By LAUREN FRAYER

BAGHDAD - Baghdad shook with bombings and political upheaval Wednesday as the largest Sunni Arab bloc quit the government and a suicide attacker blew up his fuel tanker in one of several attacks that claimed 142 lives nationwide.

The Iraqi Accordance Front’s withdrawal from the Cabinet leaves only two Sunnis in the 40-member body, undermining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s efforts to pull together rival factions and pass reconciliation laws the U.S. considers benchmarks that could lead to sectarian reconciliation.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of four more American soldiers, including three killed in Baghdad on Tuesday by a powerful armor-piercing bomb. Washington says these types of bombs are sent from Iran. The fourth soldier was killed by small arms fire on the same day. A British soldier also was killed Tuesday in a roadside bombing.

The American military announced it found a mass grave in Diyala province northeast of the capital. The grave contained 17 bodies of mostly Sunni Muslims - including women, children and elderly people - killed by al-Qaida in Iraq, the military said in a statement. U.S. forces did not say how they knew the attackers were al-Qaida in Iraq.

read more HERE

As a U.S. Olympics gold medalist in speed’skating, Joey Cheek is not used to standing still. However, he waited patiently at the entrance of the Chinese Embassy for more than a half-hour to deliver petitions with 42,000 signatures, urging China to use its influence on Sudan to stop the genocide of the people of Darfur.

Finally, Chinese officials let him in to hand over the petitions, organized by the Washington-based Save Darfur Coalition. Cheek has long been active in raising money for Darfur refugees. He donated his $25,000 in award money from his 2006 Gold Medal to the Darfur cause.

The campaign to pressure China, the largest foreign investor in Sudan, did not stop with the petitions and a vigil outside the embassy last week.

“We absolutely are moving forward,” coalition spokesman Allyn Brooks-LaSure said yesterday. “We have no intention of yielding in actions to get China to take more forceful actions.”

More at the Washington Times

Give a visit to the Save Darfur site.

R.I.P. Soldiers!

The Department of Defense announced today the death of four soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died July 23 in Sarobi District, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, Vicenza, Italy.

Killed were:

1st Sgt. Michael S. Curry Jr., 37, of Dania Beach, Fla.

Sgt. Travon T. Johnson, 29, of Palmdale, Calif.

Pfc. Adam J. Davis, 19, of Twin Falls, Idaho.

Pfc. Jessy S. Rogers, 20, of Copper Center, Alaska.

An Army paratrooper who grew up in Hollywood and Dania Beach was one of four soldiers killed recently in Afghanistan when a roadside bomb exploded, the paratrooper’s family said.

Sgt. 1st Class Michael S. Curry, 37, had spent the last 20 years of his life in the Army, and for most of that time he had been assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade at Caserma Ederle, in Vicenza, Italy. It’s also where he met his wife and had two sons, one of whom turned 12 today. The other is 9.

“He was a wonderful husband, father and son,” said Curry’s sister, Niki Martin, 35. “He was so wonderful, like something that is too good to be true.”

But it was true, relatives said Tuesday, as they mourned and discussed plans for a local memorial service. Curry will be buried in Italy next week, relatives said.

The U.S. Department of Defense would not confirm Tuesday that Curry was killed in the explosion, which happened Monday. A spokesman said it’s the department’s policy to wait 24 hours after a serviceman’s relatives have been notified of the death before releasing his identity.

Curry’s relatives in Dania Beach said they learned of the tragedy early Tuesday, in a transatlantic phone call from Curry’s wife.

It was the second time Curry had been ordered to the Middle East region. He left for Afghanistan in March.

His loved ones were proud but they were also worried.

More at the Sun Sentinel

H/T G for this post. R.I.P. Army Spc. Christopher Kube.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE LOYALTY, Iraq (AP) — Army Spc. Christopher D. Kube was memorialized Thursday in a packed theater at this outpost in east Baghdad. Another fallen soldier. Another reminder, far from the public spotlight, of the grief that hits not only families of this war’s casualties but also their comrades in arms.

He was 18.

He was a newlywed.

He was killed on July 14, eight months after he arrived in Iraq on a deployment that made him nervous from the start, as one fellow soldier remembered. Back at his home station, Fort Carson, Colorado, he drew attention for being so young, so short, so slight and so cheerful.

“When I saw him I asked, `How old are you, 10?”‘ recalled his platoon sergeant, Staff Sgt. Eugenie Byron-Griffin. “`What are you doing here? You’re a baby.’ He looked me straight in my eye, with his chest poked out like he does, and he said, `I’m 17, and I ain’t no baby. I’m a man.”‘

Tears flowing, she added: “Everyone in the unit used to mess with him because he was so small. And almost always he would fight hard to prove his manhood. Like when he purchased his first vehicle and bragged about how little he paid for it.”

