Knee Deep in the Hooah!

In this same week in history the following events took place. It’s amazing that in as much as things change, they really do stay the same. I swear that some of these headlines could easily be linked to so many things we are writing about today.

From BBC:

January 15, 1973: Nixon orders ceasefire in Vietnam: President Nixon orders a halt to American bombing in North Vietnam - following peace talks in Paris.

January 15, 1953: East German purge begins: The East German authorities begin a purge of senior officials, accused of plotting against the state and spying for imperialistic powers.

January 15, 1997: Princess Diana sparks landmines row: The Princess of Wales angers government ministers after calling for an international ban on landmines.

January 16, 1979: Shah of Iran flees into exile: The Shah of Iran flees the country following months of increasingly violent protests against his regime.

January 16, 1970: Gaddafi takes over as Libya’s premier:
Colonel Muammar Gaddafi assumes the role of prime minister four months after leading a successful coup against the monarchy.

January 17, 1991: ‘Mother of all Battles’ begins: Operation Desert Storm begins as Gulf War Allies send hundreds of planes on bombing raids into Iraq - Saddam Hussein remains defiant.

January 17, 1994: Massive earthquake hits Los Angeles: An earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale devastates Los Angeles in the USA, killing more than 20 people.

January 18, 1991: Iraqi Scud missiles hit Israel: Israel teeters on the brink of joining the Gulf War after Iraq attacks Tel Aviv and Haifa with Scud missiles.

January 18, 1967: ‘Boston Strangler’ sentenced to life: Albert DeSalvo, who says he murdered 13 women, is given a life sentence for assault and armed robbery.

Tags: history by Claire
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If you made a New Years resolution that this year you would reach out and help people, do something for the “common good” or contribute more time and/or money into a really good cause, then do I have some information for you!

I know that a lot of you are either already an Angel or at least know about it, but Soldier’s Angels is in need of some Angels to adopt deployed soldiers. The need for support and morale is just as high now as it was the day we entered Iraq. Our soldiers are seeing a lot of victory, but they are still at war and thousands of miles from their homes. Please consider reaching out to a deployed military member and extending the hand of gratitude to them. A small box filled with stuff from “home” can mean more than most of us will ever realize.

The snippet below was taken from Black Five:

WE HAVE MANY MORE HEROES BEING SUBMITTED THAN ANGELS JOINING, and that is with 50 to 100 angels joining a DAY. We really did good at Christmas..Heroes Love to be adopted. We have whole units joining with quotes like this from a Chaplain:

Your organization is highly coveted and recommended by all. Is it possible if we can be added to the Soldier’s Angels program. We’ve got a lot of young soldiers who are experiencing difficult times for their first deployment, and external support from our nation’s greatest supporters would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

It is wonderful we are able to help with morale. Will you adopt another hero, or will you please cantact your local churches, schools, hospitals, Scouts. Many of our sons and daughters are in harms way and could use some support from home.

Tell ALL you can, to go to http://soldiersangels.org and click adopt a soldier.

Thank you!

Tags: Morale, Troop appreciation, deployment, military, war on terror, well wishes by Claire
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I have not updated in quite a while regarding Bryan and his fracture. He is making some progress with his physical training and I think that considering he never had any physical therapy he is coming along fine. We go to the gym most days (he goes every other) and run on the tread mill. This past weekend I was able to talk him into running/walking a 5K around a lake with me. We both could run/walk it in a reasonable time. He is no where ready to take an APFT or anything, but hey he has to start somewhere, right? After all his APFT score was good and it didn’t come over night. He had to train, so train is exactly what we will continue to do.

His overall health is good, but I can tell he’s antsy and needs to find something outside the home to do. He has some temporary work coming his way, and I think it will be a huge relief to him. Not to mention that after spending endless days with the very lovely, but ever so precocious Princess, he thinks that OCS was a cake walk by comparison. I have a feeling he may be right! A little extra spousal appreciation is always a nice thing to come by.

So, for now we will just keep plugging away, and we will see what that hip lets him do. He’s a pretty strong guy, so I will be surprised if it holds him back at all. Now the bigger question is, did we lose momentum? We have such a limited time frame and we have spent some of our padding of “extra” time not to mention our padding of living money. Will he be able to make that “one hell of a recovery” or will be looking at his scar 10 years from now still scratching our heads and wondering “what was that all about, anyway?”

