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"The energy that the American people bring to
the endeavor of freedom is a glow that will light the life of the world, and there shall be nothing in the world that detains
that light."
| President John F. Kennedy |
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| Inauguration Day, 1961 |
"LET EVERY NATION KNOW...."
The Association believes the United States has a special mission in the world; that it was created by men and
women who took up arms as the first American patriots in the cause of liberty, and that those patriots believed this Nation
under God had a manifest destiny to light the lamp of freedom for all the world to see, and that one day all men and women
would be free. The Association and its membership believe that these are still the overiding primary purposes of any government
on the face of the earth worthy of the name.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."
- From the Declaration of Independence
"If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved
so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius
of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and dignity of the individual have been more available
and assured here than in any other place on earth.
- President Ronald Reagan
Usama bin Laden, in contrast to the above thoughts, spoke these following words in
1993, about the same time he launched, in conjunction with the Somali warlord Hadid, the murder of 18 U.S. Army Rangers
and Delta Force operatives in Mogadishu, Somalia, all of whose bodies were left behind : " America is a snake.
We must cut its head off and stop them. We must kill every American male." If you think your life has not been
changed forever by bin Laden and Islamic fundamentalist terror, then you are mistaken. Stand up for the United States without
complaining about the cost. As Bertha Von Suttner said, "After the verb 'to love,' 'to help' is the most beautiful verb in
the world." We believe that the words of World War II Navy veteran President John F. Kennedy are as relevant today as they were when they were spoken in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 1961: " Let every
nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any
hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of Liberty.... Ask
not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." President Kennedy's words were
re-echoed, we are glad to see, in the words of President George W. Bush in his State of the Union Address on January 29,
2002: "America will lead by defending liberty and justice, because they are right and true and unchanging for
all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them." We close
this section of this page with the opening incident of Operation Anaconda in Khost, Afghanistan in 2002, where Navy Seal Neil
Roberts, from California, fell out of a Chinook helicopter onto the ground while trying to sucessfully retrieve a comrade.
Although seriously wounded by the fall, Petty Officer 1st Class Roberts picked up a rifle and his grenades and began attacking
the barbarian Al Quaida gunmen surrounding him. They killed him. The Anaconda Commander, as opposed to what happened
to our troops in Mogadishu, sent in another helicopter to retrieve Robert's body. Five Marines were murdered by
the Al Quaida in that rescue operation, but many more of the terrorists were killed. And none of our boys, including Petty
Officer Roberts, were left behind. You may think, if you are not a service person or veteran, that leaving a
man behind is a small matter. Trust us, it is not, and never will be.
In 2004, the same thing that happened to our soldiers in Mogadishu happened to four U.S. civilian security
contractors in Falluja, Iraq. This Association never said that President Clinton's policies in Somalia caused the Mogadishu
atrocities, and it is not President Bush's policies which caused the Falluja deaths. President Clinton, after Mogadishu (which
involved a peacekeeping mission after a regime collapsed through no U.S. intervention of our own) pulled out U.S. troops and
cut and ran. After Falluja, President Bush has promised that we will not cut and run in Iraq. We hope he keeps
his word. America's honor does not lie after 9/11 by sticking our heads in the sand, or by cowering under a bed waiting for
the equivalent of bombs to fall again here. America's honor involves taking the war, the war the terrorists started, to them.
Aggressively and purposefully.
MAY GOD BLESS AMERICA.
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As we speak here, also, at the beginning of the 21st Century, the United States is the only country in the
world which has the power to change the world.
That, too, is part of our Manifest Destiny.
It is an obligation we must not renege on.
| President George W. Bush |
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| Greets Operation Enduring Freedom Soldiers |
| And Chinooks |
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| Still Serve in America's Arsenal |
| Both Blackhawks |
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HELICOPTERS IN IRAQ UPDATE:
A U.S. Army Blackhawk was shot down in October, 2003 outside
Tikrit in Iraq. One American soldier was injured and none killed. This was the second military helicopter downed in the Iraqi
War.
