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I'm almost embarassed to say anything. My only standing in this comment is that I am an American who loves and respects this country and all who served and died for it. Obama is a Radical Muslim terrorist that needs to be removed from the office of the president of this United States.

To you simon99 and all who served and are serving this country, I'm here to help you take it back.
 
Greetings everyone,

Just to create a basis for this post - GORDON: Al Qaeda retakes Fallujah; Obama frees cohorts from Gitmo - Washington Times

So, for all my fellow service members that remember being there, to those that were lost, how does this news report strike you?

The forums censor won't allow me to truly express myself, but I'm pretty unhappy.

No need to say it. The words burn in our brain. Obum was a traitor, is a traitor and will always be a traitor !
 
I'm not even a present or ex service member, but it makes me sick to my stomach to see them throw away all the blood and sacrifice by our troops.

If you are going to spill their blood or spend their lives, make sure its for something important and lasting. Otherwise, you have done nothing different than sending our best to the firing squad.
 
I've been out for 33 years but still stand with my brothers who did their best and still feeing like they lost. All wars from WWII on have been politically motivated by the greedy career politicians, the scum that gets elected everytime.
We can only do so much as soldiers then the shooting stops and the pollution starts...
Stand firm my brothers! !! We will get our credit and then some!!!
 
I've been out for 33 years but still stand with my brothers who did their best and still feeing like they lost. All wars from WWII on have been politically motivated by the greedy career politicians, the scum that gets elected everytime.
We can only do so much as soldiers then the shooting stops and the pollution starts...
Stand firm my brothers! !! We will get our credit and then some!!!

:s0155::)
 
Heard this from my Marine Son who served, in country, in OIF. This is the same crap that happened with Vietnam. War is never popular, but quitting and giving up is even less popular. I can't say here what I want to say. Let's just get rid of the Commies in the Mid-terms and purge the rest of Washington in the next Presidential Election!!
 
True, but many of us do not know what life would be like having not served. And that honestly confuses me as people have no idea what life is and how valuable our rights are and those whom have do more then anyone.

EDIT PS : I think our country would be very different if citizens knew what cost there liberal BS is affecting the lives fought for. And if we could some how tell people life is worth fight for.

So true in the meaning of most people nowadays don't even care about what goes on in the lives of soldiers and their families, the sacrifices and heartaches that tear them apart then pulls them so closer together again.
 
Heard this from my Marine Son who served, in country, in OIF. This is the same crap that happened with Vietnam. War is never popular, but quitting and giving up is even less popular. I can't say here what I want to say. Let's just get rid of the Commies in the Mid-terms and purge the rest of Washington in the next Presidential Election!!

Please thank your son for me. Ooorah!
 
Falluja's Fall Stuns Marines Who Fought There


By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.JAN. 9, 2014



Marines fighting insurgents in Falluja in 2004. The insurgents are back, and many Marines wonder if their sacrifice was in vain. Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times


Adam Banotai was a 21-year-old sergeant and squad leader in the Marine Corps during the 2004 invasion of Falluja, a restive insurgent-held city in Iraq. His unit — which had seven of 17 men wounded by shrapnel or bullets in the first days of the invasion — seized control of the government center early in the campaign.

So when Sunni insurgents, some with allegiances to Al Qaeda, retook the city this month and raised their black insurgent flag over buildings where he and his men fought, he was transfixed, disbelieving and appalled.

"I texted a couple of friends," said Mr. Banotai, now a firefighter and registered nurse in Pennsylvania. "Everyone was in disbelief."

"I don't think anyone had the grand illusion that Falluja or Ramadi was going to turn into Disneyland, but none of us thought it was going to fall back to a jihadist insurgency," he said. "It made me sick to my stomach to have that thrown in our face, everything we fought for so blatantly taken away."

The bloody mission to wrest Falluja from insurgents in November 2004 meant more to the Marines than almost any other battle in the 12 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many consider it the corps' biggest and most iconic fight since Vietnam, with nearly 100 Marines and soldiers killed in action and hundreds more wounded.


"Lives were wasted, and now everyone back home sees that," said James Cathcart. He fought as a private first class in the Marines in Falluja in 2004, and was discharged with post-traumatic stress disorder. Matthew Staver for The New York Times

For many veterans of that battle — most now working in jobs long removed from combat — watching insurgents running roughshod through the streets they once fought to secure, often in brutal close-quarters combat, has shaken their faith in what their mission achieved.

