From the day he arrived, Youngblood was surrounded by violence.

On his first day at the combat outpost, he stepped outside to videotape an exchange of gunfire in the city. But he became more than a witness. A rocket blew the video camera from his hand, and killed his friend “Zimmerman” in the process.

He wrote that two days later, a rocket-propelled grenade hit five feet from his tank. “But I had already loosened up by then. I don’t even get scared when I hear gunfire,” he wrote.

Youngblood moved to Mesa 11 years ago from La Porte, Ind., with his mother, Kristen Chacon, and sister, recalled his stepfather, TJ Chacon.

He attended Tempe’s McClintock High School and later worked as a sandwich maker in southwest Mesa before joining the army.

“He was a pretty simple kid,” his stepfather said. “He didn’t ask for much. He always liked to joke around.”

Before enlisting in the military, Youngblood enjoyed skateboarding, riding his bike and playing video games with friends.

He’d thought of going to film school, Kristen said. And he’d thought of a career in the military. But everyone else said he should be a comedian. His fourth grade teacher once told her she’d be surprised if he didn’t write for David Letterman when he grew up.

Kristen Chacon sat in her backyard in the Dobson Ranch area of Mesa Tuesday afternoon, flanked by friends and family, food piling up in the kitchen. A small, furry dog scampered to and fro, pausing beneath the lemon tree, then returning to sniff visitors’ feet.

“I keep telling people not to bring food — we’re not hungry,” she said warmly, taking a draw on a cigarette. She turned to several of her co-workers from Desert Vista Behavioral Health, who dropped by to show their support. “I wish you guys could have gotten to meet him — he’s so awesome,” she said.

The weather had been beautiful Sunday before officers knocked on her front door to deliver the bad news. She’d been drinking a cup of coffee.

“It’s like Armageddon there,” she said of Iraq. She said she wanted people to be reminded of the soldiers who are out fighting and dying.

“We could have used them here,” she added.

Youngblood had “always wanted to be in the army, ever since he was a little kid,” said his step-grandmother, Deanna Chacon. She said he “always played army and wore camouflage pants.”

“I just can’t believe Bush would send someone out of basic training straight to Iraq,” she continued. “They didn’t have a chance to begin with,” she said of new, young soldiers.

His mother said Youngblood was stationed in Savannah, Ga., and Kuwait before being sent to Iraq.

“This young brave man who gave his life for his country deserves to have recognition for his bravery in serving our country,” his step-aunt, Natalie Anguiano, wrote to the Tribune.

Youngblood’s mother said the funeral will be March 3, but she has not yet chosen a funeral home. His funeral will be public, and she plans to have him buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which is reserved for soldiers killed in combat.

From the Tribune

Related Link:
Kelly D. Youngblood slain by sniper

Comment (William M. Arkin): In War Planning for Iran, Truth Is the Linchpin

Every American adventure overseas has a geographic linchpin, an essential country that the United States needs to go to war.

In the case of Iraq 2003, it was Kuwait. Without Kuwaiti bases, the United States would not have been able to deploy the ground forces needed to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Without Kuwait, the United States would not have had unrestricted airspace into and out of Iraq to attack the country.

This fact is made abundantly clear in a series of declassified U.S. Central Command planning documents obtained by the National Security Archive.

In the case of going to war with Iran, the linchpin, ironically, might be Iraq.

The "Polo Step" collection - the codename for the compartmented war planning that was first revealed by this author in the Los Angeles Times in mid-2002 - is particularly noteworthy today, with all of the heavy breathing regarding war with Iran.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

Perspective: Most U.S. tips fingering Iran false

(02-25) 04:00 PST Vienna -- Despite growing international concern about Iran's nuclear program and its regional ambitions, most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate, and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran, diplomats here said.

The officials said the CIA and other Western spy services have provided sensitive information to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency at least since 2002, when Iran's long-secret nuclear program was exposed. But none of the tips about supposed secret weapons sites provided clear evidence that the Islamic republic is developing illicit weapons.

"Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that's come to us has proved to be wrong," said a senior diplomat at the atomic energy agency.

Another official described the agency's intelligence stream as "very cold now, (because) so little panned out."

Read the rest at the SF Chronicle

Opinion (William M. Arkin): Plans, But No Intention for War With Iran

Earlier this week, the BBC carried a report that said it had learned "U.S. contingency plans for air strikes on Iran extend beyond nuclear sites and include most of the country's military infrastructure."

The BBC also said "diplomatic sources" told the news agency that "senior officials at Central Command in Florida have already selected their target sets inside Iran." An attack would be triggered either by confirmation that Iran was developing a nuclear weapon; or if a "high-casualty" attack on U.S. forces in Iraq was traced back to Tehran.

The BBC report has predictably ignited an Internet firestorm, certainly understandable given the supposedly impeccable news source, the Bush campaign ever since the State of the Union speech to focus on Iran and Tehran's continued intransigence in the face of international pressure.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

Comment (Thom Shanker): More Sabers to Rattle, Perhaps Fewer to Thrust

WITH just enough flourish to give North Korea something to think about, a squadron of radar-evading F-22 Raptors landed in Japan a week ago, the first overseas deployment of the United States Air Force’s new ground-attack jet.

In a decision intended to give Iran similar pause, a second aircraft carrier arrived last week in waters within easy sail of the Persian Gulf.

These moves seemed like perfectly logical geopolitical responses to heightened dangers. But they also helped mask another reality. Because the military today does not have enough available ground troops to use for intimidation, the moves were pretty much the only options rather than choices among several.

In the past, certain Army brigades were designated to be on standby, ready to rush to global hot spots in 18 to 72 hours. But the Army and Marines are carrying out the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan with large and sustained deployments, so warplanes and warships are replacing boots on the ground elsewhere.

Read the rest at the NY Times

Comment (Ron Hutcheson and Warren P. Strobel): Speculation rages -- Is Iran Bush's next target?

WASHINGTON - President Bush says he isn't looking for a fight, but the question won't go away: Is the United States headed for war with Iran's Islamic rulers?

Increasing tensions with Iran over its nuclear program and actions in Iraq have fueled speculation that Bush may be paving the way for military action. With U.S. forces tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, no one expects a ground invasion, but analysts at both ends of the political spectrum put little stock in Bush's insistence that he's focused only on diplomacy.

"I still believe, at the end of the day, that he will bomb the Iranian (nuclear) facilities," said Joshua Muravchik, a neoconservative scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank with close ties to the Bush administration. Muravchik, who favors military action, sees Bush's current focus on diplomacy as a prelude to attack.

Read the rest at Real Cities

Opinion (William A. Niskanen): Don't start another war

President Bush continues to rattle the saber with Iran, declaring openly that Iranian weapons are killing U.S. troops in Iraq, and appearing to establish a pretext for possible military action. But a few blocks east, Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton have asserted that Bush does not have the authority to broaden the war beyond Iraq's borders.

President Bush wisely warned us that the early withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq might lead to a larger regional war, and we should take steps to avoid that. So why does he seem to be preparing for a war with Iran, and maybe Syria?

Read the rest at the Sacramento Bee

Analysis: Fears grow over Iran

Tony Blair has declared himself at odds with hawks in the US Administration by saying publicly for the first time that it would be wrong to take military action against Iran. The Prime Minister’s comments came hours before the UN’s nuclear watchdog raised the stakes in the West’s showdown with Tehran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that Iran had expanded its nuclear programme, defying UN demands for it to be suspended. Hundreds of uranium-spinning centrifuges in an underground hall are expected to be increased to thousands by May when Iran moves to “industrial-scale production”. Senior British government sources have told The Times that they fear President Bush will seek to “settle the Iranian question through military means” next year, before the end of his second term if he concludes that diplomacy has failed. “He will not want to leave it unresolved for his successor,” said one.

Read the rest at the Times of London

Comment (David Ignatius): Signals From Tehran

The title of the two-page Iranian document is "Gentlemen's Agreement." In convoluted English, it lists 11 points of understanding supposedly reached in September between Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani and his European counterpart, Javier Solana, on a temporary, partial, not-quite suspension of uranium enrichment.

What's interesting isn't the purported agreement -- Solana's spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach, insists there wasn't one -- but the fact that the Iranians are circulating the document and signaling through various channels that they want to restart dialogue. Indeed, when Larijani met Solana in Munich this month, "he expressed the willingness to resume talks to prepare final negotiations," according to a source close to Solana.

"We're getting pinged all over the world by Iranians wanting to talk to us," Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns said in an interview yesterday.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

Perspective: Failing our wounded

Jonathan Schulze

March 5, 2007 issue - After returning from Iraq in late 2005, Jonathan Schulze spent every day struggling not to fall apart. When a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic turned him away last month, he lost the battle. The 25-year-old Marine from Stewart, Minn., had told his parents that 16 men in his unit had died in two days of battle in Ramadi. At home, he was drinking hard to stave off the nightmares. Though he managed to get a job as a roofer, he was suffering flashbacks and panic attacks so intense that he couldn't concentrate on his work. Sometimes, he heard in his mind the haunting chants of the muezzin—the Muslim call to prayer that he'd heard many times in Iraq. Again and again, he'd relive the moments he was in a Humvee, manning the machine gun, but helpless to save his fellow Marines. "He'd be seeing them in his own mind, standing in front of him," says his stepmother, Marianne.

Read the rest at Newsweek

Perspective: Hundreds of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are ending up homeless

Vanessa Gamboa, a 24 year-old single mother, became homeless on her return from Iraq.

Feb. 24, 2007 - Kevin Felty came back from Iraq in 2003 with nowhere to stay, and not enough money to rent an apartment. He and his wife of four years moved in with his sister in Florida, but the couple quickly overstayed their welcome. Jobless and wrestling with what he later learned was posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Felty suddenly found himself scrambling to find a place for himself and his wife, who was six-months pregnant. They found their way to a shelter for homeless veterans, which supported his wife during her pregnancy and helped Felty get counseling and find a job. A year later, he's finally thinking his future. "I don't want to say this is exactly where I want to be—it's really not," he says. "But it's what I can get at the moment."

Read the rest at Newsweek

Perspective: Army downgrades injured vets' disability ratings to control costs

The Army is deliberately shortchanging troops on their disability retirement ratings to hold down costs, according to veterans’ advocates, lawyers and services members, and the Inspector General has identified 87 problems in the system that need fixing.

“These people are being systematically underrated,” said Ron Smith, deputy general counsel for Disabled American Veterans. “It’s a bureaucratic game to preserve the budget, and it’s having an adverse affect on service members.”

The numbers of people approved for permanent or temporary disability retirement in the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force have stayed relatively stable since 2001.

But in the Army — in the midst of a war — the number of soldiers approved for permanent disability retirement has plunged by more than two-thirds, from 642 in 2001 to 209 in 2005, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year. That decline has come even as the war in Iraq has intensified and the total number of soldiers wounded or injured there has soared above 15,000.