It’s still a little surreal to both of us, but it’s slowly seeping into our reality and being integrated as one of our experiences. It’s hard when your life is turned upside down and you go through months of training and indoctrination to have it suddenly stopped. It’s also hard when you have been gearing your home up for months and preparing for the first PCS, studying, learning, connecting, and suddenly you don’t know where you are going to be living in a few months.

As I have said before it’s really arrogant for me to think that I really know what is going to happen one moment to the next. I read a quote the other day that asserts “We plan. God laughs.” I don’t know if God laughs at our planning or not, but I am sure that in our finiteness and our futility we must look pretty pitiful trying to manipulate the earth and sky to do what we think we need it to do. Shoot, we must look pitiful in our attempt to even declare that we truly know what we need, yet alone try and make it all happen exactly as we have planned.

I am tired of wrestling, personally. Unfortunately in the case of wrestling my body and spirit are both willing and weak. That’s a bad combination. Maybe it’s time to surrender and just rest in the knowledge that the one thing that has really changed is my own awareness of my limitations. Again, I don’t think that is so bad, really. I would rather look like a fool to those who are proud, by admitting that I am limited, than proving myself a fool to everyone by insisting that my limitations have no limits.

Tags: Morale, Shack Pack news, family life, getting old, military, updates by Claire
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I found this article on “The Tension.” Yep, it’s more of whats been going on for a couple of weeks now. Our guys are cleaning house up north. (excerpt below)

News in Balance:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 11, 2008 (AFPS) — Forces in Iraq have ramped up efforts this week to stamp out remaining al Qaeda hot spots there, pummeling areas with air strikes and bombs and surging troops in previously uncontrolled territories.

Coalition forces attacked suspected hideouts in the north, including in Diyala province, and air strikes yesterday concentrated on the southern outskirts of Baghdad in the Arab Jabour region.

“We are not leaving holes or safe havens for the enemy,” Army Brig. Gen. Joseph Anderson, chief of staff for Multinational Corps Iraq, said in a conference call with military analysts.

So far, military officials reported, forces have captured or killed more than 30 insurgents and uncovered numerous weapons caches. The bombings yesterday targeted deeply buried bombs, Anderson said.

Tags: Army, Islam, Terrorism, Troop Surge, combat, military, war on terror by Claire
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A couple of things that caught my eye this morning as I was perusing various news sites:

First:

From FOX News:

“Oscar Pistorius has been ruled ineligible to compete at this summer’s Olympic Games because his prosthetic limbs give him an unfair advantage.”

Continuing on in the story it is revealed that a two day scientific study claims that his Cheetah blades give him an advantage on energy consumption and resistance. I am sure the main advantages this double amputee possesses are as follows: 1. the fact that he is obviously an incredible athlete; 2. and a highly competitive individual. I hope he wins his appeal.

From the Sun Sentinel (found originally on RN) :

Peace activists in pink dresses and tiaras demanded the arrest of anti-communist militant Luis Posada Carriles Saturday, but aborted plans for a demonstration in Little Havana after Carriles supporters rushed their vehicle.

First off if you want to be taken seriously when you are protesting things, never ever let them see you sweat and never let them see you in a pink dress and tiara.

<snip>

… they were met by some 200 irate Cuban-Americans who consider Carriles a champion of freedom. Some ran at the activists’ truck as they arrived, tearing off its pink fringe, while others shouted sexist slurs.

“We’re not in Cuba. We’re supposed to have free speech,” said Medea Benjamin, one of the group’s founders. “This is indicative of how a small group of Cuban-Americans are holding the rest of the community hostage.”

Wait a minute. Back up the tape here. Is this the same group who is notorious for trespassing on private business property, for harassing recruiters and vandalizing recruiter’s offices? This is the same group that believes they have the right to approach our Secretary of State in a threatening manner? They think that they are supposed to have unlimited rights, but let some private citizens run them out of their neighborhood and now they are crying “foul?” Funny, I always thought that the Constitution protects you from the government’s ability to silence you, however, if you act like a general nusance in public your fellow citizens also get to exercise the same freedom and run you off. I hate to be the one who has to point this out, but other people have the right to protest your protesting. Go figure.

Tags: Weird, anti-military by Claire
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In certain approaches in therapy a cognitive and/or emotional paradox is sometimes used to expose and explore an inner conflict. Once the paradox is identified then the therapist can use it as a tool to uncover wherein the problem for the client lies. For example, when a client tells you she loves her job, but then spends the rest of the time telling you how much she really hates her work, then there’s a problem. It seems obvious to the observer, but to the person who is struggling with the conflict it is not always so obvious. The paradox is just a symptom too. It could be that she really does love her job, but she feels inadequate and that causes her stress. She may feel inadequate for a host of unrelated reasons. This is the strand where the tapestry often begins to unravel.