Some now blame President Obama for not pushing harder to keep some troops in Iraq to maintain the stability. Others express anger at George W. Bush for getting them into a war that they now view as dubious in purpose and even more doubtful in its accomplishments. But either way, the fall of the city to insurgents has set off within the tight-knit community of active and former Marines a wrenching reassessment of a battle that in many ways defined their role in the war.


"This is just the beginning of the reckoning and accounting," said Kael Weston, a former State Department political adviser who worked with the Marines for nearly three years in Falluja and the surrounding Anbar Province, and later with Marines in Afghanistan.

Mr. Weston, who is now writing a book but remains in close contact with scores of the men he served with, said Marines across the globe had been frenetically sharing their feelings about the new battle for Falluja via email, text and Facebook.

"The news went viral in the worst way," he said. "This has been a gut punch to the morale of the Marine Corps and painful for a lot of families who are saying, ‘I thought my son died for a reason.' "

Ryan Sparks was a platoon commander during a seven-month Falluja deployment in which three men were killed and 57 wounded in his 90-man unit. Now about to take a job in Manhattan after recently leaving the Marines, Mr. Sparks, 39, said many of the younger Falluja veterans are angry "because we lost so many Marines, and it feels like they were sacrificed for nothing."

Yet even among older officers who seem less surprised by the turn of events, Mr. Sparks said, "It hurts to think that it isn't as important to Americans as it was to us while it was happening."

He likens Falluja to Khe Sanh, the bloody 1968 battle where Americans triumphed only to abandon the base months later, though he did not disagree with the 2011 troop pullout and does not believe that American troops should be sent back in.

"This makes the analogy complete," he said.

"It hurts to think that it isn't as important to Americans as it was to us while it was happening," said Ryan Sparks. He was a platoon commander during a seven-month Falluja deployment.

Mr. Banotai has no regrets about supporting the war, and said it was a mistake for the United States to withdraw troops when it did, which he believes was done for political reasons, not because the mission was accomplished. But he also would not favor sending troops back. "It's too late. Mistakes have already been made," he said. "We can't go back and rewrite history."

Among the few things that kept 19-year-old Pfc. James Cathcart going during his second combat tour was flirting with female Marines who would come through his base in Falluja after their job searching Iraqi women at a nearby checkpoint. Yet that memory — of one woman in particular — haunts him: Mr. Cathcart's platoon rushed to respond to an attack in June 2005 to find the truck ferrying the women to their base engulfed in flames from a car bomb.

"I wanted to get with that girl, and then the next day I was seeing pieces of her all over the side of the road," said Mr. Cathcart, now 28, who says he was discharged with post-traumatic stress disorder and is now unemployed in Colorado.

He said that the fall of Falluja might finally bring home to the public what he says he and many comrades had long believed about the war. "Lives were wasted, and now everyone back home sees that," he said. "It was irresponsible to send us over there with no plan, and now to just give it all away."

Across the Marine Corps, officers are struggling to respond to calls from wounded veterans and parents of Marines killed in Anbar about recent events in Falluja.

"There is a rising drumbeat of anxiety/angst among our Marines concerning the state of Falluja/Ramadi today," one senior active duty officer wrote as part of an email chain circulating among Marine officers discussing how to respond to the inquiries they were receiving from Marines and their families about Falluja. The officer cited what he called the Marines' success in helping foster the Awakening movement — where local tribesmen turned against jihadists and partnered with American forces — and said that "without these victories, we might still be there today."

The officer added: "What the Iraqi forces lost in the last month, four years after transition, is not a reflection of Marine efforts. If it is a reflection of anything, it is the nature of the Iraqi social fabric and long-suppressed civil discord."

One of the last things Matthew Brown, a 20-year-old lance corporal when he was wounded the third day of the invasion, remembers about Falluja was seeing Mr. Banotai help load him into a vehicle. Given last rites because he lost so much blood after a sniper shot him in the leg, he awoke a week later at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and began the long process of learning to walk again, which he now does with a cane. Seeing pictures this week of insurgent-held Falluja, he said, was "nauseating."
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"It's just like, wow, thanks for dragging up all these memories I tried to forget that were controlling my life," said Mr. Brown, 29, who now lives in Fayetteville, N.C. "For a while I lived out of a bottle trying to shut the memories off."