Read the rest at the Army Times

Perspective: Sharing the pain online

Ryan Kules

Bowie, Md. — WITH her husband in a coma, unable to breathe on his own, Nancy Kules sat down at a computer and began to type. PRAY, PRAY, PRAY, she wrote.

It was Dec. 2, 2005. Nancy, a kindergarten teacher from Arizona, had flown across the Atlantic to be with her husband, Army 1st Lt. Ryan Kules, at a military hospital in Germany. His entire body was wrapped in bandages. All Nancy could see were his forehead, a toe and his blood-clogged ears.

Ryan's Humvee had been hit by a roadside bomb in Iraq three days earlier. His right arm and left leg were blown off. He nearly bled to death. He had severe brain damage. Doctors feared he would not survive.

Nancy wrote to friends and relatives: I wish I were logging on with better news…. I will give you all the cold, hard facts.

Read the rest at the LA Times

Perspective: Loved ones soldier on

Members of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Marine Regiment, whose families must cope without them at home.

Sandy Leshinsky is fighting the grim insurgency of breast cancer while her husband and stepson fight the bloody insurgency in Iraq.

One battle is waged in the dangerous Anbar Province, the other in the family home on the grounds of Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township and in radiation sessions at a Mt. Clemens hospital.

Julie Kolomjec gets three kids off to Richard Elementary School in Grosse Pointe Farms every morning and still manages to volunteer on the schooplayground. She tries not to worry about her husband, who permanently closed his Canton law practice before heading for Iraq.

"My faith, my faith — every day, my faith gets me through," Kolomjec said.

Read the rest at the Detroit Free Press

Perspective: Iraq's kids play at civil war

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Toting menacing looking toy guns, young boys swarm around an abandoned car, chanting battle cries of a Shiite militia and pointing their play weapons at the "terrorist" in the driver's seat. Outnumbered, the boy playing a would-be suicide bomber surrenders.

On Baghdad's dusty streets, Iraqi children are playing make-believe war games inspired by the Shiite-Sunni conflict, a development that shows the depth of the city's rapid and violent break-up along sectarian lines.

Some adults try to discourage such games, fearing they only contribute to sectarian hatred. Others believe there is little they can do to stop it -- given the horror that children in Baghdad experience nearly every day.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

Perspective: 'If you work for Americans, you might get killed'

Unemployed men line up to register with Iraq's labor ministry. Numbering in the millions, many of Iraq's unemployed have not had steady jobs since the 2003 invasion. U.S. and Iraqi officials acknowledge that every young man without work is a potential recruit for insurgents who pay as little as $50 to people who plant explosives on a highway or shoot a policeman.

BAGHDAD — The letter arrived at Hassim Mohammed's house a few months after he had started his new job. "If you work for an American company, we will kill you," it said.

It was not signed, but Mohammed didn't need a name. The simple, one-line threat was convincing enough.

The civil engineer quit his job with the American company six months ago and began looking for work elsewhere, but found nothing. Unemployment is high, and pay at most Iraqi companies is low, so Mohammed put on a suit Saturday and put his life on the line once more.

He came to a job fair, joining hundreds of other Iraqis vying for work with U.S. firms or with Iraqi firms doing business with Americans.

"It's dangerous, but life must go on," Mohammed said, reflecting the combination of fatalism and desperation driving many Iraqis to risk their lives, family ties and in some cases their marriages for a decent salary.

Read the rest at the LA Times

Security Summary: February 26, 2007

A man grives over the death of his brother after yesterday's bombing at a Baghdad college which killed more than 40.

BAGHDAD - Iraq's Shi'ite vice president, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, and a cabinet minister were wounded in an apparent assassination attempt when a bomb killed six people at the public works ministry in Baghdad where they were attending a ceremony. An aide said Abdul-Mahdi was taken to hospital after suffering wounds in the blast. At least 31 people were wounded.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi security forces killed 12 insurgents, including two wearing explosive vests, and arrested 117 others, the government said in a statement.

BAGHDAD - At least 1,000 displaced families have returned to their homes since Operation Imposing Law was officially launched about 10 days ago.

FALLUJA - A U.S. Marine was killed in combat in Anbar province, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb struck a police patrol, killing two officers and seriously wounding another in the Rustamiya area of southern Baghdad, police said.

ABBASI - A suicide car bomber killed one Iraqi soldier and wounded two others when he attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi military checkpoint near the small town of Abbasi, 70 km (40 miles) southwest of Kirkuk, police and army sources said.

BAGHDAD - A mortar round killed one civilian and wounded two others when it landed in central Baghdad's commercial Nidhal street, police said.

ISKANDARIYA - At least seven people were wounded when mortar rounds hit the town of Iskandariya, 40 km (25 miles) south of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - A roadside bomb wounded two policemen in a patrol in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, police said.

From Reuters/Alternet

Gulf countries deny giving air space for Israeli attack on Iran

CAIRO, Egypt, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- The Arab League said three Arab Gulf countries have denied Israel use of their air space to strike Iran.

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Mousa told reporters in Cairo the foreign ministers of Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates said there is no agreement allowing Israeli jets to use their air space to reach Iran.

His remarks came a day after Israel's Haaretz daily said Israel has received a green light from these three oil-rich states to pass through their air space to launch air strikes against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility near the Arab Gulf region.

"No Arab country could allow or give license to Israel to attack Iran," the head of the 22-member Arab League said.

Read the rest at UPI

Related Link:
Israel to hold nationwide nuclear attack drill

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Report: 3 Gulf states agree to Israeli overflights en route to Iran; Turkey urged to allow U.S. overflights, ground attack

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Report: Israel seeks U.S. okay for Iran attack

Israel to hold nationwide nuclear attack drill

Tel Aviv, capital of Israel

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel will next month stage its first-ever nationwide drill simulating a nuclear and chemical missile attack on its cities, rescue services said Monday.

The exercise was initiated by the army's homefront corps in the wake of last summer's war in Lebanon and Iran's calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and its controversial nuclear programme.

Israel suspects is Iran is aiming to develop an atomic bomb, but Tehran insists its programme is for civilian energy purposes.

The main scenarios which will be simulated are a massive rocket attack on cities as well as a "conventional and non-conventional missile attack," Magen David Adom rescue services spokesman Yerucham Mandola told AFP.

During the drill -- which will include army rescue forces, police, medical and firefighting services -- air-raid sirens may be sounded across the entire country.

Read the rest at Yahoo News

Related Link:
Report: 3 Gulf states agree to Israeli overflights en route to Iran; Turkey urged to allow U.S. overflights, ground attack

Related Link:
Report: Israel seeks U.S. okay for Iran attack

U.S. Says Raid in Iraq Supports Claim on Iran

A soldier inspects the weapons cache found near the Shiite village of Jadidah last week.

BAGHDAD, Feb. 25 — A raid on a Shiite weapons cache in the southern city of Hilla one week ago is providing what American officials call the best evidence yet that the deadliest roadside bombs in Iraq are manufactured in Iran, but critics contend that the forensic case remains circumstantial and inferential.

The new evidence includes infrared sensors, electronic triggering devices and information about plastic explosives used in bombs that the Americans say lead back to Iran. The explosive material, triggering devices, other components and the method of assembly all produce weapons with an Iranian signature that has never been found outside Iraq or southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is believed to have used weapons supplied by Iran, the Americans say.

But critics assert that nearly all the bomb components could have been produced in Iraq or somewhere else in the region. Even if the evidence were to establish that Iran is the source, they add, that does not necessarily mean that the Iranian leadership is responsible.

The raid by American and Iraqi forces discovered a fake boulder made of polyurethane and containing three of the deadliest kind of roadside bombs in Iraq.

Read the rest at the NY Times

Related Link:
Intelligence Sources: Officials in Iran weapons briefing overstated evidence

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Bush: Iran supplying roadside bombs

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Aide: Sadr still supports crackdown, but wants Iraqi security independent of U.S.

Sadr's whereabouts are currently unknown.

BAGHDAD, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Powerful Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has not withdrawn his support from a U.S.-backed crackdown in Baghdad, his aides said on Monday.

Salih al-Ugeyli, a spokesman for Sadr's political movement, said Sunday's strongly worded statement from the Shi'ite cleric was meant to encourage Iraqi forces to act independently from the U.S. military in the capital.

In the statement read out to a large crowd in Sadr's Baghdad stronghold of Sadr City, the cleric said the Baghdad security plan would not work because U.S. forces were involved.

"The media misinterpreted the statement because we are still fully behind the plan. It was meant as advice for our security forces who are capable of achieving more without American help," Ugeyli said.

A senior politician from Sadr's political movement echoed Ugeyli's comments.

"We have not withdrawn our support for the security plan. All we did was ask Iraqis to take more of a lead and we repeated our demands for a withdrawal of the occupation," said Falah Hasan Shanshal.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

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VP Hashemi: Human rights 'have not been respected' in security plan, decries focus on Sunnis

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Iraq's Sunni vice president said Monday the Baghdad security plan has so far failed to respect human rights and treat all groups equally, which he described as flaws that doomed the two major crackdowns in the capital last year...

During an interview in his Green Zone headquarters, al-Hashemi said he had not expected a marked improvement in security in the capital “simply because the requirements of the plan are not in place.”

“Up to now, legal procedures have not been observed,” he said. “The human rights of Iraqis have not been respected as they should be. In this regard, this plan is being implemented in the same way the previous ones were."

Read the rest at the San Diego Tribune

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Egypt stops broadcasting al-Zawra, but Arab-Sat feed into Iraq continues

Egypt has stopped the transmission of a private Iraqi TV station which glorifies the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.

The United States has privately asked the Egyptian authorities to stop al-Zawraa which is carried on Nilesat - a government-owned TV satellite.

Al-Zawraa broadcasts from a secret location. Its owner is a former Iraqi MP who now lives in Syria.

Nilesat says it was taken off air because it broadcast on frequencies which interfered with other channels.

Not so, says Mishan al-Jaburi, the owner of al-Zawraa. He says political reasons were behind the Egyptian decision.

He accused Egypt of bowing to American pressure to stop carrying al-Zawraa.

The channel shows footage of attacks by Sunni groups against US and Iraqi forces.

It also shows images of bloody and mutilated bodies of women and children which it identifies as Sunnis killed by US soldiers and Shia militiamen.

The Iraqi authorities shut down al-Zawraa's offices in Baghdad last November, accusing it of inciting hatred and instigating violence, but Mr Jaburi said his channel condemned equally all attacks against civilians.

He accused Iraqi government channels of promoting sectarianism.

Al-Zawraa is still being carried by Arab Sat, which is jointly owned by all Arab countries.

Read the rest at the BBC

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VP Abdel-Mahdi escapes assasination in bombing at government building

Iraq's President Talabani (a Kurd), Vice-President Abdel-Mahdi (a Shia), and Vice-President Hashemi (a Sunni). The posts are considered mostly ceremonial, but can wield a great deal of behind the scenes power. Talabani is currently in stable condition in a hospital after falling ill and flying to a hospital in Jordan on Sunday.

