Entries Tagged as 'Shack Pack news'

Official Welcome Home for the Dragoon Raider brigade!

I didn’t realize that it was a 4th BCT soldier who won the new Jeep Liberty from Operation Gratitude! Wow! Congratulations to Spc. Gallagher, and to all of the Dragoon Raider Brigade. A special welcome home to my wonderful son who is a soldier in this Brigade. It’s wonderful to know their colors are uncased and they are home from their mission!

4th Stryker BCT to uncase colors at Fort Lewis

Staff report
Posted : Tuesday Jul 1, 2008 13:04:10 EDT

Soldiers from 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, will be welcomed home during a ceremony Tuesday at Fort Lewis, Wash.

The brigade, known as the Dragoon Raider brigade, was deployed from April 2007 through June 2008.

During the ceremony, the brigade will uncase its colors to signify the completion of its deployment and its return to Fort Lewis. Silver Star awards will be presented to several soldiers during the awards portion of the ceremony.

Prior to the ceremony, representatives from Operation Gratitude and Chrysler will present a 2008 Jeep Liberty to Spc. Michael Gallagher, who received the keys to the sport utility vehicle in Operation Gratitude’s 300,000th care package while he was deployed.

Gallagher designed a mural for the SUV to honor fallen soldiers from his unit, and the customized SUV will be unveiled during the presentation.

Closing, Closing…

… and hopefully today, if all goes as planned, we will officially say “Closed!” We are headed out in a few to close on our house. We are very excited and it is nice to settle into a realization that we will not be traipsing off all over the Country. I was geared up for that, but I am fine staying put and continuing on with life here in TN. Mr. H! has not given up on the Reserves. We simply need to get him APFT ready. Looks like I need to get my Drill Instructor hat on and kick some booty!

Mike is on his way home this week, and we will all be together on the 4th of July for a family picnic and a time for me to soak in the realization that my whole family is in the exact same spot at the exact same time. Now there’s a blessing beyond blessings! [Read more →]

Right now, as I write this…

UPDATE & Bump: A certain Specialist has had his Board date postponed because a certain S’gnt Major forgot and overbooked his work day. SOOOOOOO … looks like the exam will be this coming Thursday. Woot. I guess.

There is a “certain Specialist” who is being grilled interviewed by an NCO Board in order to prove he is ready for a promotion to Sargent.

For the record, I am not proud at all. Nope. I won’t brag about how he went from PFC to Spc. in less than a year. I am not going to be a boorish mother who feels the need to announce that her son went from Spc. to the NCO Board in less than a year. I am most certainly, definitely not going to lavish you with the details of what a hard working, handsome, smart, strong, ethical, up-standing, fine young man I have for a son.

See, aren’t you glad that I am not one of “those” moms?

The Final Purge and a Jackass of the Day Award

So that I do not dwell on this any further, I feel the need to do a “final purge” of the happenings the past few days on this blog. Some of you know of the huge dump that the Washington Post’s blog “IntelDump” took on my blog the other day. We were an easy target for the blog author Phillip Carter, so we were thrown under the bus and he got noticed. Nice, eh? The funny thing is, Carter claimed in his article that the real issue at hand was the fact that “Stand To” linked to an article that was clearly an anti-Obama piece, but the problem is he did not really make that the focus of the entry. He quotes and talks more about our blog and what Mr. H! wrote. He even made sure to purposely inflame his readership by linking us with Limbaugh and Fox News (accusing us of only using these two as sources of information). He set it up. He forgot to reiterate to his readership that the real issue at hand was the military, not us. Convienent, no?

I got thousands of hits that day from Washington Post and several other sources that had linked to his article. I went to Washington Post and posted on the comment thread twice. I was respectful both times, but I would like my readers to read a couple of comments left on Phillip Carter’s blog for me. These were lifted verbatim, copied and pasted. I refuse to link to his blog, so if you want the source just Google his name and the name of his blog.

may be your son who is on duty in Iraq,, should come in a box,, or some of his limbs blown away,,, or come home with mental problems and are the govt is slow to give proper medical treatment,, then your eyes will be wide open,, isn’t it,,

Posted by: mugambo | June 12, 2008 5:56 PM

…………………………..

I hope that former army officers’s son doesn’t ever come home

Posted by: madashell | June 12, 2008 9:51 PM

……………………………

Thank God that Carter reads and pays about as close attention as his readers do. My son is already home, safe and sound. The crap-weasels who wrote those comments did so believing my son is still in Iraq (because Carter stated so). Aren’t they nice. Aren’t they oh so loving and progressive?

WaPo’s commenting policy states that “… User reviews and comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site.”