Immediately afterward, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz
landed in Tikrit, the home town of Saddam Hussein, and was mobbed and kissed by Iraqis thanking him the U.S. for ousting Saddam.
Almost no major U.S. news media agency carried the story, although almost all carried the story about the Blackhawk.
On 11-2-03, a SAM or RPG brought down a Chinook outside Baghdad, killing
15 Army servicepeople and wounding 21.
Another SAM or RPG brought down a Blackhawk near Tikrit on 11-7-03,
killing all on board.
We can expect those who want to restore an anti-American dictatorship to
Iraq to continue to target our helicopters with the huge stockpile of Soviet SAMs and RPGs still available in that country.
Helicopter crews were one of the highest categories of casualties during
the Vietnam War.
The hearts of all United States Navy Veterans Association members go out
to the families of all the brave men and women who lost life or limb while flying on these ships.
Their sacrifice for country also strengthens our resolve that the United
States should stay the course.
Update: April 12, 2006:
A AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter was
downed near Youssifiyah in Iraq about 12 miles southwest of Baghdad on April 1, 2006 killing the two pilots.
A U.S. statement said troops had recovered "all available remains." A website video from the Iraqi "Mujahedeen
Shura Council," on the other hand, showed a website video of a shot of a US Armed Forces member (belt area only filmed)
being dragged through a street by Iraqi animals.
This Association condemns not only this atrocity,
if in fact it occurred, but also condemns the policy or lack of policy of any United States Government which does not immediately
act in response, with all reasonable force, upon any and all foreigners who commit any act of this atrocious magnitude on
any US Armed Forces member. Where was US Senator John McCain, we ask, who promised us that passage of a law prohibiting US
torture of prisoners would make it more likely that foreigners would not degrade or torture US Armed Forces captives, in speaking
out as to this incident, and in speaking out as to his previous promise as to what foreigners would or would not do?
When Senator McCain proposed that legislation in the first place, this Association said that he was wrong as to
that prediction he explicitly made. We were right, and he was wrong.
Where is the US Government, Bush Administration or
otherwise, in making sure that the one of the primary purposes of US foreign policy is the protection of US lives
and property abroad, especially our miltary personnel?
These are legitimate substantive policy questions,
and this Association is quite clearly asking them.
 "SAVING PRIVATE LYNCH"
You've heard a lot, or read a lot, or seen a lot, about Private Jessica Lynch, America's Iraqi War heroine,
and her capture and rescue by U.S. Forces in Iraq.
A lot of the people telling this story up to now have had axes to grind.
We don't. And we have tried to piece together the story, dramatic as it is, from both Iraqi and DoD sources,
after the others have told their tales, as of May 31, 2003. We have questioned our sources vigorously as to some of the previously
conflicting reports. We have tried to be objective. We have tried to be factual. Some of the detailed facts will never be
totally known. But our conclusions are still that this is a dramatic story, a story of patriotism, of battle, of death and
threatened death, of trial, of courage and of fear, of good and bad among the people of Iraq, and that above all one
major conclusion remains intact: Jessica Lynch is a real American heroine.
Here is her story:
During a horrific dust storm at nightfall on March 23, 2003, as the Transport Branch soldiers of the 507th
Maintenance Company of the Army's 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division drove their 33 tanker trucks north in support of their
Division main force ahead of them, one driver, not being able to clearly see the rear lamps of the truck immediately
ahead, rear ended it, causing the five vehicles behind to stop until they were sure of what happened and what the damage
was. The truckers' single file column was outside of and to the west of Nasiriyah, where fierce fighting was going
on, and the entire Division was in a race, on what amounted to a dirt road, both to get to Baghdad quickly and also
to encircle Nasiriyah from the north.
The rest of the column, minus the five truck detail, continued northward. When the five truck detail,
consisting of one five-tonner and four humvees each pulling a water tank, was ready to go, the detail's commander, a 1st Sergeant, ordered
a wrong eastward turn heading directly into Nasiriyah.
