And to add insult to
injury, Verizon put this in the “spam” folder – for what
reason I do not know – then again it was from you, Bob.
Being from the VN era,
I am use to the gutlessness, creative innuendos, and often downright lying of
the media, all for the great buck and to sway public opinion. We have too
many in our nation, especially our government and corporate “leaders,”
who are duplicitous, self serving, and greedy, and excel at using people.
It appears to me that the “great experiment” is dying due to the apathy
of the rest of us. Something needs to change, and change soon. But
what? How?
In the mean time we
can only be thankful for guys like Chontosh who represent the only real hope we
have left for our country. People with the guts to do what is good for
others.
Semper Fi
Rip
PS Someone once said
that “the definition of a Statesman is a dead politician, and that we
need more Statesmen.” The more I watch our “representatives”
at work, the more I am inclined to agree.
From: Bob McSweeny
[mailto:goblue55@comcast.net]
Sent: Friday, February 26, 2010
2:49 PM
To: Rip; Neal Puckett; Jim Sisson;
Jim Herbold; DALE POTTS; Chuck Scofield; Brian Welch; bob Duncan
Subject: The pride of Semper
Fidelis
Those of you who
might not know, the man on the left is the Commandant of the Marine
Corps, and he is proud to know the man on the right.
Maybe you'd like to
hear about a real American, somebody who honored the uniform he wears
Churchville-Chili Central School Class of 1991.
Proud graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Husband and about-to-be father. First lieutenant (now Captain)
in the United States
Marine Corps.
And a genuine hero, the
secretary of the Navy said so yesterday.
At 29 Palms in California Brian Chontosh was presented with the
Navy Cross, the second highest award for combat bravery the United States
can bestow.
That's a big deal. But you won't see it on the network news tonight
And all you'll read in
Brian's hometown newspaper is two paragraphs of nothing.
The odd fact about the
American media in this war is that it's not covering the American military.
The most plugged-in nation in the world is receiving virtually no true
information about what its warriors are doing.
Oh, sure, there's a body count. We know how many Americans have fallen.
And we see those same casket pictures day in and day out.
And we're almost on a first-name basis with the jerks who abused
the Iraqi prisoners. And we know all about improvised explosive devices and how
we lost Fallujah and what Arab public-opinion polls say about us and how the
world hates us.
We get a non-stop feed of gloom and doom but we don't hear about the
heroes.
The incredibly brave GIs who
honorably do their duty. The ones our grandparents would have carried on
their shoulders down Fifth
Avenue .
The ones we completely ignore, like Brian Chontosh.
It was a year ago on the
march into Baghdad
. Brian Chontosh was a platoon leader rolling up Highway 1 in a humvee.
When all hell broke loose.
The young Marines were being
cut to ribbons. Mortars, machine guns, rocket propelled grenades.
And the kid out of Churchville was in charge. It was do or die and it was up
to him.
So he moved to the side of his column, looking for a way to lead his men to
safety. As he tried to poke a hole through the Iraqi line his humvee came
under direct enemy machine gun fire. It was fish in a barrel and the Marines
were the fish. And Brian Chontosh gave the order to attack..
He told his driver to floor the humvee directly at the machine gun
emplacement that was firing at them. And he had the guy on top with the 50
cal unload on them.
Within moments there were Iraqis slumped across their machine guns and
Chontosh was still advancing, ordering his driver now to take the humvee
directly into the Iraqi trench that was attacking his Marines..
Over into the battlement the humvee went and out the
door Brian Chontosh bailed, carrying an M16 and a
Beretta
and
228 years of Marine Corps pride.
And he ran along the trench, with its mortars and riflemen, machine guns and
grenadiers.
He fought with the M16 until
it was out of ammo.
Then he fought with the
Beretta until it was out of ammo.
Then he picked up a dead
man's AK4 and fought with that until it was out of ammo.
Then he picked up another
dead man's AK47 and fought with that until it was out of ammo.
At one point he even fired a
discarded Iraqi RPG into an enemy cluster, sending attackers flying with its
grenade explosion.
When he was done Brian Chontosh had cleared 200 yards of entrenched Iraqis
from his platoon's flank.
He had killed more than 20
and wounded at least as many more.
But that's probably not how he would tell it.
He would probably merely say
that his Marines were in trouble, and he got them out of trouble.
Ooh-rah, and drive on.
"By his outstanding display of decisive leadership, unlimited
courage in the face of heavy enemy fire, and utmost devotion to duty,
1st Lt. Chontosh reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest
traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval
Service."
That's what the citation
says.
And that's what nobody will hear.
That's what doesn't seem to be making the evening news.
Accounts of American
valor are dismissed by the press as propaganda, yet accounts of American
difficulties are heralded as objectivity.. It makes you wonder if the role of
the media is to inform or to depress - to report or to deride. To tell
the truth, or to feed us lies.
But I guess it
doesn't matter.We're going to turn out all right as long as men like
Brian Chontosh wear our uniform.
If you are as proud of
this Marine as I am, then send this to EVERYONE YOU KNOW
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