Iraq's Shia vice president narrowly escaped an assassination attempt today when a huge explosion ripped through a government building he was visiting in Baghdad.

Adel Abdel-Mahdi was taken to hospital after suffering minor wounds in the blast at the public works ministry. A second member of the Iraqi government, the public works minister Riyad Ghraib, also a Shia, is thought to have been seriously injured in the attack.

The vice-president had just arrived at the building when his party was forced to retreat as the explosions were detonated in a meeting hall inside.

Officials said he escaped with light wounds caused by shrapnel. Six people were killed and dozens more were injured.

The near miss for such a senior figure will cause further alarm about security for Iraq’s fledgling government as well as sparking concerns about infiltration of institutions by terrorists.

The cause of the blast was under investigation. But militants are increasingly using suicide vests to launch attacks due to tighter checks on roads aimed at reducing car bombs.

Read the rest at the Telegraph

Analysis (Seymour Hersch): A 'redirection' has the U.S. eyeing war against Iran

A wall poster in Tehran.

In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran.

Read the rest at the New Yorker

Perspective: Targets elusive in Baghdad sweeps

A woman prays as soldiers search her Baghdad home for illegal weapons as part of the new security plan.

BAGHDAD -- The engineer stood aside as Iraqi and American soldiers rifled through his daughter's wardrobe and peered under her bed. He did not mind when they confiscated the second clip for his AK-47, because he knew it could be easily replaced. He demurred when asked about insurgent activity in the neighborhood, afraid to be stamped an informant and driven from his home of 14 years. Face to face with the Baghdad security plan, it seemed to him a bit absurd.

"Obviously, the soldiers lack the necessary information about where to look and who to look for," said the government engineer, who declined to give his name in an interview during a sweep through his western Baghdad neighborhood last Monday. "There are too many houses and too many hide-outs."

American military commanders in Iraq describe the security plan they began implementing in mid-February as a rising tide: a gradual influx of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi troops whose extended presence in the city's violent neighborhoods will drown the militants' ability to stage bombings and sectarian killings.

But U.S. troops, Iraqi soldiers and officials, and Baghdad residents say the plan is hampered because security forces cannot identify, let alone apprehend, the elusive perpetrators of the violence.

Read the rest at the Washington Post

Perspective: Joint force weighs move on Sadr City

U.S. soldiers stand guard at a checkpoint to an entrance in the Sadr City section of Baghdad, where over 2 million Iraqis live.

BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi forces have moved aggressively in the last week to combat Sunni Arab insurgents in neighborhoods across the capital and to establish a stronger presence in religiously mixed districts long plagued by sectarian violence.

But as the new security crackdown enters a second week, they face their most sensitive challenge: whether, when and how to move into the Shiite-dominated slum of Sadr City, stronghold of the Al Mahdi militia.

Political pressure has mounted to crack down on the Baghdad neighborhood that harbors the militia loyal to radical anti-American cleric Muqtada Sadr. Sunni Arabs, who make up the backbone of the insurgency, have long accused Shiite Prime Minister Nouri Maliki of allowing Sadr City to remain a haven for the militia to keep the support of Sadr's followers.

Read the rest at the LA Times

Perspective: Stryker team key to Iraq security plan

The Stryker vehicle system is designed to be a troop transport that's as deadly as a tank, as swift as a Humvee and highly mobile for quick deployment into combat.

BAGHDAD — In any other city, the sight of an old man standing next to a can on the side of a crowded street would go unnoticed. In Baghdad, it was enough to make U.S. Army Spc. Aurelio Cazares slow down his armored Stryker for a closer look and alert his gunner.

The vehicle's gunner fixed his viewfinder on the man and the object and zoomed in, just as a sedan stopped in front of them, blocking the view and adding further suspense to the moment. Then, the car pulled away, the old man crossed the road, and the Stryker's high-tech remote weapons system, which can detect heat in an object and determine the presence of explosives, confirmed that the can was harmless.

The Stryker moved on, and Cazares relaxed.

There aren't many things that worry him as he steers the 22-ton troop carrier, which resembles an oversized and massively overloaded camper van, through Baghdad's streets. Its steel-and-ceramic armor is far stronger than a Humvee's, making it the safest troop transporter by far on roads littered with explosives and snipers.

Nothing, though, can guarantee protection from some of the armor-piercing explosives plaguing U.S. forces in Iraq. Since August, three men from Cazares' 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, from the Army's 2nd Infantry Division, have died in such attacks.

Read the rest at the LA Times

Perspective: Old Problems Undermine New Security Plan for Baghdad

BAGHDAD — It looked like a scene out of a counterinsurgency training video. Dressed in crisp uniforms with a computer-generated camouflage of blue, gray and brown, Iraqi national police officers joined United States troops on searches late last week through relatively calm districts of Shaab and Ur in northeast Baghdad in the first large operation of the Baghdad security plan.

But appearances in Iraq can often be deceiving. At least two of the national police officers who turned out for the operation were moving ahead of the American troops not to lead the security drive but to warn the residents to hide their weapons and other incriminating evidence.

Read the rest at the NY Times

Perspective: In Iraq, such decisions mean life or death

BAQOUBA, Iraq -- A grainy video screen cast an eerie green light on those of us huddled in the back of a Bradley fighting vehicle, rumbling down roads through the heart of insurgent territory. There was no moon and no light - only a thermal imaging display of the view from the gunner's turret above. "I see a mortar round partially buried on the left," said Spc. Brandon Osborne, the gunner. The vehicle slowed to a halt.

We squinted to see what Osborne had seen. Something shiny protruded from a mound of mud to the side of the road. Could it be a harmless piece of metal? Perhaps an unexploded shell - or a deadly roadside bomb ready to go off?

The decision about what to do next could spell the difference between life and death. Such decisions face American soldiers across Iraq countless times each day.

Read the rest at the Post Intelligencer

Perspective: Sunni fratricide in Iraq's Anbar escalates

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The killers started early. Just after sunrise, they tracked the imam to his modest brick mosque, where he was praying on a green carpet. Three masked gunmen muscled past a handful of worshippers and pumped four bullets into the chest of Sheik Adbul Rahman Jawhar al-Karbouli.

His murder Feb. 16 in a village near the Syrian border was barely noticed in Iraq's daily body count. But -- like a vivid footnote in a dry collection of statistics -- it helps bring the violence among Iraqis into sharper focus.

To much of the world, the meltdown in Iraq is a two-act spectacle: insurgents versus U.S.-led forces and Iraqi allies, and the sectarian bloodletting between Sunni Muslims and the majority Shiites. Yet out in the desert of the western Anbar province there is another story -- told one attack at a time -- of an internal struggle among Sunnis, between militant factions and those who have stood up against them.

Read the rest at the Guardian

Perspective: Trouble in Ramadi

Soldiers search for insurgents in houses located across the street from Outpost 293 in Ramadi, Iraq, after a gunfire and mortar attack on the outpost.

RAMADI, Iraq — The Iraqi Police major sat at a plywood desk, puffing on a Miami cigarette.

It had been three weeks since he and a small contingent of young police officers moved into Combat Outpost Iron, a small joint security station on the southern edge of downtown Ramadi, and the major was getting frustrated.

Although he was a respected sheik and a veteran of Saddam Hussein’s army — a top pedigree for this Sunni Arab city — the major said he and his men were having difficulty getting downtown residents to cooperate with them and share information on insurgent activity.

“When we came here, the people were very pleased to see Iraqi Police here,” said Maj. Obrahim Jassim. “But they are scared to deal with us. The Iraqis as a people don’t scare easily, but this al-Qaida organization is very strong. They are murderers and they do not hesitate to kill anyone.”

Read the rest at Stars and Stripes

Perspective: Young GIs get first taste of war in Ramadi

Soldiers attend a briefing before starting on a mission in Ramadi.

RAMADI, Iraq — What lures a young private to Iraq?

For at least two recent arrivals in this battered provincial capital, where troops attached to the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division are battling Islamic militants in a muddy and bloody urban war, the answer is both love and money.

“I joined for the money,” Pvt. Andrew Ralston said before heading out on a cordon-and-search operation Wednesday. “My plan is to retire at 45 with $3 million.”

Read the rest at Stars and Stripes

Security Summary: February 25, 2007

An Iraqi boy walks past a U.S. soldier on patrol today in Baghdad.

MOSUL - Police in the northern city of Mosul said 24 bodies were found in different parts of the city over the past day.

BAGHDAD - Police found the bodies of 17 people shot dead in different parts of Baghdad over the past day, a police source said.

NAHRAWAN - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed one person and wounded three, including two policemen, in Nahrawan, southeast of Baghdad, a police source said.

SULAIMANIYA - The body of a man who had been shot dead was found in Sulaimaniya, a relatively peaceful city 330 km (205 miles) north of Baghdad, in Kurdistan, police said.

BAGHDAD - A suicide bomber killed at least 40 people and wounded 55 by detonating an explosives vest in the reception area of Mustansiriya University's Economy and Administration college in eastern Baghdad, police sources said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb wounded four people when it exploded in a car park next to a commercial street in the predominantly Shi'ite district of Karrada, police said.

MOSUL - U.S. forces killed two insurgents and captured a suspected senior al Qaeda leader during a raid in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Five other suspected insurgents were detained during the raid, the U.S. military said.

BAGHDAD - Mortar rounds wounded at least three people in a market in southern Baghdad's Shi'ite Abu Dshir neighbourhood, police said. Another police source said 10 people were killed in the attack.

HABANIYA - Police put the final death toll from a truck bomb attack near a Sunni mosque in the town of Habaniya on Saturday at 52. That included 17 women and five children. Police said 110 people were wounded. Habaniya is 85 km (50 miles) west of Baghdad.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed two people and wounded four in central Baghdad, police said.

KIRKUK - A roadside bomb seriously wounded three people in the northern city of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen stormed the house of Ibrahim Hemdan, a former senior member of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, and shot him dead on Saturday in the northern city of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi security forces killed 11 militants and captured 75 on Saturday in operation Imposing Law that hopes to pacify the violent capital, said the plan's spokesman Brigadier Qassim Moussawi who was quoted by Iraqiya state-funded television.

BAGHDAD - Iraqi police arrested 10 employees of an Iraqi media company in central Baghdad, police said.

MAHMUDIYA - Police arrested 11 people in the town of Mahmudiya, just south of Baghdad, police said.

From Reuters/Alternet

Report: 3 Gulf states agree to Israeli overflights en route to Iran; Turkey urged to allow U.S. overflights, ground attack

An Israeli F-16 flies over Masada. Israel has denied that it is seeking permission for flyovers to attack Iran.

Three Arab states in the Persian Gulf would be willing to allow the Israel Air force to enter their airspace in order to reach Iran in case of an attack on its nuclear facilities, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasa reported on Sunday.

