4 Mile Creek

Placenta Legs

This story reminds me of a little adventure I had years ago as a EMT in an ER, at a hospital that I won't name for reasons that will become quite clear.
I worked the night shift, it was a lot more fun, and I actually got some time to do some reading.
One night, I don't remember if it was dark and stormy, we got a ring at the ER door (it was locked after 2400 hrs because there was only a nurse and me on after that time, we had to wake the doc when we got someone in). A very nice couple had driven some bum to the ER after finding him on the side of the road with both his legs cut off. We never did get the name of the couple, and they drove off right after I got a gurney and wheeled the bum into the ER. I can't imagine the amount of blood that must have been on their back seat.
Anyway, we called the doc right away, and he came down and started all sorts of procedures to save this guy's life. The guy was still conscious, and he told us that he was bumming on a train, and he thought that the train had stopped, so he held onto the side of the boxcar door, and stepped down. Because the train was still moving, quite fast I'd guess, he tumbled on the ground then under the wheels of the train which cut off both his legs right below the knee on one side, and right above the knee on the other. I tried to get a good location from him as to where he stepped off the train, but no luck. The doc eventually knocked him out to do some bone reduction, and I called the local cops to see if they could go out and find the legs before some coyote walked off with them, or before some local dog brought them home for a reward. We just needed the legs for recovery reasons, as there was too much soft tissue damage to his stubs for an attempt to re-attach them, even if we could find them in time.
Eventually the bum went into the OR, where the docs stitched him up and added some blood to his dangerously low system. And the cops showed up with a couple of legs in a garbage bag for me, socks and shoes still on. They were more than happy to hand them over to me, and I was more than happy to find out that I didn't need to do anything more with them except to show them to the docs, for some reason, then toss them into the incinerator. We put everything in there, from placentas to diseased tissue to removed organs, to just plain bloody waste that could burn, like bandages and such.
Come to find out, after the bum wakes up, he asked for his legs. He says he belongs to some religious sect that believes one must be buried with everything you were issued by God, or else you showed up in Heaven with stuff missing. So they collected all their teeth they lost as kids, all their removed spleens, kidneys, and whatnot.
So the hospital administrator calls me up and asks me what I did with this bum's legs. I told him that I burned them. After he about passed out, he tells me to go to the incinerator when I come on shift, get some ashes out of the incinerator, and give them to the guy. I ask, logically enough, how much ash should two legs comprise, and what do I put it in? He says he'll have a nice box waiting for me in the ER, and to just "fill it up" and give it to this guy. Which I did.
So this guy is going to have this box full of ashes put into his coffin, and somehow that will work. The bum seemed to go for it, but I doubt he knows the truth.
When he get to Heaven, his legs are either going to look like two stubbed out cigars with ashes on the end, or he's going to have all sorts of organs, placentas and such hanging off below his knees.
I sure hope his God isn't a vengeful god, or I'm in trouble.

Criminals

I didn't see the pictures of the soldiers and the prisoners that seem to be all the buzz on the news today, so I can't comment much. Other than this.
From what I can read, no prisoners were actually hurt, only humiliated, which is bad enough, but not even close to what happened in that prison under Saddam, so stop the comparisons.
The US Army has condemned what happened, will likely court-martial the guilty soldiers, and as is the custom, allow the commanders, who are just as guilty as the soldiers for allowing such a climate to fester, to retire if they have enough time in to retire, or resign.
In the end, keep these points in mind.
1. Muslims are not disgusted that this happened. They know much worse happens daily within the prisons of every single arab (and persian) state in the area, and they say nothing. They are disgusted that infidel Americans, and specifically, a female American, did this. If you learn nothing else from reading this site, remember that for arabs, it's all about saving face.
2. The Army knows what to do about this type of stuff, and is doing it. Condemnation of these acts have come from everyone, including the President of the United States, so it's clear there isn't going to be a coverup.
3. Most soldiers I know would never do something like this, and generally feel sorry for prisoners, especially those who have been poorly trained, equipped and led, then abandoned on the battlefield. The treatment of the prisoners reflects that feeling.
4. We are never, I repeat, never, going to win over the hearts and minds of a single muslim in the middle east. Never, ever. This is vital to understand. It is impossible to be a "good faith muslim" and be sympathetic to a secular progressive western country and people. Their religion does not allow it, and even a cursory reading of the Q'ran will bring that to light. So we need to stop imagining that we can somehow win over their hearts and minds and get on with dragging them, kicking and screaming, into the 18th century where they might find some sort of basis for a muslim "enlightenment".

