LEATHERNECKM31

In honored glory....

For the fifth time in the Long War the Medal of Honor will be awarded to an American hero who died saving the lives of his comrades.

The White House announced today that the family of 19-year-old Army Pfc. Ross McGinnis of Knox, Pa., will accdept the Medal of Honor in ceremonies June 2.

McGinnis, was standing in the gunner's hatch of a Humvee when an enemy grenade was tossed in the vehicle's crew compartment. He shouted a warning and instead of leaping to safety, he dove inside and smothered the grenade, killing him instantly.

His family has suggested via Blackfive.net that anyone who wishes to make a memorial donation to send something useful to a service member overseas, a veteran or local service member and present it as a gift from PFC Ross McGinnis.

Gifts to his unit may be sent to:

SFC Cedric Thomas
1st Platoon, C/1-26 IN
Task Force Blue Spader
APO AE 09390-1537

McGinnis is the second U.S. soldier since Somalia to be awarded the nation's highest award for valor; he joins 1stSgt Paul R. Smith, right, who was credited for stopping an enemy attack with his machine gun until his was fatally wounded.

The three other posthumous Recipients are Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, and SEALS Lt. Michael Murphy and fellow SEAL, Master at Arms Second Class Michael A. Monsoor.

Both Monsoor, right, and Dunham, above, sacrificed their lives in the same manner as Pfc. McGinnis, placing the lives of others beyond their own, in the greatest traditions of the military service.

 

Murphy, a SEAL team leader, (right) was killed after exposing himself to enemy fire while calling in air support to keep scores of Taliban fighters at bay.

Murphy and two others team members died in the desolate Afghanistan redoubt and are survived by Marcus Luttrell (below) who was able to escape after being blown off a ridge toward the end of the pitched battle.

Here's a good way to start the Memorial Day Weekend.

Luttrell ("Lone Survivor") was in the Big Apple to address the NRA convention the other day, but he almost missed the speech. 

Arriving late the night before, he checked into the swank hotel in his jeans an untucked shirt and went down to the snooty bar for a beer; he would later admit it was a place he shouldn't have been.

Plunked down at the bar in a T-shirt emblazoned with the Texas flag, the 6'5" 240-pound retired Navy SEAL and Navy Cross Recipient was approached by a "foreigner" who started running down Texas and America...

Thanks to Uncle Jimbo over at Blackfive.net for the video of Marcus Luttrell conducts cultural awareness training.

Especially Vietnam and Iraq War vets will appreciate this:

Canada is set to deport coward Corey Glass, 25, who deserted his national Guard unit and feld north says he did so in 2006 because he did not want to fight in a war he did not support.

Glass, who's still on active duty and is considered absent without leave, (when I was in this have been desertion--ed.) applied for refugee status at the Canadian border in August 2006 on the grounds of objection to military service.

But Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board denied his application for refugee status Wednesday, prompting the Canadian Border Services Agency to issue a June 12 deportation order.

Seems even the Canadians won't tolerate cowards deserting their units.

C'mon back Little Corey... did I mention that Luttrell has a twin brother.... also a SEAL?

Have a good weekend; remember these fine men who helped make it possible.

 

 

 

 

 

Color-coding history

Okay. This is right in my wheelhouse.

Spike Lee, the director who seems to make only cache "black films" which do little business but are loved by guilt-ridden white critics, can't generate headlines with his work so the other day he called Clint Eastwood a "racist."

Lee couldn't carry Clint's .44 magnum... it weighs more than he does.

Lee attacked Clint because his two films--"Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" didn't give a co-starring role to the black Marines who served in non-combat units on the "sulphur island".

"He did two films about Iwo Jima back to back and there was not one black soldier in both of those films," Lee said Tuesday at the Cannes Film Festival.

"Soldier"? I thought we were talking about Marines.

(And of course, he's wrong anyway, one of the Lee trademarks: One of Eastwood's co-producers, Robert Lorenz  had to explain to Lee that 12 black extras were used in the landing scenes. "They are there in this film ... but the focus of this film is the story of the flag raisers. This film is very much about racism and the treatment of Ira Hayes, the Native American flag raiser.")

Yeah, Hayes had it tough as a Pima Indian in the Corps at that time, but it didn't dominate what I thought was a very flawed movie anyway.