According to the report, a diplomat from one of the gulf states visiting Washington on Saturday said the three states, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, have told the United States that they would not object to Israel using their airspace, despite their fear of an Iranian response.

Al-Siyasa further reported that NATO leaders are urging Turkey to open its airspace for an Attack on Iran as well and to also open its airports and borders in case of a ground attack.

Read the rest at al-Haaretz

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Report: UK to send mercenaries for 'post-occupation' phase

Called 'private security contractors', mercenaries such as those pictured above in Iraq are hired from all over the world, including from countries with questionable human rights records, and are not subject to the same public oversight as the military. Accusations of widespread and sometimes deadly abuses by these forces have been largely ignored.

MINISTERS are negotiating multi-million-pound contracts with private security firms to cover some of the gaps created by British troop withdrawals.

Days after Tony Blair revealed that he wanted to withdraw 1,600 soldiers from war-torn Basra within months, it has emerged that civil servants hope "mercenaries" can help fill the gap left behind.

Officials from the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence will meet representatives from the private security industry within the next month to discuss "options" for increasing their business in Iraq in the coming years.

The UK government has already paid out almost £160m to private security companies (PSCs) since the invasion of Iraq, for a range of services, including the protection of British officials on duty and in transit in some of the most dangerous parts of the world.

But, despite expectations that the booming market for private security would go into decline following the bursting of the "Iraq bubble", firms have now been told to expect even more lucrative work during the "post-occupation phase".

Read the rest at the Scotsman

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Sadr: 'No security plan will work' as long as Iraq occupied

BAGHDAD, Iraq: The leader of Iraq's biggest Shiite militia complained Sunday that bombs "continue to explode" in Baghdad and that U.S.-led security crackdown is doomed to fail, adding that Iraqi forces should operate independently of the U.S. "occupiers."

Many Shiites believe that bombings have continued because the Shiite-led government bowed to American pressure and convinced radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to take his Mahdi Army fighters off the streets.

Al-Sadr's statement, read to his followers in Sadr City, is likely to add pressure on U.S. and Iraqi forces to show results in the nearly two-week-old crackdown.

"I'm certain, just like all oppressed Iraqis are certain, that no security plan will work and no good will come of any occupier," al-Sadr said in the statement. "Here we are, watching booby trapped cars exploding to harvest thousands of innocent lives from our beloved people in the middle of a security plan that is controlled by an occupier who does as he pleases."

Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune

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Spokesman: 'Tens of people' killed in U.S. air strikes in Mashahda

An oil pipeline on fire after insurgent sabotage in Mashahda. No word was given on the impetus for the air strikes, or how many civilians were in the area at the time.

BAGHDAD, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Iraqi troops supported by U.S. aircraft killed "tens" of militants at a base just north of Baghdad early on Saturday, the Interior Ministry said.

Ministry spokesman Brigadier Abdul-Kareem Khalaf said a large Iraqi force clashed with insurgents at the base in a rural area of Mashahda at dawn. U.S. air strikes destroyed the base.

"Tens of people were killed in the operation ... We wiped out their base," Khalaf said.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

U.S. launches air strikes against 'terrorist targets' in southeast Baghdad

U.S. soldiers in Bo'aitha shortly after the invasion in 2003. No word was given on the impetus for the air strikes, how many civilians were in the area at the time, or on any casualties.

Baghdad - US forces launched air strikes in southeast Baghdad on Saturday, Iraqi officials said, as a series of massive explosions rocked the war-torn city.

"American aircraft are bombarding terrorist targets that have been chosen by US and Iraqi forces, as part of our Baghdad security plan," said Brigadier-General Qasim al-Mussawi, spokesperson for the operation.

There was no immediate comment from the US, but AFP reporters in downtown Baghdad heard the rumble of more than three dozen powerful blasts in rapid succession at around 22:00pm (19:00 GMT).

Shortly after the first blasts, electricity was cut in part of central Baghdad, but it was not clear if these events were linked.

A senior Iraqi interior ministry official told AFP that the air strikes were aimed at insurgent strongholds in Bo'aitha, a sparsely populated neighbourhood on the west bank of the Tigris, south of the city centre.

While lying within the city limits, Bo'aitha is a district of farms and smallholdings, whose scattered villages are known to house the hideouts of Sunni insurgent gangs linked to al-Qaeda.

Read the rest at News 24

Report: Military prepares for spring offensive in Ramadi

A house search in Ramadi

THE US military is preparing for a spring offensive against Sunni insurgents and Al-Qaeda fighters in the lawless city of Ramadi as part of the troop surge to impose security in Iraq.

The Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki said yesterday that 400 suspected militants had already been killed by US and Iraqi security forces in Baghdad.

With the battle to secure the capital under way, the fight for control of Ramadi in Anbar province to the west will mark the second phase of the surge. The group Al-Qaeda in Iraq has exerted a grip on the city and terrorised sheikhs cooperating with the Americans.

President George Bush promised to send an extra 4,000 marines to Sunni-dominated Anbar when he announced the troop increase last month. According to defence sources, the battle for Ramadi is likely to begin around April, when the marines will be ready in strength.

“Ramadi is the last place to be sorted out,” said a senior defence source. “A lot of the sheikhs are already onside and it will be a much more straightforward operation than the battle for Baghdad.”

Read the rest at the Times of London

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General: Turnover of Diyala may extend into 2008

Above: U.S. soldiers prepare to embark on house-to-house raid operations in Diyala. Left: Baqouba is the capital city of Diyala.

TIKRIT, Iraq -- A U.S. general warned Saturday that increased Sunni attacks in a province extremists call the center of their Islamic state in Iraq may delay plans to hand it over to Iraqi troops by the end of the year.

Plans call for all provinces to be transferred to Iraqi security control by Dec. 31, with the hope that U.S. troops could begin to leave. But increased attacks by Sunni insurgents could delay the transfer of Diyala, just northeast of Baghdad, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon told The Associated Press.

Direct fire attacks on U.S. soldiers in the province are up 70 percent since last summer, said Col. David W. Sutherland, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division's 3rd Brigade. The security crackdown in Baghdad has also encouraged mostly Sunni extremists to flee the capital for surrounding provinces, especially Diyala, Mixon said.

That influx has caused a spike in violence in the province, known as "Little Iraq" because of its near-equal mix of Sunni and Shiite Arabs as well as Kurds -- the country's three major groups.

Read the rest at the International Herald Tribune

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Truck bomb kills 56 at Sunni mosque in Habbaniyah

The blast signalled an escalation in Sunni-on-Sunni violence. The imam of the mosque, about 50 miles west of Baghdad, had spoken out against militants fighting the U.S.-backed government, including the group al-Qaida in Iraq.

FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP) - The death toll from a bomb attack on a Sunni mosque in western Iraq has risen to 56 with 103 wounded, a doctor said on Sunday as Iraq's prime minister blamed Al-Qaeda for the carnage.

"The final toll of the car bomb which targeted the mosque is 56 killed and 103 wounded," said Dr Mukhies Abdul Hamid, medical supervisor for the Fallujah area which includes the town of Habbaniyah where Saturday's attack took place.

A local medic had said a fuel tanker truck rigged with explosives detonated outside the mosque as worshippers were leaving, causing mayhem.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said on Sunday Al-Qaeda was behind the attack, and that the blast proved "terrorists" will attack anyone, regardless of their sect.

Read the rest at Yahoo News

Report: Talabani falls ill, flies to Jordan for treatment

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) - Iraq's 74-year-old President Jalal Talabani was flown out of his Kurdish home city towards Jordan on Sunday after falling ill with what an ally said was a kidney problem.

A Jordanian official told AFP that the kingdom stood ready to receive the veteran leader, a barrel-chested former rebel fighter who became a symbol of Iraq's difficult battle to escape sectarian bloodshed.

"Because of the continual hard work over the course of recent days, President Talabani has fallen ill. The doctors have asked for more tests and he has gone to Jordan," a statement on the president's website said.

"There is no reason to fear for his health, and we hope he will return in good health," the statement said.

Iraq's ambassador to Jordan Saad al-Hayani said: "He has not arrived yet, and we are making contacts with the royal court to see in which hospital he will be admitted."

Read the rest at Yahoo News

Iraqi National Security Adviser: Iranians have stopped training and providing weapons to insurgents

Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards at prayer

BAGHDAD, Feb 25 (Reuters) - Iranians have stopped training and providing weapons to Iraqi militants in Iraq in the last few weeks to allow a U.S.-backed security plan in Baghdad to succeed, a senior Iraqi official said on Sunday.

National Security Adviser Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told CNN there was some evidence that Iranians had been supporting some Shi'ite militia groups fighting U.S. troops in Iraq.

"There is no doubt in my mind that recently in the last few weeks they have changed their position and stopped a lot of their tactics and interference in Iraq's internal affairs," Rubaie said in an interview.

It was unclear if he was talking of the Iranian government. Washington accuses Shi'ite Iran of fuelling violence in Iraq.

The United States has drafted thousands of extra troops into Iraq in an attempt to crack down on insurgency and curb sectarian conflict.

U.S. officials said this month that the Quds Force, a unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was supplying weapons to Shi'ite militia groups in Iraq.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

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Hakim house targetted by bomber

Shi'ite cleric Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, spent years in exile in Iran before returning to Iraq. In December, Hakim met with Bush in Washington, shortly before the administration attempted to coordinate Prime Minister Maliki's ouster with Hakim chosen by Washington to be the power-broker behind the scenes. Hakim is also head of the Badr Brigade, a Shi'ite militia. Last week, the U.S. raided the Baratha mosque in Baghdad, which is associated with Hakim. The U.S. military says it was targetted for 'illegally armed militia kidnapping, torture and murder activities'.

BAGHDAD: A suicide car bomber attacked a checkpoint protecting the home of one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite leaders, Abdul Aziz Al Hakim, yesterday killing at least three civilians and wounding seven.

An Interior Ministry official said the attacker was shot as he drove towards a road barrier in Baghdad's Jadriyah district.

Thousands of Shi'ites, meanwhile, protested the US detention on Friday of Hakim's son, Ammar Hakim, 35, in cities throughout the Shi'ite south. Ammar Hakim said in Najaf that he was handcuffed, blindfolded and his security guards were "strongly abused" before he was set free.

Read the rest at Gulf Daily News

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Talabani: U.S. soldiers in Hakim arrest should be 'disciplined'

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Thousands protest in Najaf against arrest of Hakim's son

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Furor over arrest of al-Hakim's son

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U.S.-Iraqi forces raid Baghdad's major mosque for 'kidnapping, torture and murder activities'

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al-Hakim meets Bush, calls for U.S. military to do more, rejects regional solution

Talabani: U.S. soldiers in Hakim arrest should be 'disciplined'

Thousands marched yesterday in protest of the arrest

BAGHDAD, Feb 24 (Reuters) - Iraq's president said on Saturday U.S. soldiers responsible for briefly detaining the son of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite leaders, should be disciplined.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said within hours he was sorry for the detention on Friday of Ammar al-Hakim, who said he was handcuffed, blindfolded and pushed roughly by U.S. guards.

