Thursday, October 23, 2008
Just Something I Was Thinking About Tonight! A Fight I Couldn't Win
We were just soldiers, holding our ground. Shots ringing out and then men go down. We were caught in Harm's Way. way too far from home. Well it's not about pride, or the headline story. Not for the country or even Ol' Glory. At times like that, you're just trying to bring each other back home. I ran over to help my friend. I tried so hard to keep the life inside of him. Yes I tried. But that was a fight I couldn't win. A fight I couldn't win.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Drinking & Driving, Blood On The Highway
I have for the past several years been an opponent of drinking alcohol while driving, or driving under the influence of alcohol. I will be the first though to admit that I in the past have been guilty of this crime, but it was in my late teenage years and very early twenties, and I am now a near 47 year old man (Thanks to the Good Lord Watching Over Drunkards And Fools). But over I would say the last 20 years, drinking and driving has recieved alot of attention, alot of education has been taught in our schools of the dangers of drinking and driving. Then there is the M.A.D.D. Organization, an oranization originally formed by mothers of children that have been killed by alcohol related traffic accidents, they are a beacon of light when it comes to getting the knowlege out about driving under the influence. I myself am a member of M.A.D.D. I have spoken at the meetings and rallies for them. Why? Because I too am a victim of an alcohol related accident. I was hit head-on by a drunken driver when I was 22 years old and driving home from work one February evening. The impact and power of the collision I will never forget, slamming me into the dashboard and then through the windshield, breaking bones and fracturing my skull. The injuries were devastating, and the therapy and recovery were grueling to say the least, but fortunately I did survive by God's Grace. Since then I have been against drinking and driving, the accident which set me in the victims seat of such a terrible thing, made me see my own actions from the victims side, and it changed my life and conduct forever.
But this is not about me this time, for there was an accident in my small rural community in the dead of night on a lonely stretch of highway. Three teens riding in a pick-up truck under the influence of alcohol and traveling at an estimated speed of 90 miles per hour, lost control of the truck in a slight curve and veered over into the oncoming lane. When they did, a car carrying a man and his wife were coming from the other direction. They were so close there was no time for braking or swerving. The impact was upon them before they could blink.
I will first tell you of the victims of this terrible accident, the wife died from her injuries around 5:45 am. The husband is clinging to life in a very serious condition. They are parents to two small children, a daughter age 7 and another daughter age 4. These two children have lost their mother, and may very well now lose their father.
Now the teens that caused the accident by driving under the influence. Two of them, one the driver of the pick-up truck and the other a passenger in the truck, died instantly on impact. A third person in the truck also a passenger sitting in the middle of the seat, was critically injured, so badly that she was air lifted by medi-vac helicopter from the scene of the accident and rush flown to the trauma center in Jackson, Mississippi, where she is listed in very critical condition, she is in a coma, she has multiple cuts all about her body, multiple broken bones including a skull fracture with brain injury, and her left arm was severed just below her shoulder in the accident and cannot be re-attached. She has been given little chance of surviving her injuries and that if miraculously she does survive them, it is never expected for her body to function properly again, she will need assistance for the rest of her life.
Learning of this devastating accident makes me think about the times that I too rolled the dice on not only my own life but the lives of innocent others and chose to drink and drive. No one on earth has the right to do that. Not to defend my actions back then, because there is no defense for them. Back then though there was little taught about the dangers of drinking and driving.
However today things are way different than they were when I was teenager. It is taught in schools about the dangers of drinking and driving. It is in commercials on television, it is on the news, it is on billboards along the highways, police and other law enforcement agencies set up road blocks in an effort to catch drunk drivers. Most if not all police departments have special units set aside named D.U.I. Task Force who's prime goal is to cruise around the streets watching for irradic driving, in hopes of catching drunk drivers and taking them off the streets. The knowlege of drinking and driving now days is everywhere we look.
For teenagers it's everywhere they look as well, magazines they read run ads about drinking and driving, movie trailers often have a small segment about the dangers of it. They are taught it as I said in school. There is no reason now for anyone not to understand fully how wrong this is, and how dangerous it is and that by drinking and driving it does not only consider You, the other drivers out there on the streets are a concern about it as well.