I am struggling with my own paradoxes these days. It’s an uncomfortable place to reside. I am in the zone where you want a phone call more than anything, but you don’t want a phone call because it would be premature and you know it would only be bad news. I try to set my ring tones so that I know who is calling on the other line. When that tone rings as an unknown number, my heart races a little. It could be good news, bad news, or no news. It is usually the latter, and I will take that as opposed to the possibility of bad news. It’s all about the news when you know you they are actually on a battlefield somewhere. It’s more intense than the daily grind kind of worry. If you do not know what I am talking about, then count yourself blessed. If you do, then at least you know that you are not alone in the world of emotion upheaval and felicitous insanity that seems to come with the territory of having a loved one deployed.

So, I swing wildly between wanting a phone call, and being glad that I have not had one since at this point it may only occur if something bad happened. I feel blessed for being in the dark, and cursed for being in the dark. I want to know what he has ahead of him, and I don’t. I can handle hearing about it afterward, but my imagination often wants to paint a picture based on information I have gleamed from news reports and milblog entries. Again, I struggle with the want to know/don’t want to know duality.

I think we all struggle to some degree with this particular paradox. We all want some sense of control, or some sense that there is at least a good chance that the earth will not open up and swallow us at any given moment. It’s hard to operate when the boundaries no longer make you feel safe — when your boundaries go beyond your own world and into Iraq and battle. There is no distancing yourself or forgetting about it for a day. A sincere love for another person, especially a spouse or a son or daughter, can not be manipulated like that. It’s just a fact. It’s just there. You love that person with a reckless abandon, and where he or she goes, you go too.

You may remember me talking about my youngest son, Nate, a while back. I wrote:

It all started yesterday. Nate came to me last night before bed.
He wanted to learn to iron a dress shirt and make good creases.
I knew this day was coming.He also needed me to take him out
earlier that day and buy him a shoe shining kit.

Yep. He’s got it bad.

The real indicator for me was when he told me
his high and tight was not high or tight enough.
Yes, you guessed it.

My youngest son has the military gene!

I was not kidding when I wrote that. He is chomping at the bit to join, but wants to do delayed entry. Bryan flat out asked me last night how I would handle it if all three of them were in Theater together. Neither of us ever see that actually happening, but until we are not at war it is something we have to consider as a military family. The quick answer is, I would just do it like I have been doing it for almost a year now. You get out of bed, wash your face, eat and take care of yourself on one hand. On the other hand, you worry yourself sick, you learn that your brain is capable of extremely morbid reveries, and your emotions are greatly inflated with fear, pride, joy, angst and love. I am just accepting it.

The truth is war is paradoxical too. I know that there are some who hold the philosophy that war is never justified, and that peace is always achievable through other means. I wish that were true, but the enemy that our sons and daughters are fighting now is not that kind of enemy. They can, do and will use peaceful negotiations to take advantage of a situation and bring death. Sometimes might does at least set some things straight, and sometimes fighting hard brings at least a chance and a hope for some peace.

Until we see that real chance for peace I think that I will be knee deep for a long time to come. I know we are seeing more and more of a glimmer of it. I will keep wading through these paradoxes until they either make sense to me, or until I am able to find my own peace from this emotion and mental battle that goes on in my heart and in my head. God is the only One who really knows which will come first, if either come at all.

Tags: combat, communication, deployment, family life, mental health, military, war on terror by Claire
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Welcome to the new home of Knee Deep. I have been knee deep in the crash course of php code and css styling, but it is starting to make a lot of sense (which is scary). I wanted to get a private domain since I know that Blogger is automatically blocked for a lot of people. When Bryan was on base he could never access my blog from any of the local computers (owned by the DoD) since it was a blogspot.com address. We didn’t want to pay for personal Internet connection, so he was stuck. I understand why they block Blogger and I would not criticize a decision like this on the publicly used computers that are owned by another party. In a nut shell, I switched here so that my site could be accessed by more people, and I was ready to spread my wings a little and give owning a domain and building my own site a try.

The page tabs above are still under construction, but will be up with lots of good things in the very near future. I wanted to go ahead and make the switch today.

If you have me bookmarked (well, heck even if you don’t!) please bookmark my new site. I have blogger on auto forward, but eventually that blog will be put to rest. The forward does tend to slow the loading of this page, but not too much. This site’s address is www.kneedeepinthehooah.com

Have a great weekend!