The U.S. military said on Saturday he was held because his guards were acting suspiciously in an area near the Iranian border where smuggling has happened before. It said he was quickly released and treated with respect.

"The president of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, expressed his sorrow for the offence to which al-Hakim was exposed and called for those responsible to be held accountable," a statement from the president's office said.

"(Talabani) noted that he was treated in an uncivil manner and inappropriately and demanded that U.S. authorities hold accountable those who harmed him and give guarantees such unjustifiable actions will not be repeated with other politicians and national figures," the statement said.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

Related Link:
Thousands protest in Najaf against arrest of Hakim's son

Related Link:
Furor over arrest of al-Hakim's son

Related Link:
Son of al-Hakim freed, but 'bodyguards' still in custody; U.S. apologizes for arrest

Related Link:
Report: Son of Shi'ite leader al-Hakim arrested on return from Iran

Related Link:
Military: 'Rogue elements' of Shi'ite militias behind use of Iranian EFPs

Related Link:
U.S.-Iraqi forces raid Baghdad's major mosque for 'kidnapping, torture and murder activities'

Related Link:
al-Hakim visits Tehran, calls for U.S.-Iran talks on Iraq

Related Link:
al-Hakim: U.S. arrest of Iranians an 'attack on Iraq's sovereignity'

Related Link:
al-Hakim meets Bush, calls for U.S. military to do more, rejects regional solution

Adare W. Cleveland dies of injuries from I.E.D.

A 20-year-old soldier from Anchorage was among three men killed in Iraq on Monday when their vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device, the Department of Defense said Thursday.

Pfc. Adare W. Cleveland was a cavalry scout assigned to the 1st Squadron, 89th Cavalry Regiment, out of Fort Drum, N.Y. Sgt. Shawn M. Dunkin, 25, of Columbia, S.C., and Pfc. Matthew C. Bowe, 19, of Coraopolis, Pa., died in the same incident. Two other soldiers in the same 10th Mountain Division unit were wounded.

Cleveland was home-schooled in Anchorage through Family Partnership charter school, district and school officials said. He joined the Army in July 2005 at the age of 18, completed basic training at Fort Knox, Ky., and was assigned to the Commando Brigade in November 2005.

He was deployed to Iraq in August. Cleveland was a gunner and dismount with Team Hellcat on Task Force Vigilant. His team guarded Victory Base Complex and patrolled the villages of Al Furat, Iraqi Family Village and Airport Village in the southern areas of Baghdad, according to the Sandstorm, a publication of the 10th Mountain Division.

"I love my job," Cleveland said in an interview published in the military magazine. "I love the little (children)."

An Anchorage neighbor, George Hixon, said Cleveland was a friendly young man who loved Alaska and loved hearing birds singing in the morning. He was proud to serve his country, Hixon said.

Read the rest at the Daily News

Matthew C. Bowe dies of injuries from I.E.D.

CORAOPOLIS - A soldier from Western Pennsylvania who was serving as a medic was killed in a firefight in Iraq, his family said.

Pvt. Matthew Bowe, 19, a 2005 graduate of Moon Area High School, was killed Monday along with another American serviceman about 30 miles north of Iraq, his mother, Lori Lynn Bowe told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for Wednesday's editions. The family has an unlisted telephone and could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

"He wanted to go in the service, he wanted to be a doctor," Bowe told the newspaper. "He talked about it for years."

The U.S. Defense Department did not immediately release information on Bowe's death, but his family learned about it Monday, and officials at his former school learned of it Tuesday, said Moon Area High School Principal Michael Hauser.

"One of the reasons he joined the military was because he wanted to go to medical school and saw this as a way to pay for it," Hauser told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Bowe said her son, the oldest of her five children, wanted to be a pediatrician and became interested in children because she runs a child day care center.

Pvt. Bowe enlisted in July 2005 and went to Iraq as a medic in October, after training at Fort Benning, Ga., and other posts in Texas and New York, his mother said. Bowe knew his assignment was dangerous, but she said her son tried to shield her from those details.

"He tried to smooth it over because I was always watching CNN and I'd always question him. And, of course, he's talking to Mom, so he'd candy-coat it and try to say everything was fine and he was good," Bowe said. "But he'd tell his dad things."

Bowe last spoke to his mother on Dec. 27, when he called to wish her happy birthday. When his unit moved, he was limited to e-mails and last sent one to his mother for Valentine's Day, she said.

From the Reporter

Shawn M. Dunkin dies of injuries from I.E.D.

YORK, S.C. -- A mother and father from York are making arrangements to bring the body of their son back home from Iraq.

Their son was Sgt. Shawn Dunkin. He was 25 years old, and planned on making a career out the Army.

He was killed Monday by a roadside bomb.

“(We) had a knock at the door Monday night--- my husband answered the door,” said Jan Dunkin, Shawn’s stepmother. “Being retired military, we knew immediately.”

Worry about that day began in 2001, when Jan Dunkin got a phone call from her stepson saying he’d enlisted in the Army.

“I was scared,” she said.

Shawn Dunkin was following in his father's footsteps; he had served 20 years in the U.S. Army.

The scenes of violence in Iraq have been a constant and familiar anxiety for their family.

On Monday, Shawn was killed when the vehicle he was riding in was hit by a bomb.

“He never discussed with me ‘if I don't come back,’” Jan Dunkin said. “It was just, ‘While I’m gone, you and Dad take care of Ashley.’”

Ashley is the wife he leaves behind.

“He was so happy that day,” Jan Dunkin said. “She was his soul mate, his true love. They had plans for starting a family when he came back… Much like his father, he was protective, very loving. He loved magic tricks -- that was his thing.”

Jan says Shawn was a hero long before he went off to war, remembering when he helped rescue five girls from drowning.

“He received a medal of heroism for that at 12,” Dunkin said. “Just a month ago he pulled a fellow soldier from the same situation that ultimately took his life.”

Read the rest at WCNC

Clinton W. Ahlquist killed during combat operations

Clint Ahlquist grew up a cowboy who wanted to flee the palm trees and bright lights of Scottsdale, Ariz., for a place that fit him better.

He found Creede at 16, moved in with a cousin and graduated in 2003 from high school in the southwest Colorado mountain town of barely 400. He wrote down Creede as his hometown when he joined the Marines.

On Tuesday, Ahlquist, 23, a sergeant who had re-enlisted in Iraq, was killed in combat.

"He called us Sunday," said Barbara Ahlquist, his mother, from Scottsdale. "It was just a typical call. He told us he loved us and he missed us and he was fighting for our right to be free."

"We just know he was a dedicated, dedicated Marine. He loved and believed in what he was doing," she said. "He always wanted to be a soldier."

Creede claims the strapping young man - 6-foot-2 and 225 lean pounds - as one of its own. He is remembered as a boy who blossomed in his class of 10, started on the basketball team, did his duty as a student and charmed his way to prom king.

"He had great manners, and he took time to talk to people," said Frances Kolisch, the librarian at Creede High School who became the teenager's surrogate mother while he dated her daughter, Karly.

Kolisch said Ahlquist left his beloved blue heeler dog, Grinchy, in their care when he left for the Marines.

An only child whose grandparents had introduced him to country life and Colorado, Ahlquist moved to Creede to start his sophomore year at Creede High.

"He was very gregarious, outgoing, quick with a smile," said Buck Stroh, the district superintendent. "He was someone the kids and teachers all gravitated to, right from the start.

"Clinton just seemed to adapt to Creede, like he'd been waiting for a town like this," Stroh said. "If you met him, you would have thought he came from Creede all his life, not Scottsdale."

When Clint Ahlquist's cousin planned to move, Barbara and Rex Ahlquist, the teenager's parents, bought a home in Creede where their son could live until they retired.

"Every time we talked to him, he told us how happy he was in Creede, so we finally bought the house there," Barbara Ahlquist said.

"He was a cowboy, and he fit in in the small town. Scottsdale is not a real cowboy town."

Barbara Ahlquist said her son will have a military funeral and burial in Arizona, probably within the next two weeks.

From the News

Brian A. Escalante dies of injuries from I.E.D.

DODGE CITY - In the wake of Lance Cpl. Brian Escalante's death in Iraq over the weekend, the man's mother, Rebecca Escalante, has learned much of her son.

"To me he was a kid," she said Thursday of the 25-year-old Marine. "But (Marine officials) told me he had a great responsibility over there."

Still, the void remains. "The only thing that we feel here is the loss, not having him around us, not being able to unite," Rebecca Escalante said.

Brian Escalante, who studied at Dodge City High School and Dodge City Community College before joining the U.S. Marines in 2004, died Saturday in the restive Al Anbar province of Iraq while on a combat operation against anti-Iraqi forces. According to the Marines, an improvised explosive device hit the Humvee he was riding in while in the city of Al Chidish and he later died of injuries sustained in the blast.

The man, who was on his second tour of Iraq, leaves behind a wife, Crystal Escalante of Wichita, and a 2-year-old son, Aidyn, among many others.

Faith in God

The U.S. Department of Defense reported Escalante's death Wednesday, but as of Thursday, funeral arrangements were pending, though Rebecca Escalante said her son would be buried at the Kansas Veterans' Cemetery in nearby Fort Dodge. Saturday's blast injured four other Marines as well, two of whom were sent to the United States for care and two who sustained only minor cuts and remain in Iraq.

Whatever the case, the mourning is already in full swing as Escalante's family members - including seven siblings and father Gilbert Escalante - try to cope with the tragedy. The Marine's body is making its way to Kansas from Dover, Del.

"It all goes back to God," said Rebecca Escalante, who operates a tax preparation and bail bond service in Dodge City. "Things that happen, happen for a reason. We don't know why. I just have faith in God."

Escalante, who left Dodge City High School as a junior in 1999 and later studied criminal justice for a spell at Dodge City Community College, was drawn to the Marines because of its reputation as a fierce fighting machine, said his mother. Moreover, the man, a basketball enthusiast who stood over 6 feet tall, harbored a protective side and felt driven by events in Iraq.

"We wanted him to go on to college and continue, but he wanted to go on and serve his country," Rebecca Escalante said.

Whatever the motive, joining the Marines had an impact. His mother described Brian Escalante as a man of few words before joining the service, but said that afterward, he became more expressive and seemed to grow into his own.

"I just noticed how he cared so much more for people after he joined the Marines," she said. One event in particular sticks out - how he once assisted a man at the site of an auto accident, even as the flight that would take him back to his Marine training camp in California prepped to leave.

More recently, her son, in his occasional phone calls home from Iraq, described the place as quiet, almost dull. Only after his death did she learn of all his responsibilities, dealing with weaponry, among others.