One Little Wish

I'm hoping that things calm down enough by July so that I can get back to the states and take my family on a little vacation. Maybe not the whole family, since my wife is in the middle of her residency and unlikely to get a couple of weeks off, but at least my older kids can come play with me. I don't have any desire to do the things that a lot of my contemporaries do, like golf or play tennis or go bass fishing. Or put another coat of polish on their BMW in the driveway. I like to go backpacking and camping and climb mountains and such. I haven't been able to take the kids out to do that for a couple of summers now.
What I'd really like to do is to go out to Colorado, play around the Durango/Wolf Creek/Ouray area, rent a jeep and head up into the hills. I have a nice jeep already, a fully-fixed up 1984 CJ7, but it's in storage and it would be too much trouble getting it out of storage and driving it all the way to Colorado.
Just me and the kids and the wide open mountains of Colorado.
That's the plan.

(thanks to http://www.durangoextreme.com for the picture)

A New Kind of Sendoff

Now this is interesting.
As a happily married man, I don't have any way to check this out to see if it's a joke or not. Besides, I've lost my chance for now to get a "sendoff", though the unit I'm in sends us over here for several months at at time, several times a year, so I get plenty of opportunities to say goodbye to my family every year.
I wouldn't even want to guess what the official Army stand is on this either, even though this type of thing is quite readily apparent in places like El Paso, TX.
Sometimes you just gotta smile.
(hattip Instapundit)

"Fatwas fer Sale....."

Get yer’ red-hot fatwas here!"
Islam is probably no more susceptible to corruption by the state than any other religion. The history of the west is full of examples of corrupt church leaders who were bribed into using their power over the faithful to bring about actions or changes that benefited the secular state even though it was to the detriment of the church or its followers.
Remember this when you read about Iraq. Or Saudi Arabia. Or Iran. Or Egypt, or any other islamic country. The separation of church and state is so fundamental to the US, that it is hard to imagine living in a country where a preacher (read imam for this area) can raise an entire army and march it out to its death simply by saying that it is God's will. Okay, I'll admit that the term "army" is a bit strong, talking about any islamic soldier in the middle east, but an army still.
If you are wondering why in 30 years under harsh rule by Saddam, not one imam managed to bring about decent revolt, wonder no more. Or if you have been wondering how, after 30 years of docile leadership those same imams can now bring forth a couple cities worth of suicide bombers and fanatical gunmen, wonder no more. The mechanism is the same. Money.
It is also the same mechanism used to keep people unaware of the great kleptocracy running the nation under the guise of “protector of the holy places” that is the Saud dynasty.
During Saddam’s reign, he kept a majority of the imams from gathering their flock into rebellion by building and maintaining extravagant mosques. The imams knew that they were given by a man who didn’t give a rat’s ass (new meaning to the phrase considering where his ass was found in Dec ’03) about islam or muslim teachings. What he needed, and paid for, was a complacent crowd that would let him do pretty much whatever he wanted. The same thing for the Saud family, that steals billions of dollars from the Saudi Arabian people every single year to pay for an extravagant lifestyle that includes castles in Spain, flight school in US military schools for any prince who wants to fly, shiploads of illicit Jack Daniels smuggled into Saudi Arabia, and trips away from the blistering desert for entire summers. Saddam was just as extravagant in his spending, but he was also more demanding of his imams. He needed them to keep the people from rebelling against a level of state-sponsored cruelty that has no equal. And they were all too willling to comply.
So how is this the same as what is happening now in al Najaf and Fallujah? Saddam, no longer in power, needs the imams to now lead a rebellion against the state (represented by the American forces, but soon by the Governing Council.) Why would imams, who had never once thought of calling Saddam’s secular cruelty un-islamic, now proclaim from the highest minaret and during every Friday sermon the idea that US soldiers are unforgivably cruel and an affront to islam when they simply search through a muslim’s house? That’s an easy one. They are paid to do so. Bought and paid for by the same Baathist thugs who bought and paid for their silence about Saddam's cruelty the last 30 years. Yes, a few spoke out, but they were quickly killed, and those who didn’t want to die took their 30 pieces of silver and proclaimed the dead imams blasphemous. The punk cleric al Sadr has made his calculation of which side he needs to be on to get power, and he has hitched his wagon to the best paying horse.
The old saying goes, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Amen. And if you’ve ever been here during prayer time, and seen the shops close up, the whole city stop to do ablution and prayers, then you know what kind of power these imams have. And the corruption is deep. Even Khomeini chose to live out his years of exile in Paris France, rather than some cave in the hills overlooking Teheran. That was for his own pleasure, not because he wanted to ensure his message was carried to the hinterlands of Gaul. When he returned to his people in Iran as a conquering hero, the first thing he did was consolidate his power and begin a new series of crushing blows to the people of Iran that made the Shah’s abuses pale in comparison. He promised an islamic paradise free of the secular corruption that the Shah had brought to Iran. Instead, the people of Iran are suffering under an islamic hell, completely void of the secular freedoms enjoyed under the Shah.
If the power of islam, which is very strong here, is corrupted by the power of the petro-dollar, which is the basis of governments here, the mix ends up lethal. There are many muslims in Fallujah and an Najaf and other towns who will find out just how lethal it can be, before they find out just how corrupt their imams are. In Iran, that truth is slowly coming about, and there are ever increasing attacks on the absolute power of the ayatollahs. But it has taken many years for the average Iranian to know what the average Iraqi needs to know now, to keep from being led into a brutal fight against his own freedom. No imam, corrupted, will bring islamic paradise to his flock. No imam, uncorrupted, could help but see the removal of Saddam as a blessing and the US troops in Iraq now as the best security against a resurgence of the Baathists.
When the imams of Iraq lead their flock astray, there are only a few options open to the military.
In the end, it is up to the people to understand who is their best shot at getting their lives to move forward, and we are fighting 1400 years of self-imposed uncritical thinking in that area. And at least 100 years of corrupt islamic leadership that has been trained to love the money more than Allah himself.
This is going to be tough.