As we said, Jessica grew up in Palestine, a town of 350 in the heart of the hills of West
Virginia, where 20% of the population lives below the poverty line, and had never strayed far from her family or home.
Her father, himself, was a truck driver. She loved children and wanted to become a kindergarten teacher right there in
Palestine. She decided to join the Army because of the educational and financial benefits the military offered,
both of which she knew would speed up her path to her teacher's degree once she got out. When she was in Iraq, later, she
even wrote to the local kindergarten class, asking if they would let her be their pen pal while she was in the Service. The
children said yes.
After boot camp, where she never cried once, according to reports, unlike many men who do, and some
advanced training, including small arms training that all soldiers of every Army branch receive, Jessica Lynch,
5'3" and 130 pounds, was assigned to the Transport Branch and the 507th, which was headquartered at Ft. Bliss, Texas, and
shipped out for Iraq. She made friends quickly, and one of her closest was Lori Ann Piestewa, 23, from the Hopi nation in
Tuba City, Arizona.
As Jessica's portion of the column proceeded unknowingly eastward, away from the main column, Jessica was
riding as a passenger in one of the humvees, which was being driven by Lori. As dawn broke on the outskirts of Nasiriyah,
the detail ran smack dab into an ambush of a mixed unit of the Iraqi Republican Guard and Saddam's fedayeen, murderously
firing AK-47s and RPGs from the tops of buildings , and from behind berms and other man-made obstacles. The decision was made
by the 1st Sergeant to go ahead, to speed up, to try to crash through. Sand was sticking in the tire wells, and Jessica's
truck hit another vehicle and overturned, in the process breaking Jessica's right arm, both legs, dislocating
her right ankle and sustaining a nasty gash in the forehead. It is certain, from the nature and extent of these injuries,
that she passed out, for at least three hours, she says, although she often drifted into unconsiousness subsequently in her
ordeal. The Iraqis, however, did not pass out. They advanced on the now besieged and probably confused truckers,
who began bravely picking up and firing their M-16s, even though they were repeatedly jamming, back at their assailants, shooting
in many cases until they ran out of ammunition. One soldier, Sgt. Donald Walters, a 33-year old, killed 9 Iraqis and
took out a mortar, before being killed by the Iraqis. Eleven members of Jessica's unit, including Lori Piestewa,
 Lori tending to her troops' equipment
the first woman in the U.S. Armed Forces to die in the Iraqi Conflict, were killed,
and reports persist that as the Republican Guard closed in on the now defenseless Americans, they began stabbing and shooting our
wounded. The bodies of our dead soldiers were displayed in the street and on television a day later by the Iraqis and,
to many knowledeable viewers, it looked as if some had been shot in the head at close range.
Five unwouded soldiers from the 507th were captured by the Iraqis and, for some reason, were secreted away
into captivity to a location north of Baghdad where, after the fall of the city, and because of a tip (just like in Jessica's
case, as you will later read), they were rescued by U.S. Marines exactly three weeks to the day after their capture. They
were back home for Easter on April 20.
Jessica also was captured. At a minimum, the Iraqi animals stripped off her uniform and she
was hauled off to the isolated and makeshift Nasiriyah City Hospital prisoners' ward. She drifted in and out
of consciousness for at least two days, getting little sleep at all.
Being totally isolated, and in severe physical pain from her wounds, she was worried about where she
was, and what happened to her fellow soldiers. From all the pontificating from Iraqis at the hospital to date, we haven't
heard a single one say they answered, or even tried to answer, these questions. A number of them did, however, donate their
own blood for her, while one nurse told her point blank, "One word from Saddam, and you will be killed."
Credible sources relate that while she was unconscious, she was beaten, slapped and spat upon repeatedly
by an Iraqi fedayeen intelligence colonel, in arrogant and mean-spirited defiance of the Geneva Conventions, in order to humiliate
her. This officer, and others like him, apparently wanted her moved to a quieter place away from scrutiny, so that they could
kill her. One Iraqi doctor, fearing for Jessica's life, refused to sign the papers. Nevertheless, she was loaded into an ambulance
and driven off into the desert , accompanied by the ambulance driver and an Iraqi army officer. At an out of the way
Iraqi checkpoint, the officer was handed a checkpoint gun, and told to shoot Lynch. He refused, saying it was against
his beliefs to kill an unarmed woman, and the two of them returned her to the Nasiriyah Hospital.