In one of my comments while speaking at a M.A.D.D. seminar and rally, I made the comment, that "Drinking And Driving Is Exactly The Same As Standing Off From A Crowd Of People And Firing A Rifle Bullet Into The Crowd, For Awhile You May Be Lucky And Not Harm Anyone Or Be Caught, But If You Continue To Fire, Eventually You Will Hit Someone."
Drinking and driving is no different from that, if you do it enough times, you will end up hurting someone, or killing someone, and that someone may very well be yourself.
Have enough respect for yourself not to endanger yourself by drinking and driving, care enough about your loved ones not to leave them in the pain of losing you, and have enough respect for the other drivers out there on the highway, not to choose on your own to place them in danger. There is blood up there on the highway, make certain your not the next one to spill it, by making sure you never choose again to drink and drive!
But this is not about me this time, for there was an accident in my small rural community in the dead of night on a lonely stretch of highway. Three teens riding in a pick-up truck under the influence of alcohol and traveling at an estimated speed of 90 miles per hour, lost control of the truck in a slight curve and veered over into the oncoming lane. When they did, a car carrying a man and his wife were coming from the other direction. They were so close there was no time for braking or swerving. The impact was upon them before they could blink.
I will first tell you of the victims of this terrible accident, the wife died from her injuries around 5:45 am. The husband is clinging to life in a very serious condition. They are parents to two small children, a daughter age 7 and another daughter age 4. These two children have lost their mother, and may very well now lose their father.
Now the teens that caused the accident by driving under the influence. Two of them, one the driver of the pick-up truck and the other a passenger in the truck, died instantly on impact. A third person in the truck also a passenger sitting in the middle of the seat, was critically injured, so badly that she was air lifted by medi-vac helicopter from the scene of the accident and rush flown to the trauma center in Jackson, Mississippi, where she is listed in very critical condition, she is in a coma, she has multiple cuts all about her body, multiple broken bones including a skull fracture with brain injury, and her left arm was severed just below her shoulder in the accident and cannot be re-attached. She has been given little chance of surviving her injuries and that if miraculously she does survive them, it is never expected for her body to function properly again, she will need assistance for the rest of her life.
Learning of this devastating accident makes me think about the times that I too rolled the dice on not only my own life but the lives of innocent others and chose to drink and drive. No one on earth has the right to do that. Not to defend my actions back then, because there is no defense for them. Back then though there was little taught about the dangers of drinking and driving.
However today things are way different than they were when I was teenager. It is taught in schools about the dangers of drinking and driving. It is in commercials on television, it is on the news, it is on billboards along the highways, police and other law enforcement agencies set up road blocks in an effort to catch drunk drivers. Most if not all police departments have special units set aside named D.U.I. Task Force who's prime goal is to cruise around the streets watching for irradic driving, in hopes of catching drunk drivers and taking them off the streets. The knowlege of drinking and driving now days is everywhere we look.
For teenagers it's everywhere they look as well, magazines they read run ads about drinking and driving, movie trailers often have a small segment about the dangers of it. They are taught it as I said in school. There is no reason now for anyone not to understand fully how wrong this is, and how dangerous it is and that by drinking and driving it does not only consider You, the other drivers out there on the streets are a concern about it as well.
In one of my comments while speaking at a M.A.D.D. seminar and rally, I made the comment, that "Drinking And Driving Is Exactly The Same As Standing Off From A Crowd Of People And Firing A Rifle Bullet Into The Crowd, For Awhile You May Be Lucky And Not Harm Anyone Or Be Caught, But If You Continue To Fire, Eventually You Will Hit Someone."
Drinking and driving is no different from that, if you do it enough times, you will end up hurting someone, or killing someone, and that someone may very well be yourself.
Have enough respect for yourself not to endanger yourself by drinking and driving, care enough about your loved ones not to leave them in the pain of losing you, and have enough respect for the other drivers out there on the highway, not to choose on your own to place them in danger. There is blood up there on the highway, make certain your not the next one to spill it, by making sure you never choose again to drink and drive!