Some historical facts:

There were some 700 black Marines on Iwo in non-combat roles---if there was such a designation on the hellish island. There primary tasks included running ammunition to the front lines, burying the dead, and unloading the amphibian crafts at the waters edge. My guess is that there were thousands of Puerto Rican, and even Brooklyn and New Jersey Marines who performed the same and similar tasks.

Guess what, Spike...? Eastwood didn't feature them in either movie.

Guess what #2.... in neither of Eastwood's Iwo movies (one from the perspective of the six Marines who raised the flag on Suribachi and the other from the perspective of THE JAPANESE) did not feature any black Marines.

Why...? Because they were not assigned to combat units; to portray them as such would have stood history on its head. I have no doubt, however, that in some future movie about Iwo, a black, a Hispanic and a woman will take the places of three of the flag raisers on Suribachi... "... calling Mr. Stone, Mr. Oliver Stone."

You want a documentary on Iwo featuring black Marines in all disproportion to their actual role, Spike...? call Ken Burns. (BTW: And just look how unfairly even the libs' favorite documentarian was treated on his last outing. See here.)

By the way, where's the Spike Lee movie about black Marines or any Marines for that matter, on Iwo?

Wait for it....

Someone with half a brain might just suspect that Lee is such an insignificant little dipwad that he slandered Eastwood solely for the purpose of grabbing ink for his new movie, "Miracle at St. Anna", about four members of the 92nd "Buffalo Soldier" Infantry Division in Italy during WWII.

Lastly, you know who was left out of "Flags and "Letters"?

The 27 Marine Corps and Navy Medal of Honor Recipients, that's who; if anyone has a bitch coming about Eastwood's Iwo movie it's Marines Herschel "Woody" Williams and Jack Lucas, and Navy Corpsman George Wahlen--our three surviving Iwo Recipients. There was not even a passing reference to any Recipient; in fact, "Flags" was almost devoid of any American heroism.

The single most decorated battle in history, one-quarter of all Medals of Honor earned by Marines in the entire war, the bloodiest, most costly fight in Marine Corps history... and no heroes?

So come to think of it, if anybody has a bitch about Eastwood's movie, it's Iwo vets, black and white, the Marine Corps and all Marines.

No, you din't

The Amazon said several weeks ago that she was "proud of the U.S. for the first time in my adult life” because her husband was running for president.

Obama praised his wife’s patriotism then and said that for Republicans “to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class …."

Now The Messiah has issued another warning to those who would dare question his wife's campaign comments... “But I do want to say this to the GOP. If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable.”

As always, Rush Limbaugh nails it:

RUSH: With Obama we started out, we couldn't talk about his big ears 'cause that made him nervous. We've gone from that to this: Not only can we not mention his ears...
We can't talk about his mother.
We can't talk about his father.

We can't talk about his grandmother unless he does... brings her up as a "typical white person."

We can't talk about his wife, can't talk about his preacher, can't talk about his terrorist friends, can't talk about his voting record, can't talk about his religion.
We can't talk about appeasement.
We can't talk about color; we can't talk about lack of color.
We can't talk about race. We can't talk about bombers and mobsters who are his friends. We can't talk about schooling. We can't talk about his name, "Hussein."

We can't talk about his lack of experience. Can't talk about his income. Can't talk about his flag pin;  can't call him a liberal.

When it started out we just couldn't talk about his ears.
Now we can't say anything about him.

The Fourth Estate, endowed by our Constitution with near complete protection under our freedom of speech is supposed to serve as government watchdog... almost to the extent of being part of our unique "checks and balances" system provided for by The Framers. 

To Jefferson, the central issue of the American experiment was whether:

"man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions....

Today Jefferson would condemn the left media's 60-year collusion with the democrat party for what it is... an adgenda to consitantly favor one political party over another and blanant attempts to throw elections to their fellow liberals and leftists.

I must admit, I never believed I'd see the day when the leftist news media was more in the tank for a politician more than they were for the Clintons. I stand corrected.

Since the 1960s all the major federal elections won by Republicans should be set apart with an asterisk (*) to indicate that in order for the GOP candidates to have defeated their opponents, they had to also beat the newspapers and television networks, colleges and universities, Hollywood, unions, trail lawyers, the ACLU, George Soros, not to mention, a sizable herd of RINOs.