I just watched "American Valor" on PBS ... very moving

[LastDemocratInSC]

"American Valor" is the story of 21 recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor, from World War II to Somalia. Watching it was a gut wrenching and sobering experience. The last words of the program are those of recipient Jack Jacobs, a Vietnam era recipient, who said "I know that on this day I can say anything I want to say, write anything I want to write, print anything I want to print - that is a gift worth dying for." He's talking, of course, about the American Way of free speech and free expression of ideas - the ideals he and his fellows fought for.

How can we square those words with those spoken not long ago by the Resident's former spokesman, Ari Fleisher: "People should be careful about what they say from now on."

I grieve for our nation tonight - we have lost so much so quickly.

http://www.pbs.org/weta/americanvalor/stories/

[saigon68]

1. Ari Fleisher is a BUM and a Criminal

Some day he will be in a Jail somewhere.

[TacticalPeek]

2. Receding.

"The overarching mission was to preserve the stories of a vanishing breed. There were 450 living Medal of Honor recipients when President Richard Nixon decorated Jacobs in 1969. Just 132 remain today."

http://www.nj.com/entertainment/expresstimes/index.ssf?/base/columns-0/1085475926270130.xml


Some of the vanishing is due to wise people who achieve nonwar solutions.

[proud patriot]

3. I'm watching it now on the west coast

:hi:

[LastDemocratInSC]

5. Watch carefully, my friend

My uncle, who died a few years ago, was an Army doctor in the invasions of Sicily and Italy. A few years ago he wrote a short history of his account for his family in which he told of the many moments in which he survived because he took a step to the left, or to the right. He always told me that he never should have survived.

He told of moments when he was working on a soldier and by moving his arm missed a bullet that killed another man, of how walking down some steps missed an artillery shell that destroyed the house he had just been inside. He told about how he would be operating in a tent and on many occasions the instruments were taken out of his hand by bullets. I also don't know how the man survived. He must have been the luckiest man on Earth.

On one occasion when he came home here to Greenville on leave he insisted on sleeping in the basement with a few blankets ... he couldn't stand the thought of being exposed by being above ground in the home he had grown up in.

He told about how he was crawling out to help some wounded men in a foxhole in Italy when a German tank deliberately ran over him. He was clearly marked as a medic. When the tank crew saw he had survived they threw grenades at him ... and he was home soon after with awful injuries that took years to heal.

I must say that my Uncle never liked native Germans after that. On one occasion a German engineer working with in our town went to him with a head laceration after he had fallen on some cement. During all the time my Uncle stitched him up he said nothing to the man ... they were about the same age ... what can one say?

Oh my God, this man suffered, but he healed and became a wonderful person in our community because he had survived when he, by any right, never should have.

We do not know the sacrifices of the men who didn't come home. For every winner of a medal there must be a thousand who earned it but didn't survive, and nobody knew about it besides.

What has become of the nation these men fought to preserve?

[proud patriot]

6. Amazing Stories of Valor

How the telling moves these men :cry:

[countmyvote4real]

4. "we have lost so much"

I know it’s selfish to consider these things in this context, but we have lost mountains ever since * was selected to be the POTUS.

That’s a fitting start when the highest court overturns the will of the people. And that was before 9/11 when things had to change. The problem is that the things that must be changed since 9/11 have nothing to do with fighting terrorism. It’s just an excuse for corporate avarice. Their gains are our losses.

In the spirit of “voodoo economics” (How wrong was that?) the tax cuts were supposed to stimulate corporations to create jobs. It sort of worked that way, except the jobs were out-sourced to other countries with cheaper labor costs.

The ideals of free speech and a free press that might oppose or expose policies of the government have been sent underground. The “free” press is now a suspect when it comes to objective information or coverage. Sadly, that’s true all the way from the NYT to Faux News. That’s why I choose to retrieve and filter my news from alternative sources like DU, international services and of all places The Daily Show. You must admit that something is lost when satire rings truer than CNN.

And then there’s our nation’s “moral authority.” Whatever might have been chipped away by the denial of a presidential blow-job in the Clinton administration, it pales in comparison to the actions of the * administration. Thousands of people have died for a paranoid delusion that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq would or could use WMD against us. At its best that argument was a misunderstanding of the intelligence. We now know the worst of it. It was a lie to play upon our post 9/11 fears. It is a lie that will haunt our country’s motives for years to come.

And here’s the selfish part of my argument. We’ve lost hundreds of young lives that swore to uphold the Constitution for this folly. They died and will continue to die in order to defend something that doesn’t exist here anymore. Ironically, that’s something * tells us we must spread to Iraq and the Middle East.

We are lost.