Gimme a "P", Gimme an "h", Gimme a "D"

Via WSJ's Opinion Journal Best of the Web, I find out about an article written by a graduate student at UMass at Amherst, one Rene Gonzales. I guess I shouldn't be suprised to find out that the University of Massachussettes is turning out leftist morons who deride patriotism and service to their country. That's to be expected in the land of Teddy "yes, John is turning in his grave" Kennedy and Michael "Thanks but no tanks" Dukakis.
What is so suprising is that this guy is a graduate student at UMass, and he doesn't write any better prose than this: "Obviously, the man must be made of "stronger stuff" to have had decided to "serve" his country rather than take from it." The sneer quotes alone tell me that this "graduate student" thinks that he's too "smart" to be "fooled" like all the rest of "us".
He goes on in showing how little he has learned in one of the more respected universities in the country. He writes, "So, it's understandable why Americans automatically knee-jerk into hero worship". Uh, okay. It is, however, less understandable to me why a graduate student (let's hope he is doing graduate work in some field like mathematics, and not anything to do with poly-sci or writing) would automatically "knee-jerk" into one cliche after another.
He goes on into utter stupidity and racist generalizations. "This was not "Ramon or Tyrone," who joined the military out of financial necessity, or to have a chance at education. This was a "G.I. Joe" guy who got what was coming to him".
So I guess Ramon and Tyrone are supposed to represent minorities? Ramon = Hispanic, Tyrone = African-American. Get it? And everyone (on the left) understands that Hispanics and African-Americans never join the Armed Forces out of patriotism or a desire to serve, they only join because they have fewer economic opportunities. What a racist. I hope he doesn't run his mouth like that around too many Ramons and Tyrones in a bar in Fayetteville, NC. He's likely to get is ass kicked. And Rene, the white-trash "Billy-Bobs" in the bar will gladly join in too. The last statement, that Tillman got what was coming to him is not even defensible, and beneath contempt.
Unfortunately for this Rene Gonzales, his sophomoric twaddle is now part of the web, and therefore permanent. He may mature enough over the next few years to realize that the column he wrote for the Daily Collegiate was poorly thought out, poorly written, and hopefully, poorly received. But it will represent him for quite some time (at least he didn't say soldiers are responsible for atrocities like some twenty-year-olds do publicly, then later regret - ed). Google means always having to say you're sorry.
Oh, Rene, may I have the pleasure to point out to you that your right to say any meaningless, and yet patently hurtful, thing you can think of in your under-trained mind, has been defended by all of us in uniform, and yes, even Pat Tillman.
Your Fucking Welcome, you worthless prick.