It is obvious, even from all the conflicting stories, that a number of different Iraqi war criminals were
involved in dealing with Jessica, and each one, coward as he was, and knowing that we would prevail eventually, and that he
might get caught, when push came to shove, wanted someone else to kill her.
An Iraqi lawyer, whose wife worked as a nurse on Jessica's ward, saw her mistreatment, and steeled himself
to reach American lines outside the city to tell them exactly where Jessica was.
At the stroke of midnight on April 2, 2003, a combined 11 man team of U.S. Navy SEALS and
Army Rangers began a helicopter assault, in Blackhawks, on the hospital. Support elements of the team came under withering
Iraqi fire from the hospital compound, even though the fedayeen and the Iraqi army, probably knowing the Americans were coming,
had already fled the hospital proper about 5 hours before the raid occurred. While Jessica was there, the Iraqi army
had used the basement of the hospital itself as a military headquarters.
As the lead element of rescuers kicked in Jessica's door, the point man yelled:
"We're American soldiers, and we're here
to take you home."
Brave Jessica,
now left alone by her nurses and guards, in the total darkness, shouted back:
"I'm an American Soldier too."
One of her rescuers ripped off the U.S. Flag armpacth from his
uniform and handed it to Jessica.
She clenched it, and his hand, and would not let go.
Private First Class Jessica Lynch,
United States Army Transport Branch,
American Soldier,
was 19 years old.
She lost 30 pounds during her captivity.
She keeps a picture of Lori Piestewa on her wall in Palestine
to this day.
Right before being deployed to Iraq, she had re-upped
for four more years.
The rescue of Jessica Lynch was the first successful
re-capture of a U.S. soldier behind enemy lines since World War II.
[Ed.Note: "Saving Pvt. Lynch" originally ran on this webpage in May, 2003, and
was updated on Veterans' Day of that same year, based on Jessica's own words.
When Jessica was a five-year old in Palestine, and said the Pledge of Allegiance
at school, she says she thought the word was "invisible."
It's Indivisible. Jessica knows that, and she laughs when she tells that American
story.
...And so do we all.
HQDA correctly ruled in August 2003 that no disciplinary action would
be taken against any member of the 507th for the wrong turn, citing the stressful pace of American operations at the time.
On August 27, 2003, Jessica was medically discharged from the Army and, as of that
date, was engaged to be married to an Army Tech Sergeant from California, Ruben Contreras. We wish her the best.]
LORI'S STORY
The Hopi Nation has bravely and patriotically
provided soldiers, their best and finest, for the U.S. Armed Forces, going back to the time when the white man first conquered
this continent, our America.
The Hopi are not just a tribe and
a nation. They believe in a traditional form of Native American religion. Lori believed in it, even though she was also Roman
Catholic.
Part of Hopi beliefs teach that when
an honored person who has led a good life, dies, and is taken into the Creator's embrace, his or her spirit will be permitted
to return to the earth in the form of rain, water, or snow, precipitation so valued on the arid land of the Hopi.
In the early morning hours, on the
day after Lori was killed in Iraq, on the Hopi reservation, in the village of Lower Moenkopi in Arizona, where she
lived, and still lives, where there had been no precipitation for over a month,
Gentle Snowflakes began to fall.
...
Welcome Home, Lori Ann
Private First Class Lori Ann Piestewa,
U.S. Army Transport Branch,
Bravery Incarnate,
Of the Hopi Nation,
American Soldier,
Is an American Heroine, just like
Jessica.
Let us not forget that. Or her.
Lori Ann Piestewa, age 23, was buried on the Hopi
Reservation on April 12, 2003. She left behind a 4-year old son and a 3-year old daughter.
The point of Lori's story, Patriot, is not that she lived
happily ever after.
...But that she lived.
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