Thursday, October 9, 2008
As I Sit Here In Peace And Comfort
As I sit here in the peace and comfort of my home down in Dixie, it is strange to think of what so many other Americans are going through at this very moment across the ocean on foreign lands.
War is among us, we are at war on two fronts as I write, Iraq and Afghanistan. We didn't start the war no, we were struck first on the fateful day of September 11th. We did not choose our enemy, for it was the enemy that chose us. This we must remember above all.
It saddens me often to hear Americans say that we should not be in this war, and that they do not support it.
America is not a war mongering nation, America is a peaceful nation but a proud nation, a courageous nation. It is because of America that two World Wars and the tyranny and murder plotted within them was stopped. For if not for America most of the European nations would not know freedom today and it is likely that the Jewish faith would have been wiped from existence had we not intervened and stopped Adolph Hitler and his Nazi plan to rule the world.
It is a fact, that democracy, freedom exists in countries where it never could have before had it not been for the aid and assistance of The United States. For even in the current war in Iraq, very little of the good we have accomplished there is being focused on. Not many Americans realize that because of American troops fighting courageously in Iraq, that the Iraqi people held their first real election. For many Iraqis it was their first time to ever vote at all, it was something they never in their lifetime expected to be able to do. But we made it possible and we made it happen.
In the war in Iraq, we have captured the former dictator Saddam Hussien, a man that was just as ruthless as Adolph Hitler was in World War II. We also captured his henchmen and brought them to the Iraqi leadership for justice, and it was the Iraqi people who called for their executions for the crimes against humanity they had commited, and it was the Iraqi courts that decided these men must die for their crimes, and it was the Iraqis that carried out those executions. Something they could never have done had it not been for the support and bravery of American troops. For in the past, if an Iraqi citizen so much as spoke out negatively about Saddam Hussien, that person was immediately executed in the streets and usually their family was as well, children included. But this has been brought to an end, Saddam can never again harm a soul.
These good things we have accomplished in Iraq are never the focal point of the American media. They for some reason choose to tell us the bad things of the war, how many Americans have lost their lives in it and about innocent Iraqi civilians being injured or killed, or suspected terrorist prisoners being tortured. And for the most part they only want to give us THEIR OPINION of how the war is going and if it should be going period. Which is definitely an example of journalism gone wrong. By doing this, the media is basically spreading false propaganda for support of the enemy our sons and daughters and other loved ones are facing every day.
With all of this on my mind tonight, as I sit here in the peace and comfort of my office in my home, I also wonder about the young soldier that is bleeding his or her life's blood out in the desert sands of Iraq or the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. I wonder who's heart will be breaking tomorrow in America when they get the news and I pray for them. I wonder if I will be the one getting that heartbreaking news, and I pray it won't be me. As I do I feel the guilt of a parent, for to pray it is not you that gets that terrible news, it feels the same as if you are hoping it is another parent that gets it. Inside I know I do not wish that news upon any parent ever!
Ok I reckon I have said enough in this post, have a goodnight and know that you're sleeping safe from the terrorist attacks tonight because of our troops over there laying it on the line to capture, defeat and kill if need be those that wish to see us (all Americans) dead and our nation completely destroyed. If protecting ourselves from that is not worth fighting for, well then what could possible be?
War is among us, we are at war on two fronts as I write, Iraq and Afghanistan. We didn't start the war no, we were struck first on the fateful day of September 11th. We did not choose our enemy, for it was the enemy that chose us. This we must remember above all.
It saddens me often to hear Americans say that we should not be in this war, and that they do not support it.
America is not a war mongering nation, America is a peaceful nation but a proud nation, a courageous nation. It is because of America that two World Wars and the tyranny and murder plotted within them was stopped. For if not for America most of the European nations would not know freedom today and it is likely that the Jewish faith would have been wiped from existence had we not intervened and stopped Adolph Hitler and his Nazi plan to rule the world.