He was determined, Byron-Griffin said: “Even when he was afraid, he would face his fear straight-up. And that was what he did when he enlisted in the Army. He said he was afraid he would deploy to Iraq. But he wanted to make a better life for himself and his family.”

Born on September 7, 1988, in Sterling Heights, Michigan, Kube enlisted on October 25, 2005, just making the minimum legal age of 17 for joining the military.

More at CNN

from The ASSOCIATED PRESS

PEORIA, Ill. (AP) — Retired Gen. Wayne Downing, one of President Bush’s key counterterrorism advisers after the Sept. 11 attacks, has died. He was 67.

The four’star general died early Wednesday at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, where he grew up.

Peoria County Coroner Johnna Inbagersoll said Downing was admitted to the hospital Monday, suffering from bacterial meningitis and multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.

The West Point graduate retired in 1996 after 34 years in the military, ending his career as head of all U.S. special operations forces. In that position, he commanded more than 47,000 soldiers, including the Army’s Green Berets and Navy’s SEALs.

Shortly after retiring, Downing led a 40-person presidential task force that investigated a 1996 attack that killed 19 Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, making recommendations on how to better protect Americans abroad.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, Downing commanded a joint task force of 1,200 U.S. special forces that halted Iraq’s SCUD missile attacks on Israel and eased overall missile threats in the war zone.

Downing, a military analyst for MSNBC, received the U.S. Military Academy’s distinguished graduate award in 2006.

“His reputation was that of a smart, decisive, forceful and caring leader, known in particular for his unwavering determination to accomplish any mission assigned and provide his soldiers the best possible support,” the academy wrote in bestowing the honor.

Downing had served as distinguished chair of the military’s academy’s Combatting Terrorism Center since 2003, and conducted leadership seminars as a visiting faculty member at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

R.I.P. Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz

Capt. Maria Ines Ortiz had a smile that lighted up the hallways in every hospital where she worked, from Aberdeen to Walter Reed to Iraq.

When a patient needed extra care, the Army nurse would stay late. If a colleague was feeling blue, she was there.

Ortiz, 40, was killed last week by a mortar attack in the Green Zone in Baghdad. The Edgewood, Md., resident is the first Army nurse killed in combat since the Vietnam War, Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, the Army’s acting surgeon general, said in an interview yesterday.

“Having one of the family go down is very, very hard,” said Pollock, who also is a nurse. “You feel like a piece of your heart is gone.”

Ortiz was returning from physical training July 10 when she was caught outside by a barrage of mortar shells. She was killed by shrapnel.

“If there was such a thing as the jewel of the clinic, she was the jewel,” said Renee Smith, who worked with Ortiz at an Army health clinic at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. “Her work wasn’t finished until everybody was cared for.”

Ortiz’s death has hit hard at Aberdeen, where she served as chief nurse at the Kirk U.S. Army Health Clinic for 18 months before going to Iraq last fall. Many broke down in tears when the clinic commander called everyone together and told the news.

“It really took everybody by surprise,” Smith said. “God, it’s a great loss.”

Patients who knew Ortiz have “run in here in disbelief,” said Maj. Kathy Presper, chief of medical management at Kirk. “She was dedicated, a step-up-to-the-plate type person.”

Read more »

By JAN HOFFMAN
from The New York Times

At 1 p.m. on a weekday, the emergency department at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in Upper Manhattan is in full cry, with bays crowded, patients on stretchers lining the hallways, and paramedics bringing in more sick people. Time for the Rev. Margaret A. Muncie to work the floor.

Not shy, this pastor with the clerical collar, the Ann Taylor blazer and the cheerful insistence of one whose own mother called her a steamroller. Among the first women ordained an Episcopal priest and a self-described “Caucasian minority,” she’s an odd bird among the ethnically diverse staff and especially the patients, most of them black or Latino. But she keeps pecking her head behind curtains, parting gatherings of worried family members, impervious to startled looks of suspicion.

“Hi, I-m Peggy Muncie, a hospital chaplain,” she says. “Would you like a visit?”

She’s not there to thump. Deftly, she asks people how they-re feeling, then lets them vent their pain and fear, their anxiety and frustration. She nods, a little pushy with her probing. She flags a nurse. “Can you direct a doctor toward that patient?” she whispers.

And always, at the end of a visit: “Would it be all right if I prayed with you?” The health care chaplain will touch a forehead, hold a hand and quietly pray worries to the Divine, speaking with inflections that, as needed, may be Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim. For the Baptist woman in Bed 7 whose anxieties are making her chest pain worse, the chaplain prays for calm to allow the medicine to work. Gradually, the patient’s breathing slows.

read more at The New York Times

Rest in Peace Major Jimmy Ahearn.

