More Email From Iraq

 

 

Memo from Iraq: Freedom doesn't come from a shelf at Wal-Mart or Winn-Dixie.


My South Mississippi home, it's time for a reality check. Freedom - where do we get it? From a shelf in Wal-Mart?  No?  Maybe at Winn-Dixie?  Haven't seen it there. No, freedom comes from the men and women, past, present and future, who put our lives on the line to protect it and fight for it.

Freedom has a cost, folks. Sometimes we have to go and do unpopular things, such as kick Saddam's butt. It is something that needed to be done since the first Gulf War.

Don't shrug off weapons of mass destruction because they are small. A caller said that one little sarin container is no big deal. Wrong. One little canister of sarin in Biloxi - put into the air ducts of a casino or the Coast Coliseum when it is packed - could kill most of the people and the rest would pray for death. There is more here or moved to Syria, and we will find it.

Freedom's greatest price tag is human life, and we never know when payment will be demanded. As I was coming out of the chow hall one day a mortar hit a barricade, landed on our side, and one soldier was fatally wounded. As a medic, I tried in vain to save her, but I could not. So don't disrespect her, her family, myself or my family and friends.

 

I am here, and I am telling you like it is. It is not like Vietnam. We will prevail because failure is not an option.

Have fun sitting in your recliners and hating President Bush and enjoying the freedom to have your criticism of him printed in a letter to the editor, because if Saddam was your president, your whole family would be tortured and killed.

SGT. RONALD GEBHART
From Mosul

ronald.gebhart@us.army.mil

 

While I definitely need feedback from readers of this site, Sgt. Gebhart deserves it far more.  His email address appears under his name.  Write to him!  DebV

 

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