If I follow Carter’s own assertion to its logical conclusion (that linking to something equates endorsement), then I am left to draw one conclusion about his leaving (or linking if you will) comments on his blog that wishes the death of a deployed soldier: The Washington Post and Phillip Carter endorse the wishing death on a deployed soldier and stating such to his parents. If they did not think it was acceptable they would have removed it. As it stands now I really could give a rat’s behind what they do — they can remove it to try and save face, but I don’t think they care. I am sure they support our troops though, right?

I have received emails telling me that I should be dead, that my family should be dead (they are clever enough to not say that they want to kill me, so charges can’t be brought … but duh, it’s obviously a death threat). I have been called a Nazi.

The Nazi comments crack me up. I have never once in my entire life ever tried to silence another American Citizen by threat or intimdation, and yet the amoral asses who write those emails have the audacity to call ME the Nazi! Is that not the most delicious irony you have ever tasted in your life? I exercise my right to free speech, I am threatened and intimidated by fellow citizens because of it, and somehow I am the Nazi? Wow. This right here shows you the mentality I have been up against for the past couple of days.

I have deleted a lot of comments left here on my blog. I immediately came to KDIH once I realized I had been linked to and was a target for flaming, and got rid of my “about the author” page and put the comments on moderation. They will have to remain on moderation for a while. I am going to register my regular readers (those who comment frequently that I know) and erase the rest of the registered readers. You will have to register to comment at will and be approved to do so. All others will go through moderation until I am ready to register them. It’s a safe guard. I do a lot of work from home, I take care of a family, and I am dealing with some very painful orthopedic problems right now — I don’t have time to babysit my blog.

This was never an issue before in the past year that I have been writing, but thanks to Carter it is now. Which leaves me no other option than to award him the Knee Deep in the Hooah!’s official, prestigious “Jackass of the Day Award.”

Mr. Carter earned this award, not for exercising his right to free speech, but because of the unwarranted, unnecessary “bitch slap” we got from him and his readers for exercising our right to free speech. He also earned it for leaving comments on his blog wishing my son death, dismemberment or mental problems, and in doing so indirectly supporting that kind of speech to military members and their families.

So, here’s to you Phillip Carter (aka Mr.Ex-MP, Mr. Ex-Civil Affairs guy, and Mr. I’m all for the Vets.) Here’s to you.

Take Note!

Are you needing a little motivation, but you’re just having a hard time finding it? Well, I have some faux stimulus for you! Toy Soldier is back in the US and is now blogging from his own domain. Visit him at False Motivation and say hello! He has a wonderful and touching tribute up to the fallen heroes of Bayonet Company.

Haditha Marines Update

Since the MSM is not going to shout it out from the roof tops I think it’s important for bloggers to spread the news. Another Haditha Marine has been acquitted. Innocent until proven guilty? Not if you are a Marine in the path of the MSM and Murtha. I would love to see a formal apology, but you know it will never happen.

Read MORE about the acquittal of Lt. Andrew Grayson.

Why the surge worked

The article below was found on The Olympian. It caught my eye, of course, because my son is a 4/2 soldier who was involved in some of this list of what the guys in his Brigade and Division have been up to since the start of the surge nearly 15 months ago. Ready for this chit list? It made my head swim reading it. The surge has done the job, and this is why… because the men who went in made it happen!

According to brigade records, 4-2 soldiers conducted 138 battalion-level operations and 413 company-level operations. The soldiers found and secured 552 weapons caches, cleared 87,324 kilometers of routes of improvised explosive devices and other hazards to secure safe travel, and captured and destroyed more than 25,000 pounds of explosives.

Also, the brigade detained 1,700 suspects, and captured 212 high-value targets. Additionally, 718 enemy and 20 high-value targets were killed in action, and 176 enemy personnel were wounded in action.

The brigade conducted 278 air and ground raids, resulting in 324 bombs dropped, as well as 4,663 mortar rounds and more than 11,000 artillery rounds fired.

Soldiers encountered and cleared 2,216 improvised explosive devices, including 72 house-borne, 25 suicide-vest-borne and 31 vehicle-borne IEDs.

The brigade left Fort Lewis a month earlier than expected, to participate in the “surge” strategy. The brigade joined Fort Lewis’ 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team in Diyala province, then remained there under the command of Multi-National Division North - eventually assuming responsibility for an area of operations that had previously been covered by two brigades of its size.

What does your daddy do for a living?

When Mr. Hooah! was at Ft. Benning the only explanation I had to offer a very inquisitive and hard to fool 3-year old girl was “papa is away at work.” It was the truth. Of course I explained to her that it was his “far, far, away” work and that one day we would all be together again. She began to understand this whole Army life to a degree, and when people asked her about papa she would say “My papa is shouldier.” That’s not a typo. She pronounced it like “shoulder” with the special suffix. That was a new understanding since earlier in the year every soldier was called a “Michael” because as far as she was concerned our Michael had invented the whole soldier-Army get-up. [Read more →]