Now, Rebecca Escalante figures her son's doing as good as can be expected.

"He's in a better place," she said.

From the Hutchinson News

Kelly D. Youngblood slain by sniper

PHOENIX - A soldier from Mesa has been killed in Iraq less than three weeks into his deployment there, according to his family.

Pvt. Kelly Youngblood, 19, died Sunday after he was hit by sniper fire in Ramadi, his family said Tuesday.

"Ever since he was a little boy, he wanted to be in the military," said his mother, Kristen Chacon. "It was like he was answering a call."

Youngblood, who attended Tempe's McClintock High School and Rhodes Junior High and Alma Elementary School in Mesa, enlisted in the Army as soon as he turned 18.

His grandmother, Jean Herrold, said he wouldn't give up on his dream of giving back to his country, despite her pleas.

"He just told me not to worry about him, that he loved everything about the military," Herrold said. "I think he was born to be a soldier."

Chacon said she tried to remain optimistic about her son's deployment to Iraq until he told her about a narrow escape in a bombing that killed four soldiers a few days after he arrived. She said shrapnel missed him by 8 feet.

"My first thought was that he was not going to make it," Chacon said. "It was just too dangerous."

Herrold said Youngblood was "was the funniest person I know."

By the fourth grade, he was already popular for his humor and always had a lot of friends, his mother said.

Youngblood also loved playing pranks on his roommates in the Army, Chacon said.

"Kelly would hide somewhere where his fellow soldiers could not see him," she said, "and then jump out and blow a horn to scare them."

Youngblood's family said he thought about continuing to serve in the Army, where he drove a tank, after returning from Iraq.

"He liked the service, the discipline and camaraderie between his colleagues," Herrold said.

Funeral services were not announced but his family said he would be buried in Arizona.

From the Star

Justin T. Paton killed by small arms fire

Army Pfc. Justin Paton, 24, the son of Donald and Shelley Paton of Alanson, was killed Saturday in Iraq, a close friend of the family said Monday.

Jerry Carpentier of Alanson, a friend of the Patons and a custodian at Petoskey Middle School, said he had spent much of the weekend with the Patons and was able to confirm that Justin had been killed in or near Baghdad.

Justin’s death was also confirmed by Justin’s uncle, Tom Paton, who was visiting with the family over the weekend. He said members of Justin’s immediate family were to meet with military officials later Monday to learn the details of Justin’s death.

Carpentier said he had been friends with the Patons for years, and had known Justin almost from birth. He said Justin had graduated from Inland Lakes High School in 2000.

Frank Holes, a former principal at Inland Lakes High School, said he remembered Justin as a quiet but friendly student.

“He was kind of a quiet kid in school,” Holes said. “He was a good student, he was always friendly, seemed to have lots of friends but he wasn’t the kind of kid that did anything outlandish or drew attention to himself.”

He added that Justin was interested in technology, and that he and a group of friends would often fix equipment at the school.

“He was just a really, really nice kid. Just one of these kids that doesn’t draw attention, that doesn’t say, ‘Look at me,’ but he was steady and he was a good kid. He was a good representation of his school and his community and his parents, one of those silent leaders that was always doing things the right way and unfortunately doesn’t get a lot of recognition,” Holes said.

Carpentier, who said he was like an uncle to Justin, said Justin was “very easy-going, a good guy.”

He said Justin liked to kayak and to be outside.

“My wife and I spent time with them and shared our common interests in hunting and fishing and camping. Justin liked to camp when he was young and even when he grew older he would always come to the campsite to visit us.”

Carpentier said Justin loved rock gardening as a hobby, an interest that grew into a job with Dross Landscaping of Alanson.

Justin was a member of Walloon Lake Community Church.

He had a sister, Stormy Dickenson, and a brother, Adam Parkey, both of Alanson, and many nieces and nephews.

From the Herald Times

Nickolas A. Tanton laid to rest

As friends and family filled Fort Sam Houston's Dodd Field Chapel on Friday, Lt. Col. Joseph Fleury turned to the heavens to describe the life of Pfc. Nickolas Aaron Tanton.

"Once in a while we're blessed to see a shooting star," said Fleury, who celebrated the Mass. "It enthralls us ... we're caught up in its beauty."

But then it disappears, he said, and blends in with the universe.

"Nick was like that," he said, a bright light with a heart full of love.

Tanton, a 2001 graduate of Clark High School who was assigned to the 25th Infantry Division in Kirkuk, is the 25th San Antonian to die in Iraq. He died Feb. 13 of "noncombat injuries," and the incident remains under investigation, according to the Defense Department.

Fleury repeated Christ's words that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for another person. Tanton did that, he said, "for us, for our nation."

In his eulogy, Maj. Gen. Russell Czerw said he came to know Tanton in recent days through talks with his family and reading messages from his comrades in Iraq.

Tanton, 24, had charisma and a unique sense of humor he used in any situation to make things better for those around him, Czerw said.

Those who knew him said life never seemed to get him down.

Everyone recognized his deep loyalty and commitment to others, the general said, as well as his love for his family.

His comrades knew him as "laid-back," a "subject-matter expert" and a guy with a photographic memory, Czerw said, reading e-mails from Iraq.

But Tanton was, is and always will be a soldier, a living embodiment of courage and valor, Czerw said.

Those aren't just words, the general said. They have meaning because men and women such as Tanton are willing to risk their lives for others.

The general then quoted an inscription he once read on a Navy memorial: "For tomorrow, we gave our today."

Those words apply to Tanton, Czerw said, adding, "He'll not be forgotten by his family, or his nation."

After the chapel service, the casket was brought to the grave site by a horse-drawn caisson, with one of the animals bearing an empty saddle.

The caisson and honor guard slowly passed a row of 50 American flags fluttering in the wind. Their bright red, white and blue provided a colorful contrast to the gray clouds that promised rain but occasionally broke to yield a ray of sunshine.

At the grave site, the family received the medals and ribbons Tanton was awarded, including the Bronze Star and the Global War on Terrorism Medal.

Some standing nearby winced as the first volley of the rifle salute resounded. Others began weeping gently before the bugler finished taps.

From the Express News

Related Link:
Nickolas A. Tanton dies of injuries in non-combat incident

Daniel Morris laid to rest

RAPHINE — He was a born leader with a quick wit and a maturity well beyond his years. Raised in the rocky hills of the Shenandoah Valley, he joined Marine brothers in the hot sands of Iraq.

Thursday, Lance Cpl. Daniel T. Morris returned to the hills of his youth, minutes from his mother's home, as the earth swallowed his coffin on a windswept hill behind New Providence Presbyterian Church.

Hundreds huddled inside the little brick church to mourn the passing of a young man who was sure, almost from birth, of his place in the world.

"It only took Daniel 19 years to fulfill his obligation to God," said his mother's fiancé, Donnie Moneymaker. "But the rest of us will have to wait a little longer."

Daniel was killed Feb. 14 by an insurgent's pipe bomb flung through the bars of his checkpoint window in Iraq. He was carrying a St. Christopher medallion, a prayer cord and a cross, with a folded American flag in his backpack when he died.

Another Marine lost his legs in the same blast, said their platoon leader, 2nd Lt. Tin Nguyen, who served with Morris in Iraq.

"He was one of the Marines in the platoon that was the moral fiber," Nguyen said. "He was the glue that kept the platoon together."

Morris' friends from Wilson Memorial High School, where he graduated in 2005, said Daniel was quick to make a joke, but it was his maturity that really made him stand out.

"He brought so much energy," Logan Byrd, a Wilson High band-mate, remembered. "He was friends with everyone."

His brother, Jonathan, a senior at Wilson Memorial High School, said he wasn't happy when Daniel announced he was joining the Marines. He wanted Daniel to stay out of harm's way. In the past few days, however, he said he had made peace with his brother's decision to serve his country.

"During childhood, we were inseparable," Jonathan said. "All the way up to age 14, it was me and him."

Daniel could have been buried in Arlington National Cemetery, but once his family found that he could get a military service near home, the decision to lay him to rest in Raphine was made.

He was buried where he belonged, among friends and family who meant so much, at the church where he confirmed his baptism just after he finished basic training. Twenty-one rifle shots and a folded flag marked his memory.

"He would've wanted a military funeral," said his mother, Carol Wendell, "but I think he would've wanted to be near us."

From the News Leader

Related Link:
Daniel T. Morris killed in combat operations

Ray Werner laid to rest

BOISE - The last of three Idaho soldiers, killed while fighting in Iraq, have all been laid to rest.

Services were held for Private First Class Raymond Werner at the Cloverdale Church of God Friday.

Werner lived in Boise with his wife Lacey before he was deployed to Iraq with the 321st Engineering Battalion based at Gowen Field.

Werner and two other soldiers from that unit were killed on February 8th by a roadside bomb.

“Ray was my best friend, my support, my husband, my everything,” Lacey Werner said.

Private First Class Raymond Werner's wife of just over seven months bravely spoke about the love they shared - a love that made her feel safe. Lacey says her husband will always be her

“Not one day went by that I didn't tell him how proud I was of him,” she said.

Lacey says Ray was hilarious – a fitting description, since he was Cole Valley Christian High School's class clown and mascot.

“If nothing else, you knew you could always have fun with Ray and he would try to make you laugh,” Pastor Chris Standridge said.

At 14, Ray chose to rise above a troubled past and began connecting with many people at church.

Since then, his Pastor and good friend says he has touched many lives -- evident by a packed church at his memorial.

“I know hundreds, even thousands of lives who were changed forever because one 14 year old boy chose to give his life to Christ,” friend Ken Whitmire said.

Ray never got to be the father he had dreamed of being someday but his wife, Lacey says he did live out one goal of his life- being a great husband.

They spoke daily while he was away at war.

“Ray and I ended all of our conversations with ‘I love yous’ and ‘bye bye for now,’” Lacey said. “Knowing that we said that in our last conversation makes me feel at ease-because we truly meant it.”

Now Lacey says their conversation endings have new meaning- because she along with Ray's loved ones view this memorial the same way – it is “bye bye... for now.”

“The life he lived, the man he was, the things he did for his fellow man...and the ultimate sacrifice he made will never be forgotten,” Whitmire said.

“Good night my sweet angel and we will be together soon, again,” Lacey said.

Private First Class Raymond Werner joined the Army in 2005.

He received military honors before he was laid to rest at the Idaho State Veterans Cemetery.

From KTVB 7

Related Link:
Raymond M. Werner dies of injuries from I.E.D.

James Holtom laid to rest

CANYON COUNTY — A thousand friends and family members recalled a man who lived by values from a bygone era Tuesday at the funeral of U.S. Army Sgt. James J. Holtom.

The former Boise State University student died in Karmah, Iraq, on Feb. 8 when his armored vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb during a rescue mission. He was one of three Idahoans killed in the attack.