From ABC11TV:

Fort Bragg Army Major Jim Ahearn known as Jimmy by many died in a roadside bombing last Thursday.

Monday his wife, who was born in Iraq, spoke to Eyewitness News about her husband’s life with his family - and his death.

Lena Ahearn remembers the day her husband, Major James Ahearn left for his third tour of duty in Iraq. He wrote a note to his family on their refrigerator bulletin board. “No matter how far we are apart, our hearts will always be together. I love you guys so much,” the soldier wrote on the note.

Jimmy died in Iraq along with another Fort Bragg soldier. Lena is Iraqi and she met Jimmy in the Green Zone where she worked in Baghdad. They fell in love instantly. “He tried to do anything… anything you want just to make you happy,” Lena told Eyewitness News reporter Gilbert Baez. “Like… whenever I cry… he cried. Whenever I’m happy… he’s happy. This is the man I always dreamed of but he got to go so fast,” Lena said.

Lena says she’s the first Iraqi woman to fall in love with and marry an American soldier after the war in Iraq began in 2003. Her family received death threats after the marriage. The repercussions forced her mother and sister to flee Iraq.

Read more »

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - With a son-in-law in Iraq and a son who served in Afghanistan, Kathy Johnston says she wants to make sure her five grandchildren know that it’s important to support U.S. troops, no matter how they feel about the war.

That’s why she, her daughter and daughter-in-law took them Saturday afternoon to the Oklahoma version of Operation America Rising, an event touted as a non-partisan way to express appreciation for the job that U.S. soldiers are doing.

“Her husband wants to be here (at home),” Johnston said, motioning toward her daughter-in-law, Melissa Morning of Fort Bragg, N.C. “But he knows what he is doing is right.

“There is a lot of good going on over there, and we hear about it firsthand, even if the media doesn’t report it,” she added.

Similar rallies - some numbering in the hundreds, others with a handful in attendance - took place in cities and towns across the United States, including Ford City, Pa.; Baton Rouge; Bristol, Conn.; and Denver.

The Oklahoma event, held at State Capitol Park, included three speakers and six bands. All the participants offered their services for free, said Ren Schuffman, the lead singer for Oklahoma City band StoneWater and one of the event’s organizers.

“It’s not anti-war. It’s not pro-war,” Schuffman said. “It has nothing to do with war.”

In Bristol, several hundred people milled under tents, ate picnic food and listened to bands on a school lawn.

“We’re here to support the troops; that’s the bottom line,” said Kevin Martin, Connecticut’s Operation America Rising coordinator.

At least 100 people gathered in Baton Rouge next to the plaza where the battleship museum USS Kidd is docked. Organizer Janet Broussard described it as “speeches, music; just a good-time kind of get-together visit with our veterans.”

The names of the 182 Pennsylvania service members who died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan were read aloud to a silent crowd in Ford City. The Veterans of Foreign Wars honor guard then fired a 21-gun salute.

Speakers told the crowd that they can support the troops in tangible ways. Navy Warrant Officer Willie Grier, who served in Iraq, said troops look forward to getting packages containing everything from baby wipes and candy to paper and pens.

read more at USA TODAY

This week’s hero, Army Captain Darrell C. Lewis, died in Afghanistan. R.I.P.

By Clarence Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer

Darrell C. Lewis had long astounded his family. He navigated one of Southeast Washington’s toughest neighborhoods before earning a scholarship to a private high school and another for college.

After graduating from Wittenberg University, he joined the Army as an officer, rising to captain. From the start, his mother knew he had made the right choice.

“You can’t express it in words; it was in his face,” Hannah Lewis said last night. “Being in the military was the happiest I’ve ever seen my child.”

Lewis, 31, was killed Saturday in Vashir City, Afghanistan, when his unit was attacked by insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms, the Department of Defense said yesterday. He had been in Afghanistan since February.

Lewis was raised in the Linda Pollin housing complex in Southeast, in an area known for drugs and violence. But his family described a natural leader who used an inquisitive mind to chase his dreams.

Continue reading at the Washington Post

A British hero. R.I.P. Corporal John Rigby. My deepest sympathies to your family and especially to your twin brother.

They were twins and, by coincidence, corporals in the same battalion. On Friday they should have been celebrating their 24th birthday. But it was not to be; Will Rigby sat at the bedside of his brother, John, in an Iraq field hospital and watched him die.

Corporal John Rigby had been fatally wounded by a roadside bomb near Basra Palace in southern Iraq that morning, and was named by the Ministry of Defence yesterday as the 153rd British serviceman whose life had been claimed by the conflict.

