The 'SURGE'

After reading this article that our reader and US Veteran Patriot sent me, I can understand how this father and family have found solace.

Both of these are beyond sadness. I am numb at the moment.


EXERPTS from both:

'Imagine packing up the house ... paintings .. documents, assembling a few valuables and delivering them along with the children's pet bird, to your sister's house ..telling the children you do not know when they might return ... instructing the neighbour's gardener to guard the house .. imagine arguing with your weeping children about what they can take with them, locking the gate ..' Imagine, imagine, imagine: justified by the venal, oil grabbing, shameful, stomach turning, discredited, disgusting words : 'liberation, freedom, democracy'.

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For weeks, Chief Warrant Officer Jason DeFrenn's family awaited his homecoming, a trip planned as much more than a simple respite from his second tour in Iraq: The nine-year Army veteran was returning to South Carolina to help his wife give birth.

Instead, his loved ones are making plans for the 34-year-old Army pilot's funeral. DeFrenn's Apache helicopter was shot down on Feb. 2 -- two weeks before he was supposed to be back in his native state.


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Twenty-three Marines and soldiers have died in helicopter crashes in Iraq since Jan. 20. Most, like DeFrenn, are believed to have been shot down. The latest, which killed seven Marines when their transport helicopter crashed Wednesday, remains under investigation. Four American civilian contractors also were killed in a recent crash.

The deaths have raised questions about whether insurgents are using more sophisticated weapons or whether U.S. tactics need changing.

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As the Palestinians before them, Iraqis who flee either abroad, or under 'liberation's' ethnic cleansing, take with them the keys of their homes, the deeds of their home and land, all they have of their precious, only place on earth. As the Palestinians, how many generations will dream of the right to return? Sixty years after Britain's establishment of the State of Israel and the ever ongoing displacement, Britain, with the support of the biggest bully on the block, is playing the same game. And Palestinians in Iraq, safe for generations, too, flee yet again, with other nationalities who have lived there equally long, accused of being 'foreign fighters'. Sorry, 'foreign fighters' R us (U.S.)

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His father said the military gave DeFrenn the excitement he had sought as a boy while hunting and fishing near their hometown of 5,000 about 60 miles south of Columbia.

"When he was young, he had a spirit of wanting to be a hero," Garth DeFrenn said. "He was one of those kids who wanted adventure."

The DeFrenns are now making plans for Jason's funeral in the small town of Barnwell. He'll be buried in his family's plot, as his father believes he would have wanted. The governor plans to grant a request to lower the state's flags.

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'I gave them a good boy and they sent me back a monster', said the Mother of a Viet Nam veteran ( the indispensable 'Four Days in My Lai - a war crime and its aftermath', Michael Bilton and Kevin Sim, Penguin.) Nothing has changed. America, Britain, take your monsters home. Illegal invasion, illegal 'surge', illegal executions, illegal oil grab. Just go away - and take your discredited politicians with you.

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Crossposted at BigBrassBlog