It is a fact, that democracy, freedom exists in countries where it never could have before had it not been for the aid and assistance of The United States. For even in the current war in Iraq, very little of the good we have accomplished there is being focused on. Not many Americans realize that because of American troops fighting courageously in Iraq, that the Iraqi people held their first real election. For many Iraqis it was their first time to ever vote at all, it was something they never in their lifetime expected to be able to do. But we made it possible and we made it happen.
In the war in Iraq, we have captured the former dictator Saddam Hussien, a man that was just as ruthless as Adolph Hitler was in World War II. We also captured his henchmen and brought them to the Iraqi leadership for justice, and it was the Iraqi people who called for their executions for the crimes against humanity they had commited, and it was the Iraqi courts that decided these men must die for their crimes, and it was the Iraqis that carried out those executions. Something they could never have done had it not been for the support and bravery of American troops. For in the past, if an Iraqi citizen so much as spoke out negatively about Saddam Hussien, that person was immediately executed in the streets and usually their family was as well, children included. But this has been brought to an end, Saddam can never again harm a soul.
These good things we have accomplished in Iraq are never the focal point of the American media. They for some reason choose to tell us the bad things of the war, how many Americans have lost their lives in it and about innocent Iraqi civilians being injured or killed, or suspected terrorist prisoners being tortured. And for the most part they only want to give us THEIR OPINION of how the war is going and if it should be going period. Which is definitely an example of journalism gone wrong. By doing this, the media is basically spreading false propaganda for support of the enemy our sons and daughters and other loved ones are facing every day.
With all of this on my mind tonight, as I sit here in the peace and comfort of my office in my home, I also wonder about the young soldier that is bleeding his or her life's blood out in the desert sands of Iraq or the mountainous regions of Afghanistan. I wonder who's heart will be breaking tomorrow in America when they get the news and I pray for them. I wonder if I will be the one getting that heartbreaking news, and I pray it won't be me. As I do I feel the guilt of a parent, for to pray it is not you that gets that terrible news, it feels the same as if you are hoping it is another parent that gets it. Inside I know I do not wish that news upon any parent ever!
Ok I reckon I have said enough in this post, have a goodnight and know that you're sleeping safe from the terrorist attacks tonight because of our troops over there laying it on the line to capture, defeat and kill if need be those that wish to see us (all Americans) dead and our nation completely destroyed. If protecting ourselves from that is not worth fighting for, well then what could possible be?
Friday, October 3, 2008
Blackhawk Down
Today is October 3rd, 2008. To many or even most of you this is just another day, it's Friday the end of the work week and time to relax and maybe even party some, and that's cool, it's what you're supposed to do. But today is also a very special anniversary to a select few. To these select few, today is the 15th anniversary of a day for those that survived it, they will never live to forget it. For fifteen years ago today, October 3rd, 1993. On this day during Operation "Restore Hope" Members of the Elite 75th U.S. Army Rangers 3rd Batallion and Members of the also Elite Delta Force. In Mogadishu, Somalia Africa, there to aid the starving people and capture the Warlord Muhammed Farah Adid, who was commiting genocide and his weapon was hunger. Millions had died already to this man's hands and orders.
Then came the day October 3rd 1993. The 75th Rangers and Delta Force were ordered into the Bakara Market deep inside the city of Mogadishu, a very hostile area. They went in from the air in helicopters and from the ground on humvee convoys. Their goal was to capture Muhammed Farah Adid and/or some of his top Lieutenants.
The warlord's militia were ready, they were well informed of our coming, they had people including children with cell phones and radios stations along the entry route to give good warning of the American troops arrival. When the troops arrived in the Bakara Market, the streets were immediately blocked off behind them, by overturning old cars, piling up tires and setting fire to them, virtually trapping the rangers and delta force teams within the boundries of hostile territory. The ambush began, there was hostile fire from all directions, the fight lasted throughout the day and the night into the morning of October 4th. During the battle 2 American Blackhawk helicopters were shotdown in the city, and 19 soldiers would lay dead and another 70 would be wounded.
