A CNN reporter is embedded with the Marines in Fallujah. His impressions:
I have spoken to a lot [of Marines] who have been engaged in some of these firefights. In fact, I was in one of the combat surgical rooms where they were working on a couple of these guys.
Two of them had been ambushed, not where the main fight is going on tonight, but their unit had been ambushed east of Fallujah. And seven people rolled in. There were two that had gunshot wounds. And they pulled a huge slug, a bullet, out of the leg of one of the Marines. And another one had a bullet wound right through the back.
And, amazingly, they were trying to convince their commanders that they were ready to go and go back out. I have been really surprised at … the high degree of morale that these Marines have shown. Remember, they have only been here for a month and a half. Many of these units that are here now engaged in the initial invasion last year and were in Iraq for several months.
Now they’re back. But they seem to be engaged. They’re taking casualties. But it’s really surprising. You don’t see much head-dragging or anything like that. I mean, you know, what you see is kind of more encouragement for these guys.
And, for example, the one who had the gravest — the bullet in and out through his back — was trying to convince his commander that he’d be back. And his commander actually promised him that his spot was still going to be there. Another soldier who was injured in that huge firefight yesterday who I spoke to earlier this morning, he wanted to get back out there. But the only problem was, was that half his shoulder was missing around his firing arm.
But he was convinced he would be able to sit there on a roof and not have to run anywhere and he could contribute that way. So it’s been surprising. But … the Marines that are here certainly appear to be geared up for whatever the future holds.
The proud. The few. Pray for them.
GOOD NEWS IN IRAQ: From Kurdistan, of course. But Kurdistan matters for the future of Iraq – just as much as Fallujah.
MARRIAGE REALITY: “Sunday’s New York Times displayed the hypocrisy and hilarity of our nation’s marriage laws. While the paper ran a front-page story on Governor Romney’s position that he will prohibit same-sex couples residing outside Massachusetts from marrying there, it also included two particularly entertaining wedding announcements. Serving up a diptych of dysfunction, the Times Styles section prominently displayed the Massachusetts wedding of former GE-CEO Jack Welch and Suzy Wetlaufer right alongside the New York marriage of Salman Rushdie and Padma Lakshmi.
Not to pick on Welch and Rushdie, but these two bald, past-their-prime alpha males, who between them have left five wives in their wake, are not exactly poster-children for the sanctity of marriage. The facts are well-tread. This is Welch’s third marriage, to a much-younger fellow divorcee, with whom he struck up an affair after being interviewed by her, only to be caught by his second wife after finding “love e-mails” in his in-box. Rushdie wed for the fourth time, to a knockout-of-a-woman twenty-five years his junior, for whom he supposedly dumped his third wife for after reading about her in a celebrity magazine and then meeting her at the Talk Magazine launch party.
Now does Mitt Romney (on whose commonwealth’s books Welch’s indiscretion was sanctified) or George Pataki (whose state’s laws consecrated Rushdie’s folly) honestly believe that these “marriages” are any more legitimate than the ones that gay couples want to have? How exactly does Jack and Suzy’s union serve to reinforce the culture of marriage? Does Salman, with nearly as many wives as novels, understand the responsibilities of matrimony better than gay men and women yearning to embrace that responsibility?
Absurd is the only way to describe the intellectual dishonesty of our state and national leaders on this issue.” Absurd is a kind description, actually. More feedback on the Letters Page.
The Dish 