Archive for the ‘War’ Category

Valor Defined

Check out this story from the San Diego Tribune:

The citations for valor read like scenes from a movie, and it’s only through cinematic comparisons that Cpl. Howard Lee Hampton Jr. can describe the combat his Camp Pendleton unit saw here in April.

“It was beyond anything in ‘Black Hawk Down,’ ” said Hampton, 21, referring to the movie about the actual downing of two U.S. helicopters in 1993 Somalia and the harrowing rescue operation in which the lives of 18 American soldiers were lost.

“I remember going into the city in the (amphibious assault vehicle) and hearing the bullets hit off the sides.

“When the door opened, I thought about the scene in “Saving Private Ryan” when they were coming up to the beach and that guy got hit right in the head before he ever got to the beach,” Hampton said, this time conjuring up the movie account of D-Day during World War II.

“Once we got in the city, we had hundreds and hundreds of people trying to kill us,” said the native of El Paso, Tex., recalling how the cascade of enemy shell casings from windows above the Marines sounded like a never-ending slot machine payout.

It’s riveting, and you should read it all.

In the same vein, take a moment to check out this American Heroes listing.

Zarqawi captured…or not.

Reports are filtering in. Unfortunately the sources aren’t so reliable.

Illuminated

Seen in Entertainment Weekly’s July 10th Edition, page 16:

…All this because actor Liev Schreiber saw him (aspiring Iraqi filmmaker Mudher) telling MTV’s True Life how nearly impossible it is to learn his profession in a country ravaged by war.

Schreiber, who makes his directorial debut with the adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2002 novel, contacted Mudher through MTV and, along with the movie’s producers, is personally financing the cross-cultural moviemaking adventure. “We felt really guilty about what our country had done to his country,” says producer Peter Saraf. “And then, of course, he gets here, and it never occured to me that he would say something like ‘But I love George Bush — he changed my life!”

The name of the film is, appropriately enough, “Everything is Illuminated”.

Pakistan Nabs Terrorist

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa, has been captured in Pakistan, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat said Thursday.

I’ve had my doubts about just how much Pakistan is really helping us in the WoT, but this definitely seems like some major news. Lets’ keep ‘em coming, guys.

Update – The conspiracy theories have started to fly.

This could be big…

Al-Qaida Suspect Arrested in Texas
A South African woman picked up in Texas almost 10 days ago may turn out to be a key, high-level al-Qaida operative.

Pretty clumsy, but then again similar errors in judgment were made by several of the 9/11 hijackers – even right at the end – and they slipped through the cracks. Hopefully this arrest will lead to more.

Nothing to see here

Read this soon to be revealed as bogus report. It’s interesting (imo, solely) because of the source.

Hoax or horror? You decide.

The first story in this link from Instapundit is pretty frightening, if true.