(Video) The Obama Iraq Documentary

Quiet Iraq streets leave soldiers yearning for Afghanistan

Full story (here).

Spc. Grover Gebhart has spent nine months at a small post on a Sunni-Shiite fault line in western Baghdad. But the 21-year-old soldier on his first tour in Iraq feels he's missing the real war -- in Afghanistan, where his brother is fighting the Taliban.

With violence in Iraq at its lowest level in four years and the war in Afghanistan at a peak, the soldiers serving at patrol station Maverick say Gebhart's view is increasingly common, especially among younger soldiers looking to prove themselves in battle.

"I've heard it a lot since I got here," said 2nd Lt. Karl Kuechenmeister, a 2007 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who arrived in Iraq about a week ago.

Soldiers who have experienced combat stress note that it is usually young soldiers on their first tour who most want to get on the battlefield. They say it is hard to communicate the horrors of war to those who have not actually experienced it.

"These kids are just being young," said Sgt. Christopher Janis, who is only 23 but is on his third tour in Iraq. "They say they want to get into battle until they do, and then they won't want it anymore."

That soldiers are looking elsewhere for a battle is a testament to how much Iraq has changed from a year ago, when violence was at its height. Now it's the lowest in four years, thanks to the U.S. troop surge, the turn by former Sunni insurgents against al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Iraqi government crackdowns on Shiite militias.

The Iron Timetable

This is from an editorial from the Washington Post (of all places).

BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: "They said we couldn't leave when violence was up, they say we can't leave when violence is down." Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. Early last year, when the war was at its peak, the Democratic candidate proposed a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. combat forces in slightly more than a year. Yesterday, with bloodshed at its lowest level since the war began, Mr. Obama endorsed the same plan. After hinting earlier this month that he might "refine" his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq.

Full article (here).

The most beautiful wedding of the year

Full story (here).

The walk down the aisle yesterday was only a matter of yards. Yet for Martyn Compton it meant everything. Indeed, his determination to make the distance was matched only by that of the beautiful young woman he was about to marry.

And when he falteringly held out his hand for her to slip the gold ring on his finger, they both finally fulfilled the dream they had fought desperately against all the odds to make a reality.

It was so nearly destroyed when, two years ago, Martyn, a Lance-Corporal in the Household Cavalry, was badly burned in an ambush in Afghanistan. Suffering from 70 per cent burns, he was in a coma for three months.

When he regained consciousness, his once handsome face and honed body were ravaged. His eyelids had been fused inside out and he had lost his ears, nose and hair. He was told he might never walk, nor use his arms, again.

His catastrophic injuries came to represent the tragic cost of British troops being sent to the Middle East, and his heroism in overcoming them made headlines around the world.

(Video) Karachi Kids

Last week, the kids in this documentary trailer were in the news when they were returned to the US from Pakistan.



The full film can be found at http://karachikids.com/.

Obama says he used "poor phrasing" on Jerusalem

Full article (here).

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said on Sunday he used "poor phrasing" in a speech supporting Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel.

"You know, the truth is that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech. And we immediately tried to correct the interpretation that was given," he said in an interview aired on Sunday on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria -- GPS."

"The point we were simply making was, is that we don't want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the '67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent," Obama said.

Obama's campaign has issued similar clarifications since the candidate's speech to pro-Israel lobby group after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination early last month.

In the speech, Obama told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that if elected president in November, he would work for peace with a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," the Illinois senator said. Palestinian leaders reacted with anger and dismay.

Election Humor

An email from Ireland to the brethren in the States...a point to ponder despite your political affiliation:

'We, in Ireland , can't figure out why people are even bothering to hold an election in the United States .

On one side, you have a pants wearing lawyer, married to a lawyer who can't keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against a lawyer who goes to the wrong church who is married to yet another lawyer who doesn't even like the country her husband wants to run.

Now...On the other side, you have a nice old war hero whose name starts with the appropriate Mc terminology, married to a good looking younger woman who owns a beer distributorship.

What in Lords name are ye lads thinking over there in the colonies??