The Mogadishu Firefight was the bloodiest battle for American troops since the Vietnam War. In the battle two Congressional Medals Of Honor were posthumously awarded to two great heroes, Sgt. Randy Shugart, and Sgt. Gary Gordon. These two men were stationed high above the ground in a helicopter serving as snipers for the ground troops and they requested at their own free will to be put down on the ground to defend the crew of a shot down helicopter which was being converged upong by hundreds and hundreds of armed Somalians. They saved the life of the pilot, but in doing so, they gallantly gave up their own lives.
This day should be remembered, even though it was a 24 hour war, it was a war in which many good young American soldiers fought with valor and honor and gave their life's blood and their lives to defend what was right.
They were there to aid a starving country, a starving people who in the end, turned on them and bit the hands of the American soldiers that were there to help them. This is too often the case in many situations. But I will not go into that now, that's politics in my opinion, and when you mix politics and war, soldiers die and usually for nothing.
Many of you may not know of the day October 3rd 1993 as I said earlier, but I am sure you probably know the movie Blackhawk Down what you need to know most importantly, is that it wasn't just a movie, it was real, boys died, boys bled, and those that came home carry the day with them in silence in their hearts and minds for the rest of their lives. God Bless Those We Lost With Eternal Peace, and God Bless those that came home with peace within themselves and a nation that remembers and appreciates their sacrifices.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
A Little More About Me
I'm just your average southern fried redneck simple kinna man. Nothing fancy here, just me being me. I speak my mind and my beliefs, some ya might like and some ya might now like, either way that's just me.
I'm a firm believer in the fact that "Political Correctness" is part of the ruination of this great country of ours. It's somewhat taken away the comfort that we are supposed to be able to feel by living in a country of freedom and democracy. If ya really think about it, how can the two terms co-exist "Politically Correct" and "Freedom"? Kinna hard for me to understand too.
In this journal you will find my views on a variety of topics in the news and some not on the news. You will find alot of patriotic messages and comments. So if ya read it, prepare yaself for what ya might find, cause ya just might not agree. You're welcome to leave a comment even if ya don't agree lol, I just ask that you don't leave a font assault, no need for Keyboard Commandos I don't think lol.
I'm a firm believer in the fact that "Political Correctness" is part of the ruination of this great country of ours. It's somewhat taken away the comfort that we are supposed to be able to feel by living in a country of freedom and democracy. If ya really think about it, how can the two terms co-exist "Politically Correct" and "Freedom"? Kinna hard for me to understand too.
In this journal you will find my views on a variety of topics in the news and some not on the news. You will find alot of patriotic messages and comments. So if ya read it, prepare yaself for what ya might find, cause ya just might not agree. You're welcome to leave a comment even if ya don't agree lol, I just ask that you don't leave a font assault, no need for Keyboard Commandos I don't think lol.
This Is Me
Hi:
My name is Jeff, I'm 47 years old and live in the mighty fine southern state of Mississippi. I'm a writer, columnist, and poet. I also write short stories and songs. I am a B.M.I. Nashville affilliated songwriter.
I'm married for almost 24 years now, and have two sons one that is 22 years old and is currently serving in The United States Army, and a son that is about to turn 6 years old and has just started school.
I'm an avid hunter, I enjoy hunting whitetail deer, wild turkey and wild hogs here in Mississippi, and just enjoy being in the outdoors seeing all of the wonders that God has created for us all to see and enjoy, if we would only take a moment to.
I am new to this journal website so bear with me as I learn by my mistakes (which I am certain there will be many).
My name is Jeff, I'm 47 years old and live in the mighty fine southern state of Mississippi. I'm a writer, columnist, and poet. I also write short stories and songs. I am a B.M.I. Nashville affilliated songwriter.
I'm married for almost 24 years now, and have two sons one that is 22 years old and is currently serving in The United States Army, and a son that is about to turn 6 years old and has just started school.
I'm an avid hunter, I enjoy hunting whitetail deer, wild turkey and wild hogs here in Mississippi, and just enjoy being in the outdoors seeing all of the wonders that God has created for us all to see and enjoy, if we would only take a moment to.
I am new to this journal website so bear with me as I learn by my mistakes (which I am certain there will be many).
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