Oh That Liberal Press

The press continues to use the name Jose Padilla for one Abdullah al Muhajir, the muslim who trained in Afghanistan on explosives, researched the construction of a "uranium-enhanced" explosive device and then met with al Qaeda operations chief Abu Zubaydah to figure out how to best detonate it in America for the most casualties.
He changed his name when he changed his religion, quite common for islamic converts. And quite harmless.
So why do they continue to call him Jose Padilla when his name is Abdullah al Muhajir?

No Sacrifice Too Small

This is the kind of schizoid poll results you get when you ask newly freed but still poor citizenry whether they are better off after a war of liberation. It goes along quite well with the now famous phrase "At least he made the trains run on time."
The average living Iraqi may have seen some decline in their standard of living, especially if we take out the "electrodes to the genitals" and "number of female relatives raped" measures.
The poll also seems to indicate that the average Iraqi finally sees a better future for their country with the rampaging Saddam family gone.
But when there is no history of self-sacrifice for the good of the nation, and in Iraq there is absolutely no one who thinks they should sacrifice for the good of the nation, then you get the two seemingly divergent poll results.
Just thought you'd like to know why, since it's unlikely that the press will give you the correct information.

ChickenHawks vs ChickenShits

There are those on the left (oh, the irony!) who say that someone shouldn't be able to comment on whether a nation should go to war or not, unless that person had served in the Armed Forces of the US. Considering that most leftists have never served (and who, by the way, generally cringe at the idea of personal sacrifice), this is a very peculiar and self-defeating statement for them to make. If they truly believed this, it would make every single "No Blood for Oil" sign they carry more irrelevant than it already is.
We don't live in a country that requires service in the Armed Forces in order to obtain full rights of citizenship. Thank God. This ain't the Starship Troopers, and no one I know wants it to be. Besides, I served eight years under a CINC who once said he "loathed" the military and I survived, so did the rest of the country. He may have loathed us, but eventually Clinton understood what every president does, the military is but one extension of the country's foreign policy effort and service in the military does not endow one with perfect knowledge of anything.
So personally, I couldn't care less whether a politician served or not. I'm far more interested in whether they are proud of America or ashamed of America. Whether they believe that America has a right to act in any manner it sees neccesary for its self-defense, or whether they believe that a country needs to get permission from some EU appeaser and a thieving UN bureaucrat.
Hell, in the end, I think I'm more concerned about this than about which presidential candidate did what 30+ years ago.

You Just Don't Understand

(via Andrew Sullivan, again) Scott Peterson, a CNN jounalist who is embedded with the Marines around Fallujah, is reporting the same thing that seems to confound nearly every single journalist who reports on units in combat.
They are mystified by the fact that servicemen and women have high morale after being in battle. Not an after-the-game high, but a completely selfless desire to be with their comrades in arms, and to help them no matter what the circumstances. He reports that "for example, the one who had the gravest (wound) -- the bullet in and out through his back -- was trying to convince his commander that he'd be back. And his commander actually promised him that his spot was still going to be there. Another soldier who was injured in that huge firefight yesterday who I spoke to earlier this morning, he wanted to get back out there. But the only problem was, was that half his shoulder was missing around his firing arm."
My wife (a doc at Walter Reed Army Med Center) tells me stories of soldiers who are wounded and missing major body parts, who still can't resist the urge to return to their unit to help in any way they can. Some are mere days away from receiving full medical discharges from the Army, and they don't want out. She told me of one soldier who had been in a crash of a Chinook that took the lives of most of the soldiers on board. He considered himself lucky that he only lost some limbs because he knew most of his friends died in the crash. He was despondent only because he could not return to Iraq, to his unit, with his injuries; not about the injuries per se.
This is no suprise to those of us who serve. In an all-volunteer Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force, this is the very first thing that seperates us in the service from all others who have never served. We volunteered to be there when our country needed us, and we trained very hard in order to ensure that we would fulfill our requirements no matter when, or where. For those of us who are in the Armed Forces, volunteers all, there is no surprise in what Scott Peterson writes about Marines in battle. We are no better, nor deserve no more attention for volunteering than does any other American who does his or her best to keep America strong, as every effort to that end is needed and worthwhile. But the fact that underpaid, overworked, twenty-somethings with no family nearby and no more quality of life than a gameboy in a hot tent played between life-and-death patrols in a hostile city are nonetheless happy, continues to astound reporters.
Semper Fi is how the Marines put it, and it can't be said better.
Always Faithful

Always.

Faithful.