On 27 Feb 2005 05:40:30 -0800, "Tim" wrote:

Thanks John,
heres something else too!
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/2/102005mf.asp


(AgapePress) - Rick from Winona, Mississippi, called my state-wide talk
radio program this week. Sometimes, you get a phone call that ought to
be read in the broader market.

On the program that day we were discussing the report that some
Europeans were disgusted with the Super Bowl commercial of American
soldiers getting applause in an airport. The critics thought it too
extreme in its patriotism and a possible incitement to further war.

At any rate, Rick (he asked us not to use his full name) called to talk
about his experience coming back recently from the fields of war. His
words (and they are worth your time reading, only lightly edited):

"I heard you talking about the Super Bowl commercial. I'm a Marine, a
re-con Marine. I just got back from overseas, the second week of
December, actually. I was injured overseas, so that's why I'm home now.

"But the whole time I was [there, in recovery] we watched the news to
see what's going on. And we saw the protests, and we saw what the media
was saying about what's going on, and we were worried about what we
were actually going to face when we came home. We didn't know what to
expect, to be honest with you. From the news media we were seeing, the
whole country was basically telling us we're a bunch of jerks.

"I thank God that the troops that are there don't see the news
coverage. I thank God every day, because there'd be ten times the
number getting killed, just because it would so un-motivate [sic] them.

"Back to the story: there were seven other soldiers that came home with
me that day. We flew into JFK, and we were talking on the way back:
What's going to happen? What will we be facing? Is it going to be like
the Vietnam era, are there going to be people spitting at us?

"We didn't know. We had that much trepidation about it.

"We get into JFK, we step out of the breezeway into the main terminal,
and directly in front of us was an elderly gentleman carrying a bag.
And he immediately stopped, set his bag down, and the first thing we
all thought was, 'Oh, Lord, here we go already.' He just stopped and
looked at us for a second, and then tears came to his eyes and he
saluted us.

"And -- I'm breaking up now [editor's note: with tears] -- every one of
us just started crying like babies. Everybody in the terminal -- I kid
you not, at least two to three hundred people -- just started clapping,
spontaneously. To me, it was so much worth what we were doing, to
realize that people over here actually get what we were doing. We
weren't over there because it's fun. We're over there doing a job.

"When I saw the Super Bowl commercial, I just started bawling like a
baby again because that was something totally unexpected. We had no
idea that people actually appreciated what we're doing, from what we
see on the news. We thought we were going to come back and get eggs
thrown at us. It was so refreshing to know that what we were seeing on
the news is just a bunch of garbage that's being concocted by the
media, that 99.9 percent of the country doesn't believe that way.

"I have a couple of more months of recovery. I got hit with a
concussion and have some internal damage, but I'm feeling up, doing
well, and hopefully I can get back over there with my boys."

It caused some tears in this talk show host's eyes to know there were
tears in his. Appreciation, smiles, handclaps -- they can go a long way
when a nation is at war, regardless of what the media and some
Europeans might think.

A nice story. I had tears in my eyes during the Super Bowl commercial also. I
have a feeling there will be a lot of clapping in a lot of airports around the
country for a while.

John H

On the 'PocoLoco' out of Deale, MD,
on the beautiful Chesapeake Bay!

"Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it."
Rene Descartes