Tags: blog settings, updates by Claire
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(Story and quotes originally found on RN) Our military has not only survived warfare over the years, but somehow, by some incredible work of divine favor and miraculous works, it has survived America’s politicians. Way to go troops! Keep up the incredible work!

General: Anbar ready for Handover By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer Thu Jan 10, 6:53 PM ET WASHINGTON - Iraq’s western province of Anbar, hotbed of the Sunni Arab insurgency for the first four years of the war, will be returned to Iraqi control in March, a senior U.S. general said Thursday.

“It’s interesting. We have had, this week, the colonel in charge of Anbar Province say that it’s a civil war; it’s been lost.” Majority Leader Harry Reid September 13, 2006

In a telephone interview from Iraq, Marine Maj. Gen. Walter E. Gaskin, commander of the roughly 35,000 Marine and Army forces in Anbar, said levels of violence have dropped so significantly — coupled with the growth and development of Iraqi security forces in the province — that Anbar is ready to be handed back to the Iraqis. Thus far, nine of 18 Iraqi provinces have reverted to Iraqi control, most recently the southern province of Basra in December. The process has gone substantially slower than the Bush administration once hoped, mainly because of obstacles to developing sufficient Iraqi police and army forces. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that he expects the process to continue.

“We haven’t been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically — and that’s where wars are won and lost.” Rep. John Murtha Washington Post September 11, 2006

Gates also said he was encouraged by security gains achieved in Anbar and Baghdad in the year since President Bush ordered an extra 30,000 U.S. troops to those areas of Iraq in what became known as a “surge.” Gates said it has created new promise for long-delayed political reconciliation. “We clearly are hoping that the reconciliation and improvement in the political environment that has taken place at the local and provincial level over the past number of months will now meet further progress coming at the national level,” Gates told a Pentagon news conference.

“I oppose an escalation of U.S. troops, which I do not believe will contribute to long-term success in Iraq.” Senator Hillary Clinton January 18, 2007

Gates ticked of a list of statistical indicators of recent security improvements in Iraq. He did not mention the plan to return Anbar to Iraqi control in March, but did say the province has seen a remarkable turnaround on the security front over the past year. “Anbar province, once considered a stronghold of al-Qaida, has been reclaimed for the Iraqi people,” Gates said. Having been largely driven out of Anbar, insurgents shifted first to Baghdad and more recently to the northern provinces of Diyala and Ninewa. Gaskin said that a provincial security committee under Anbar’s governor has been established and has rehearsed procedures for handling any security crisis that might develop.

“The violence in Anbar has gone down despite the surge, not because of the surge. The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al-Qaida said to these tribes, ‘We have to fight al-Qaida ourselves.’ It wasn’t that the surge brought peace here.” Senator Chuck Schumer September 4, 2007

Under a plan accepted by the Iraqi government as well as the top two American authorities in Iraq — Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus — the U.S. military will transfer control of Anbar to provincial authorities in March, followed by a ceremony in April, Gaskin said. “We all agree that, based on the requirements, Anbar will be ready by that time,” Gaskin said, speaking from his Multi-National Force West headquarters in Fallujah, about 25 west of Baghdad. Click HERE for the entire article.

Tags: Army, Terrorism, Troop Surge, military, politics, war on terror by Claire
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I just wanted to pop on and let you all know that I have not abandoned ship, and I have not turned my keyboard in for solitude. I have been furiously trying to get my new site up, going and bug free for next week. I am here, but just not able to post much.

I did hear from Mike yesterday. The proverbial “stuff” has the fan where he is right now. Please be in prayer for him and for the soldiers in the unstable areas of Iraq. We have seen a lot of success, that is true, but this war is far from over and our guys need some serious prayer and our continued support.

Mike is sending me some pictures of the school supply delivery as soon as he can. It may take a little while since things have heated up. He did report that the school was very grateful for the supplies, and I have left the offer open to send their requests to me. I couldn’t do this for many schools, but I can start with one… and then who knows where it could lead. Maybe it will stop here with one school and one shipment, and maybe it will grow into something bigger. I am open to either avenue. I think it is a very wonderful thing to involved with, and it makes me feel like I am helping in a tangible way.

I hope you all have the best Thursday possible. Take care, stay warm and come back often. I promise things will pick up again very soon.

Tags: updates by Claire
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I have showcased some of Bryan’s artwork here before, but today I want to direct you to his new online gallery. It has a handful of his work that serves as an example as to what he can do.

Enter

Tags: Art, Shack Pack news, Things I love, blog settings by Claire
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