Mourners at the Treasure Valley Baptist Church ceremony referred to Holtom, 22, as a quiet and religious man who took his duties as a soldier and Christian seriously. They spoke of how he asked his fiancee’s father for permission to hold her hand and studied his Bible early in the mornings as a boy.

“He knew he was probably going to end up in Iraq, yet Jim being Jim, he knew that’s what he was supposed to do and he stayed on task,” Pastor Randy Mitchell said from behind Holtom’s flag-draped casket and in front of a large, projected photograph of Jim in combat gear. “He loved the Lord, family, church and country.”

Planned to marry Nampan

Holtom grew up in Rexburg with five brothers and two sisters. He loved driving through mud in his pickup truck, shooting rabbits, lifting weights and satisfying his large appetite for food. Holtom attended church regularly and planned to marry Melissa Sewell of Nampa in the church where his funeral was held.

Many friends and family members described Jim as a quiet man who became more vocal once people got to know him. His devotion to Christ was strong and he loved the U.S. Army.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bond, who served with Holtom, said it was impossible to remember any funny stories about him messing up in the Army because he was so much the model soldier.

“Jim was never that person to cut a corner,” Bond said. “Jim had that thing about him, that confidence.”

Holtom was a sophomore engineering student at Boise State. He earned the rank of sergeant at 21 years old. In September 2006 he was deployed to Iraq.

Fiance aware of danger

Sewell joined those who spoke of Holtom. She remembered how he teased her when she got excited about simple things like driving through a car wash. And she recalled how she appreciated his quiet nature.

“I liked how Jim wasn’t one of those guys who just talked to make noise,” she said. “Everything he said was well thought out.”

Sewell’s voice broke when she spoke of Jim’s and her and plans to marry and start a family. Holtom had purchased a small home for them in Nampa before he left for Iraq. Sewell remembered how difficult it was to drive him to the airport that last time.

“That was one of the hardest days of my life,” she said. “I was well aware that it might be the last time I saw my man.”

Holtom’s father, Dave Holtom of Rexburg, spoke of his son for about 30 minutes. He called Jim the “point of the spear” in his service for the Army, and he said the greatest honor for a man was to give his life for someone else.

Dave Holtom also called for increased efforts in missions in Iraq and the need to fight for liberty. He said his son was all the great things people said about him, but that he could get angry and lose his temper.

“He wasn’t perfect, but he was a wonderful young man,” he said. “We had 22 wonderful years with him.”

Maj. Gen. Lawrence Johnson, who signed the orders calling Holtom to active duty, conceded he did not know the soldier well. But he said the one striking memory he had of Holtom was that he was “a man who did what he said he would do” and who volunteered with “vigor and intensity.”

From the Press Tribune

Related Link:
James Holtom remembered

Related Link:
James J. Holtom dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Manuel Ruiz has services ahead of burial at Arlington

It was a day of mourning and remembrance in Federalsburg. Navy Paramedic Manuel Ruiz's family held a public viewing. Ruiz was killed in Iraq earlier this month when his helicopter crashed near Baghdad. Hundreds of supporters visited the Framptom Funeral Home to pay their respects. Some mourners were family members, some were friends, and some were people who'd never even met Ruiz.

Ryan Simms, a co-worker of Manuel said, "you walked in the morning, might be in a bad mood from just waking up, but you walked in, saw him and thought...it's gonna be a good day. Everything he did was exciting. He always had an adventure he was working on."

Chris Abbott, a high school friend said, "if everyone else was having a bad attitude, you could always go to Manuel and he'd cheer you up. He was just a great guy. You couldn't have a better person as a friend than Manuel."

Walter Gould, a retired Navy Serviceman said, "I think Manuel's parents needed to know that other Navy people appreciated his service."

Family friends offered there condolences too. Ernie Baker said, "he was just easy to get along with. He had no worries." Anna Durham said, "he was a real nice kid, friendly, always helped people out." Amanda Baker said, "he was a wonderful kid, happy and always smiling. I don't think I ever saw him with a frown on his face."

Manuel Ruiz will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.

From WMDT 47

Related Link:
Manuel Ruiz remembered

Related Link:
Manuel A. Ruiz killed in helicopter crash

Gilbert Minjares laid to rest

Navy Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Gilbert Minjares Jr. was buried Tuesday at Fort Bliss National Cemetery with a 21-gun salute and graveside services by the Roman Catholic Church, the Masonic Lodge and the Eagle Claw Warrior Society.

Minjares was killed Feb. 7 when his helicopter crashed in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, during a casualty evacuation mission. Tuesday morning, Monsignor Francis J. Smith, pastor and vicar general for St. Raphael Parish in east El Paso, presided over the funeral, which was attended by more than 400 people.

"God will call each and every one of us," Smith said. "We pray that we will be as welcome (as Minjares)."

During his sermon, Smith spoke of a letter he had received from the mayor of Tal Afar, a city in northern Iraq. The mayor of the Tal Afar was trying to find the troops who "freed his city from the terrorists," Smith said, adding that they "spread smiles on the faces of our children and gave us new hope."

"They have given us something we will never forget," Smith said, quoting the letter. "Their sacrifice is not in vain."

Police motorcycle escorts guided hundreds of cars with their lights on through city streets to the cemetery, where workers scrambled to find parking space.

Sailors -- their dark uniforms in striking contrast to the brilliant white spats, neckerchiefs, belts and gloves -- were pallbearers and painstakingly folded the flag from Minjares' coffin before presenting it to the family.

In the background, scattered clouds cast fleeting shadows on the Franklin Mountains while the snapping of American flags buffeted by the wind threatened to drown out voices in the small stone shelter where the family faced Minjares' coffin. But just as the Rev. Roberto Alvarado began the graveside service, the steady breeze momentarily stilled.

A lambskin apron tied on the casket symbolized innocence as Minjares returned to his maker, and a sprig of evergreen symbolized the "immortal spirit that will survive the tomb," said Doc Rountree, who performed the Masonic graveside ceremony.

"He is a great warrior," said Jesus Padilla of the Eagle Claw Warrior Society, who scattered sage and corn husks in the four directions on each side of the casket. "We honor you, Gilbert Minjares, for your bravery."

Minjares was posthumously given the Purple Heart, the Combat Action Badge, the Global War on Terrorism Medal and the Iraq Campaign Medal.

Friends and relatives came from Dallas and California, said Eddie Pedregon, Minjares' cousin. "He touched a lot of people."

Joseph Moncada met Minjares when they attended Desert View Middle School. Later, they graduated from Hanks High School.

"I was a center and he was the quarterback," Moncada said. "We played ball together."

Moncada said he had been out of touch with Minjares for a year and a half, but something told him to call his old friend. He talked to Minjares the night before the corpsman deployed to Iraq. Minjares was killed seven days after his arrival.

"He didn't regret going into the Navy," Moncada said. "He did it for his kids and everybody else. He didn't want anybody crying for him. He was fighting for our freedom and doing what he wanted to do. He was courageous. He wasn't afraid of going. He knew he had a purpose.

"He knew if something happened to him, he'd have open doors upstairs."

From the El Paso Times

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Clarence Spencer laid to rest

A soldier buried her soldier husband Tuesday afternoon in a Tarrant County cemetery.

People Pvt. Clarence Spencer served with were drawn from all over the country to attend the funeral of the soldier who was killed during his fourth tour in Iraq.

His wife, Pvt. Charlotte Spencer, wept and her son embraced her as rifles were shot in the air in honor of her husband, who she had married just 34 days before he left on his last tour.

Pvt. Spencer was the 3,352nd American to die in the war. But before the grave, there was his life that was celebrated and honored Tuesday.

"Pvt. Spencer was a man who lived by the Corps values of honor, courage and commitment," said Sgt. Jay Picard, US Marine.

Sgt. 1st Class Don Harris called him "the epitome of what God put us here for."

"I know our hearts are heavy, but our dispositions are proud," he said.

Spencer's Junior ROTC leader from Dunbar High also spoke highly of the soldier, who was also an all-district football star.

"I've coached faster, stronger, more talented, but I've never coached anyone I was more proud of, ever," said Bob Jones, his high school football coach.

The same qualities that impressed his coaches and teachers also impressed fellow Marines and soldiers.

"His friends called him Spencer Fi, as a tribute to his Marine Corps, Semper Fidelis," said Brig. Gen. Will Grimsley, US Army. "But they said it was because he was always faithful about a bunch of things."

Spencer was a Marine first, and then joined the Army to be stationed in Texas closer to his daughter, his new bride and his mother.

His mom, Juanita Spencer Cole, said her son returned to Iraq even though she said war tormented his soul.

"He would jump in his sleep, and if I tried to wake him up he would be ready," Cole said. "I would say baby, it's just momma. It's just momma."

A brigadier general gave Charlotte Spencer the folded flag and Clarence's final three medals, which included a second Purple Heart.

From WFAA 8

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Ronnie Sanders laid to rest

An icy northwest wind moaned through tall pines in Lincoln Memorial Park west of Shreveport Saturday, as the mortal remains of Ronnie Lee Sanders were laid to rest.

A hardy crowd of hundreds gathered under cloudless blue skies to honor the 26-year-old Army staff sergeant and father of four, killed Feb. 3 near Taji, Iraq, after an improvised explosive device detonated near his convoy.

A crowd perhaps double that size spent two hours in the Morning Star Baptist Church on Jewella Avenue for his funeral services.

There, a trio of local ministers did not eulogize him so much as employ his faith and sacrifice to urge those still alive to put their lives to better use and chart a course for heaven.

"This is a celebration," said the Rev. Arthur L. Wilson Sr., who officiated, and said he'd known Sanders "since he was a baby.

"Ronnie was a patriotic young man and one who knew exactly what he wanted to do," Wilson said, asking whether the people who had gathered to honor the soldier were as prepared.

"Our days are numbered," he said, standing at a pulpit just behind the now-closed, flag-draped casket. "Life is a vapor."

Just before the service, hundreds of people lined Jewella Avenue waiting for the arrival of the horse-drawn hearse that eventually would bear Sanders' remains into the cemetery.

Caddo District Judge Jeanette Garrett, whose son John is in the Navy and has returned safely from war service, was among them.

"This is out of respect for this hero and his family," she said. "His grandmother requested this show of flags, and it's the least we can do. Look at all these people."

Near her was Lizzie Terrell, whose seven children all graduated from Woodlawn High, the same school Sanders graduated from in 1999.

Terrell had two sons who served in the military, and one, Johnny Kelly, fought in Operation Desert Storm.

She said she discussed going to the service with Kelly, who now is in Kentucky, and he urged her to attend.

"He told me, 'Mom, you've got to go,'" she said.

Patricia Murray stood outside as well with a flag, even through the pain she felt with a bad knee that forced her to use a walker.

"I don't have any children in the military, but I have a 36-year-old son, and it could have been him in there," she said pointing to the church where Sanders' open casket awaited the arrival of the horse-drawn carriage. "My heart goes out to the Sanders family. I prayed for them last night."