Will, described by friends as his brother’s lifetime companion and soulmate, will accompany the body back to the family home in Rye, East Sussex, where their parents, sisters and John’s girlfriend, to whom he was expected to propose, are grieving at their loss.

Corporal Rigby was on patrol with the eight men of his section, providing top cover from the hatch of his armoured vehicle, when the bomb exploded. He was the third member of the 4th Battalion The Rifles to die in Iraq in little more than a month.

Two weeks before his death he had learnt that he was to be promoted to sergeant, having achieved the highest score on the promotion board for any corporal in the regiment.

Encouraged by friends, he had been expected to propose to Jessica Varney, his girlfriend, on her 21st birthday next May.

Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Sanders, Corporal Rigby’s commanding officer, said that he and the battalion were “utterly heartbroken” at the death of an outstanding young soldier.

Continue reading at Timesonline.com

By BRUCE SMITH, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. - Nine caskets lined the front of a coliseum Friday as thousands of firefighters from across the nation, their hats in their hands, honored nine colleagues killed in a furniture store blaze.

Uniformed escorts walked the men’s wives, siblings and children to their seats in a long procession of red carnations, tears and hugs.

The fire Monday night created the single largest loss of firefighters’ lives since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Beside the caskets, the faces of its victims looked out proudly from large photos: Capt. William “Billy” Hutchinson, 48; Capt. Mike Benke, 49; Capt. Louis Mulkey, 34; Mark Kelsey, 40; Bradford “Brad” Baity, 37; Michael French, 27; James “Earl” Drayton, 56; Brandon Thompson, 27; and Melvin Champaign, 46.

Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. said the men were heroes.

“It was their calling, it was their training, it was their duty and, unflinchingly, without hesitation, with extreme courage, they did it,” he said. “They are public servants of the highest order. They want to serve. They want to help. They want to save. And They want to protect.”

Gov. Mark Sanford said questions may always linger about a higher purpose behind the deaths, but that the men proved their courage Monday night.

“Who we are crucially depends on what we’re willing to stand up for in life. In short, are we willing to walk the walk?” he said. “They walked their walk right into the company of angels and to heaven’s gate.”

Before the service, a procession of about 100 fire trucks wound through streets lined with mourners in the firefighters’ honor, passing the charred warehouse and several of the city’s firehouses.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

Cruising the blogs today, and found the Politcal Realm through Liberally Mirth’s blog. From there, I came across this comment from Larry. I thought it worth a post.

Larry said…

War is hell, especially for those with whom our goverment leaves behind.

Source: here

R.I.P. Private 1st Class Cameron Payne

By LAURA RICO
The Press-Enterprise

When Cameron Payne enlisted in the Army, it was not necessarily to fulfill a lifelong dream but out of a sense of duty toward his growing family.

“He did not join the Army to be G.I. Joe, he did not join the Army to be anyone’s hero,” said his mother, Denise Jackson. “The reason he joined the Army was to support his family.”

Payne, a private first class, was killed Monday in Iraq when a vehicle he was traveling in struck an improvised explosive device during combat operations in Baghdad, the Defense Department said Wednesday.

Payne, 22, was the proud father of an 18-month-old daughter and a 4-week-old girl. Just last month, Payne witnessed the birth of his daughter Kylee in Corona while home on leave.

His wife, Julie, 22, recalled her husband as a family man. She said their elder daughter, Annaleese, bears a striking resemblance to her father.

“They look like twins,” she said. “She’s got his personality, his humor.”

Payne met his future wife, who described him as “the funniest guy anyone could meet,” while the two were students at Buena Vista High School.

“He was actually my secret admirer in high school,” she said. The couple married in October 2005 after a courtship that included trips to amusement parks and surprise flower deliveries.

Jackson, Payne’s mother, said that “falling in love” made her son more responsible and goal-oriented.

One of his first goals was to join the Army to support his family. The transformation became apparent after basic training, his mother said.

“After he went through his course he was a totally different person,” she said. “He had goals and he knew what he wanted.”

Read more »

R.I.P. Army spc. Jeremiah Costello.

From the Chicago Tribune:

A soldier from central Illinois was killed Saturday in Iraq, according to the Department of Defense.

Army Spc. Jeremiah D. Costello, 22, of Carlinville is the first soldier with ties to Illinois to die in June.

He died after an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle, according to a Defense Department statement.

Costello was assigned to the 5th Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, which was based out of Ft. Bliss, Texas.

Costello, who had one child, was deployed to the Middle East in the fall, according to Ft. Bliss officials.

He was a motor transport operator who enlisted July 2005. Prior to Ft. Bliss, he was stationed at Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo.

Costello’s awards and decorations include the Combat Action Badge and the Driver and Mechanic Badge, Army officials said. He was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart.