It's not a race thing...it's a moosebutt thing.
Yeesh. I appreciate her service but I cringe at the tone of the book (or at least the MSM’s portrayal of the book’s tone): Depression and Resentment.
I would have had all kinds of sympathy for Ms. Johnson if she hadn't played the card...........
"Me" vs. "Her" does not warrant any extra attention to what she had to endure, that should have been enough.
Had it been me, I would have said leave me alone, I have a life to live..........
She’s right you know. If the media wants to focus on POWs, they should all be given their due.
Anyone ever hear of this guy?
“A National Guard spokesman stated that an Iraqi ambulance driver witnessed Walters [with Jessica Lynch’s 507th main, co.], still alive, guarded by six Fedayeen, in front of a building. Walters was led inside the building, and several hours later, the same witness delivered his dead body to a hospital. DNA samples recovered from blood in the building match that of Walters, and splatter vectors suggest that he died from two gunshot wounds to the back, from more than twenty feet away.
During initial reports after the Lynch rescue, it had been stated that a blonde soldier, presumably Lynch, had fought until she ran out of ammunition, although she later refuted this; although there has been no official investigation into this matter, it has been widely speculated that this soldier was Walters, who is also blond. Donald’s mother, Arlene Walters, appeared on the CBS Early Show, making this claim, on May 28.
Army reports from 2003 state that Walters died in the fighting during an ambush that left ten others dead; with no American witnesses to his death. It has now been suggested that Walters was separated from his unit; several gun magazines were found near the location of Walters’ capture, suggesting that he may have, indeed, fought until he ran out of ammunition. Before capture, Walters was shot in the leg, and stabbed twice with a knife in the abdomen, had a dislocated left shoulder, shot twice in the back.
Sgt. Walters was interred with military honors at the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas on April 12, 2003. More than 150 of Sgt. Walters’ relatives, friends and Army comrades attended his funeral. At the funeral, his widow, Stacie, was presented with the Bronze Star and Purple Heart awarded to her husband.
Sgt. Walters’ posthumously awarded Bronze Star was upgraded to the Silver Star for gallantry with marked distinction in March 2004. The ceremony was held at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas with Brigadier General Howard Bromberg, director of the Enlisted Personnel Management Directorate, U.S. Army Human Resources Command presenting the decoration to Mrs. Walters. In his remarks, General Bromberg suggested that Sgt. Walters is believed to have provided covering fire for his comrades, allowing many of them the opportunity to escape at the cost of his own life. Sgt. Walters also received the Prisoner of War Medal in May of the same year. There is currently a war crimes investigation on his behalf.”
It's not a race thing...it's a moosebutt thing.
On which page does she start to blame George Bush?
Probably in the acknowledgments.
Anyone hear about this guy?
“It was Miller, a 23-year-old Army welder from Kansas, who single-handedly took on several Iraqis, manually slamming rounds into his assault rifle and firing as they prepared to lob mortar rounds at Lynch and other soldiers from the 507th Maintenance Company.
“He’s one of my heroes,” said Army Spc. Shoshana Johnson, who was wounded and leaning against her truck as Miller dashed past her up a dusty road toward the Iraqi mortar pit. “His actions may have saved my life.”
Miller was the sole member of the unit to receive the Silver Star, one of the military’s highest awards for valor. Nearly 130,000 Army troops served in the Iraq war and its aftermath, but only 86 Silver Stars had been awarded through mid-September, according to the Army Personnel Command. Lynch and other members of the 507th received Bronze Stars, a notch below the Silver Star.
“Shoshana yelled at him, ‘Get down, Miller! Get down! You’re going to get hit!’” said another soldier, Spc. Edgar Hernandez, describing how Miller charged toward the Iraqis. Hernandez recalled hearing automatic fire from Iraqi AK-47s and the single shots of Miller’s M-16 rifle.
As a prisoner of war, Miller badgered his interrogators for three weeks, singing an off-key rendition of country singer Toby Keith’s anti-terrorist song, “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” And he fooled them.
The Iraqis pressed him to explain a series of numbers and code words scratched on a piece of paper inside his helmet. Prices for power-steering pumps, he told them. The soldiers tossed the paper into a small campfire, unaware that they had destroyed information vital to an enemy: radio frequencies for an invading unit.
“He’s a Pfc. in the Army and he exposed himself without hesitation to the enemy to save his comrades,” said Col. Heidi V. Brown, who commanded the Army task force in Iraq that included Miller’s unit and who wrote his medal ciTation, based on interviews with U.S. soldiers and Iraqis. “It doesn’t get more heroic than that.”
All the witnesses corroborated the tale of Miller’s charging toward a mortar pit and shooting at the enemy, said Brown in a telephone interview, though no one could agree on a precise number of enemy dead. An Army investigative report said it could have been as many as nine. “Absolutely, he killed some Iraqis,” Brown said.”
Tough crap,you got your black president honey now shut the hell up.
More about Miller and his and Johnson’s reaction to Lynch.
“Johnson, his fellow POW from the 507th, couldn’t recall anything particularly special about Miller when they were stationed together at Fort Bliss, Texas, in the months before they headed off to war. “A down-to-earth country boy,” Johnson remembered with a laugh. “He likes his chew. That’s all I remember about Pat: He had that chew in his mouth.”
Miller now spends his days toiling in a motor pool as part of the 2nd Company of the 43rd Area Support Group. Because most of the unit’s heavy equipment has been shipped over to Iraq, his welding torch has been cold. Recently, he has been cutting the grass and slathering brown and white paint on the building’s interior walls. Every so often, a fellow soldier will quiz him about his service in Iraq.
A $25,000-a-year private first class, Miller lives in a modest three-bedroom townhouse on base with his wife, Jessa,, and two children, 4-year-old Tyler and 14-month-old Makenzie. The children are in day care while his wife works making glasses for LensCrafters. One day, Miller hopes to rise to a higher enlisted rank — an Army warrant officer — and oversee a maintenance shop, perhaps putting in 20 years.
But the fact that Miller remains an unknown grates on Johnson and some in Miller’s family.
“Jessica’s a wonderful girl, and we’re happy she’s OK,” Johnson said. “But it was Patrick; it wasn’t Jessica. His weapon was working. He was doing everything possible. Patrick deserves so much, and he’s not getting the recognition. He’s still a private first class. He hasn’t even been promoted.”
Miller flopped on the plaid couch. He said he wants to put the entire Iraqi episode behind him and get on with his life. Play with his kids. Work on his car. Complete the paperwork for the warrant officer program.
He is asked about the fame of Lynch and how her celebrity has eclipsed his heroics. He summed it all up with a shrug. “She’s female. I’m male. It’s expected of me,” he said. Still, like some others in his company, he harbors a gnawing resentment that Lynch has emerged as the only story in the 507th.
“It just gets me how she gets credit for something she didn’t do,” he finally said. “We were all in the same unit.”
"It was kind of hurtful," the former Army cook said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. "If I'd been a petite, cutesy thing, it would've been different."
Johnson asked to be medically discharged from the military in part because she felt other soldiers resented her over the attention her POW status attracted."