Though he would not send troops back, Mr. Weston, the former State Department official, said it was "almost immoral for us to say, ‘It's all up to them now, we're out of there.' " He noted that a man whom he had worked with in Falluja recently sent him an email describing the return of Abdullah al-Janabi, an insurgent leader before the Marines invaded.

"We are looking for help," the man wrote on Jan. 1. Mr. Weston has not heard from his friend since Saturday.
 
In opposition to US advice, Karzi just released a bunch of tango's.

State Department boss is Hillary Clinton.
Her boss is Barack Obama, POTUS.

I'm weary of being angry.
Emotions cloud judgement and observation.
I consider issues and create plans to address them.
Where two or more issues can be addressed with one plan, better.
Not Stoic, I have lots of emotions.
Just want to channel my energy.
I consider what I may influence vs what influences me.
Surfing the net, sifting information, waiting like a flower.
Like a Venus Flytrap, waiting for a fly.
 
In opposition to US advice, Karzi just released a bunch of tango's.

State Department boss is Hillary Clinton.
Her boss is Barack Obama, POTUS.

I'm weary of being angry.
Emotions cloud judgement and observation.
I consider issues and create plans to address them.
Where two or more issues can be addressed with one plan, better.
Not Stoic, I have lots of emotions.
Just want to channel my energy.
I consider what I may influence vs what influences me.
Surfing the net, sifting information, waiting like a flower.
Like a Venus Flytrap, waiting for a fly.



Then this will make your day....

Obama standing by decision to lift moratorium on releasing Guantanamo Bay prisoners back to Yemen | Fox News
 
The Marines that are upset about this need to get over it. The fact of the matter is that we (USMC) went in (with some army guys) and cleaned house. We did OUR job then, and continued to do it until the city was turned over to the IA. Lots of people on this board like to quote things like "The tree of liberty must be refreshed.....", but don't seem to think it holds true for EVERY patriot, EVERYWHERE. We cleaned the city out, kept it fairly clean, but THEY let the mothertruckers back in. It is completely out of the Marines' hands.

Did anyone really think that a country that has been conquered and reconquered for a MILLENIA was suddenly going to turn democratic after a war that lasted a decade?!! WTF do the Marines that are in Afghanistan right now think is going to happen when THEY leave that place?! SSDD!! When an entire area of the globe lives by "Inshallah allah", do you think that area is suddenly going to wake up and decide that things outside their immediate family matter to them? They want to be left alone and bury their head in the sand, pretend that there isn't anything their lazy selves can do about it. Last I heard, there were over 100k people in Fallujah. There is nowhere near that many insurgents. So why are there any insurgents left?!
 
The Marines that are upset about this need to get over it. The fact of the matter is that we (USMC) went in (with some army guys) and cleaned house. We did OUR job then, and continued to do it until the city was turned over to the IA. Lots of people on this board like to quote things like "The tree of liberty must be refreshed.....", but don't seem to think it holds true for EVERY patriot, EVERYWHERE. We cleaned the city out, kept it fairly clean, but THEY let the mothertruckers back in. It is completely out of the Marines' hands.

Did anyone really think that a country that has been conquered and reconquered for a MILLENIA was suddenly going to turn democratic after a war that lasted a decade?!! WTF do the Marines that are in Afghanistan right now think is going to happen when THEY leave that place?! SSDD!! When an entire area of the globe lives by "Inshallah allah", do you think that area is suddenly going to wake up and decide that things outside their immediate family matter to them? They want to be left alone and bury their head in the sand, pretend that there isn't anything their lazy selves can do about it. Last I heard, there were over 100k people in Fallujah. There is nowhere near that many insurgents. So why are there any insurgents left?!

I guess I share a different perspective.
 
I've been out for 33 years but still stand with my brothers who did their best and still feeing like they lost. All wars from WWII on have been politically motivated by the greedy career politicians, the scum that gets elected everytime.
We can only do so much as soldiers then the shooting stops and the pollution starts...
Stand firm my brothers! !! We will get our credit and then some!!!
I am not pleased that soldiers signed up to go there. No offense intended.
 

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