Injured Marine: "intelligence was right more often than it was wrong"

[PunkPop]

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050527/NEWS17/505270387/-1/NEWS

Bryan pays tribute to Marine injured while serving in Iraq
Hometown salutes returning serviceman

By JANE SCHMUCKER
BLADE STAFF WRITER


BRYAN - Michael Strahle was on security duty, his head sticking out of the hatch of a big armored vehicle in a convoy traveling through Iraq to the Syrian border.

The assignment probably saved the 20-year-old Marine's life.

He was thrown out of that hatch by the force of a mine, hidden in the road, that exploded under his amphibious assault vehicle. He landed 50 feet away, blood pouring from his stomach.

Five Marines who had been sitting around him in the vehicle died, probably amid the screaming on the road at midday on May 11.

<snip>

He doesn't know what he'll tell them. Hasn't come to terms himself with why he lived and the others - most in their early 20s - died 10 weeks after they arrived in Iraq.

But he can say he's certain his unit was doing good in Iraq. That their house-to-house weapons searches and street patrols helped.

That when they kicked in doors and ordered families into one room as they investigated, their intelligence was right more often than it was wrong.

That he and his fellow Marines were committed to their job, even as a firefight on Mother's Day and the mine explosion three days later injured or killed almost everyone in his squad of about a dozen.

<snip>

Poor kid. Grasping for anything to help justify in his own mind the needless suffering.

[bowens43]

1. I hope I never hear my doctor

say 'Well,I'm right more often then I'm wrong'. Or how about a lawyer? Or an engineer who designs bridges? An airline pilot?

Sorry, 'right more often then wrong' is not exactly a glowing endorsement, especially when the lives of our young people are on the line.

[PunkPop]

3. Exactly. Pretty pathetic.

I keep thinking of the death penalty because that's what this war has been for so many. Imagine a prosecutor or judge trying to justify his death sentences with, "well, the verdicts were right more often than they were wrong".

[Fovea]

2. All I can say

is that I pray for his recovery.

[merh]

4. If their "intelligence" hadn't been wrong (made up) in the first

place, he wouldn't have been there to need to rely on it in the second place. Poor kid, I so appreciate his efforts, but they shouldn't be fighting the weed's illegal and immoral war. :argh:

They should not be there. :mad:


:cry:

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

5. Bingo!

He should not have been there to begin with. I'm still at a loss to understand how the world feels safer now that mission creep changed the goal from finding the non-existant WMD's to removing Saddam to ridding the country of insurgents.....:shrug:

[merh]

6. to bringing democracy to a land

while stealing it at home. :cry:

[Just Me]

7. I hope he decides he lived in order to share the truth,...

,...about the horrors of war which should be avoided unless clearly necessary to defend our nation.

[Inland]

8. And military has killed more enemy in Iraq than civilian children

Anything else that's making us proud to be Americans?