At Lincoln Memorial Park, a trio of rifle volleys echoed over a field of flags whipping in the wind. The flags were brought by those attending the burial, as well as by several dozen Patriot Guard Riders motorcyclists, who showed their respects and provided a civilian guard and escort.

Numerous soldiers from Sanders' unit, the 82nd Airborne Division, served as body bearers and as an honor guard, firing the volleys just before the playing of "Taps," and folding two flags that draped his casket.

The flags were presented by the senior officer present, Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, deputy commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, from Fort Bragg, N.C. That's where Sanders was stationed.

Horst presented the tri-folded flags to Sanders' widow, Rachel, and to his mother, Ruth Manley. Near them were Sanders' two older children, son Ronnie Lee Sanders Jr. and eldest daughter Lakeyia.

Nearby, covered against the cold in matching pink-covered car carriers were Ronnie Lee and Rachel Sanders' twin daughters, Ra-onnie and Re-onnie Sanders.

Ronnie Lee Sanders' remains were returned to Shreveport on Wednesday with a military escort. Arrangements were through Good Samaritan Funeral Home in Shreveport.

Sanders, assigned to the 82nd Airborne's 407th Brigade Support Battalion, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, had been in the Army just more than seven years. He had just begun his third tour in Iraq when he was killed.

First deployed to Iraq from January through August 2004 then from December 2004 through December 2005, Sanders' awards and decorations prior to his death included the Bronze Star medal with one oak leaf cluster, the Purple Heart medal, the Army Commendation Medal with two oak leaf clusters, the Army Achievement Medal and numerous other awards.

At the funeral service, he was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Military Order of St. Christopher from the U.S. Army Transportation Corps.

Horst and the red-bereted soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division were the most visible part of a sizable military presence at the services. The Army, Marine Corps, Air Force and Navy all were represented. Numerous other people, including Lowe-McFarlane American Legion Post 14 Commander Carroll Michaud, wore the decorated garrison caps of veterans organizations.

From the Shreveport Times

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Jennifer Harris laid to rest

Cold winds and icy terrain could not shrink the crowd of mourners who followed the body of Marine Capt. Jennifer J. Harris to her final resting place at Swampscott Cemetery on Monday afternoon, Feb. 19.

But the silence was broken only by the sound of dozens of American flags and the colors of police, sheriff’s and veterans’ organizations flapping in the stiff breeze as a white horse-drawn hearse, built in 1874 in New Bedford, rolled slowly from St. John the Evangelist Church on Humphrey Street, down across Burrill Street to Jared Raymond Square (the corner of Burrill and Essex streets named only last Nov. 11 for another Swampscott resident killed in Iraq) and up Essex Street to the cemetery.

This time, the procession was for the first Massachusetts woman killed in Iraq. Harris died Feb. 7 when the Sea Knight helicopter she was piloting was hit by Iraqi insurgents and crashed, killing all seven Americans onboard.

Military officials at first said the helicopter crashed because of a mechanical failure but later said they believe it was hit by fire, perhaps a surface-to-air missile.

The white hearse carrying Harris was built by the George T. Brownell Co. and is owned by the Solimine, Landergan and Richardson Funeral Homes. The horses that drew it were provided by Point of View Farm of Deerfield, N.H.

As the hearse approached the northern side of the cemetery, accompanied by silent marchers of every kind from every branch of the service, the winds howled again in anguish. Six Marines carried Harris’ casket to its grave site, two Marines held a large flag over it as a three-gun salute was fired and “Taps” played. The two standing Marines slowly and carefully folded the flag into a triangle and presented it to Harris’ parents while other flags were given to other relatives.

Eyes which had withheld tears until now suddenly became moist as three helicopters — not at all unlike those which Harris had piloted with such skill, even after it was hit by enemy fire — cruised slowly, at low altitude, overhead.

We even saw Marines with misty eyes.

From the Swampscott Reporter

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Tarryl Hill laid to rest

After the rifle volleys, the bagpipes and the prayers, hands -- some bare, some in white dress gloves -- touched and traced the name on Tarryl Hill's crypt in remembrance, grief and good-bye.

With a bitter wind cutting across Acacia Park Cemetery on Friday, Hill -- a member of the 1st Battalion of the 24th Marine Regiment killed by a roadside bomb in Anbar province, Iraq, last week -- was entombed in a chapel mausoleum. Family, friends and fellow Marines caressed the bronze letters and numerals on the crypt face spelling out his name and marking his brief life from 1987 to 2007.

One Marine, a portrait of grief in dress blues, bowed and pressed his fist for a long moment against the marble slab after it sealed up Hill's dark wood coffin.

Several hundred mourners filled New St. Paul Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, on the west side of Detroit, for Hill's funeral Friday. Afterward, police led the sad, slow convoy carrying him to the cemetery in Beverly Hills.

"I'm just a regular guy," Hill, 19, said in an interview played to the gathering. "A regular citizen until my country called."

The interview was taped in December as Hill of Shelby Township prepared to ship out to Iraq where he'd join his unit whose deployment is being chronicled in the Free Press as Michigan's Band of Brothers.

His camouflage cap was pulled down and his smile was turned up as he spoke to the camera.

"We're ready -- always," Hill said as his buddies joked in the background. "We learn to count on each other. We are one."

Hill was raised by his grandparents, George and Sue Hill, and he attended Grandmont Rosedale Christian School in Detroit, where his first- and second-grade teacher Faith Butler said he helped start each school day.

"He'd always want to hold that flag and say that pledge," Butler said.

Hill's sister Dedra Hill and cousins Steven, Kevin and Marquetta Hill gathered behind the coffin and recalled how they were the inseparable "FAB Five" as kids.

"This may be the last time the five are together," she said. "Tarryl, in case you didn't know it, we love you."

A Marine honor guard escorted him and his family. The guards saluted and fired rifles in his memory. They carried his coffin, placed it in the crypt and knelt, presenting folded American flags to his grandparents.

Hill gave his life, said Marine Lt. Col. Stephen Lewallen, going out "every day to try to make things better for people he didn't even know."

"He was doing what he raised his hand to do," Army Chaplain P.K. Roberts, assigned to Selfridge Air National Guard Base in Harrison Township, told the mourners.

"So I stand here," she said, "and salute him for a job well done."

From the Free Press

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Donnie Belser laid to rest

Friends and family of Capt. Donnie Ray Belser, Jr. filed by American flags and saluting veterans for funeral services at New Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church Monday.

Belser's life was cut short February 10, while serving his country on a second tour of duty in Iraq.

Belser is remembered as a great friend, loving family man and respected soldier. "He knew this was bottom line what he wanted to do, there's a sense of peace to know that he died doing what he did love," said his friend Capt. Roger Cabiness.

The 28 year old soldier was a former state wrestling champ. He graduated from Saks High School with honors in 1997. He went to college at Jacksonville State, and graduated with honors in 2001. Just before graduation, Belser married his sweetheart Marshawn. The couple eventually had a daughter and son.

Belser died on his son's first birthday. Friends say the day before he died, the loving father used a web cam to sing Happy Birthday to Myles. Then, days five after his death, Belser's family received one last surprise. "They received a birthday present from him Thursday that he'd already mailed, it was a diaper bag and it was in the Army fatigue with his name on it and everything," said family friend Michelle Busse.

Friends of the fallen soldier remember Belser as a man who was respected by his peers and trusted by his superiors. Belser's High School buddy Tallarius Likely was in shock about his friend's sudden death. "You see it on the news so much, these guys getting killed over in Iraq, I guess it takes something closer to home to make you realize the actual impact that it's having on peoples lives right now," said Likely.

Henry Munoz can't believe his best friend is gone. They had made plans for retirement following several more years of military service. "He always talked about he wanted to retire and get his retirement check and just drive a big yellow school bus," said Munoz. The military friends talked about working at the same school, Munoz wanted to retire as a soccer coach. He now says, he'll have to change his plans and drive a school bus in his friend's honor.

Belser was posthumously honored with the Combat Action Badge, Purple Heart and Bronze Star. He was buried Monday afternoon at Jefferson Memorial Gardens.

From WIAT 42

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Matthew Pathenos laid to rest

ST. LOUIS — On his first tour of duty in Iraq, Lance Cpl. Matthew Pathenos had a knack for making his Marine comrades laugh and forget the ugliness they'd see on patrol.

The stories about Pathenos, a young Marine reservist from Ballwin, spilled out of a typed letter — sent in a hurry late last week from his best friend still serving in Iraq.

The more than 400 mourners at St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church on Saturday heard the one-page letter read aloud at the funeral for Pathenos.

"The best thing about Matt was his ability to wake up every day with a smile and hold it all day long," wrote Lance Cpl. Robert Cross.

Cross joked about how Pathenos would greet him when he returned from patrol.

"He would always ask me if I had a rough day at the office and then proceed to tell me how he spent all day cooking and cleaning the house for me," Cross wrote. "It was those little jokes that made me forget about the horrible things that we see right outside in the city."

Pathenos, 21, was killed Feb. 7 in Fallujah while conducting combat operations in the Anbar province of Iraq. He was riding in a Humvee when it was struck by an improvised explosive device.

Pathenos had been in Iraq since October and was due home in April. Pathenos is a 2003 graduate of Parkway South High School.

His older brother, Christopher Pathenos, is a Marine sergeant. In a photo tribute at the church, pictures show the inseparable brothers: Matthew and Christopher in matching plaid jumpers as little boys, on the golf course as teenagers and later as young men sporting military garb and the traditional "high and tight" Marine haircuts.

Christopher Pathenos completed two tours of duty in Iraq and was back home in St. Louis when the family got word of Matthew's death, said Melanie Johnes, their stepsister.

Christopher had been motivated to join the Marines after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "For Matty, the motivation was more Christopher, seeing how the Corps treated him," Johnes said.

"We're a very patriotic family, and Matty died for our freedom," she said.

At the funeral, mourners filed past the flag-draped casket. Some wiped away tears, and a few wailed, as they said their goodbyes. Christopher Pathenos sat in the first row of pews, wearing his dress Marine uniform.

The Pathenos family for generations has come to the ornate sanctuary of St. Nicholas church. It's where Matthew was baptized, and where his great-grandparents, grandparents and parents were married.

"These parish walls have seen the happiest of times for our family and tragic times, this being the most tragic of times," said Matthew's uncle, Nicholas Pathenos, a Greek Orthodox priest from Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

Nicholas Pathenos last spoke to his nephew a few weeks before he was deployed. They talked about planes. Matthew got his pilots license at age 14. He teased his uncle that a Cessna aircraft was better than a Piper.

"I told him when he gets back, we'll go flying," the uncle recalled.

Matthew Pathenos belonged to the 3rd Battalion, 24th Marines, which has its headquarters and service company at Lambert Field. He was in Iraq with a sister unit, the Detroit-based 1st Battalion, 24th Marines.