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April 23, 2007
Not So Wild About Harry
Ok US troop fans, here you go. The following link will take you to a must read story over at National Review Online (NRO). It's by W. Thomas Smith Jr. and it's called "Baghdad Calling".
Last Thursday, hours after Sen. Harry Reid (D., NV) proclaimed the Iraq War “lost,” U.S. Navy Lt. Jason Nichols was e-mailing Michelle Malkin from his office in Baghdad with a message for Reid.
“Your [Reid’s] words are killing us,” Nichols writes. “Your statements make the Iraqis afraid to help us for fear we’ll leave them unprotected in the future.”
Earlier that day — before Reid’s infamous declaration of defeat — I was on the phone with Nichols, who told me, “We are winning,” explained to me how he knows we are winning, why the troops actually doing the fighting continue to support the war effort, and what he and others are doing to get the facts in front of the American people.
Nichols, a Naval officer currently serving in Iraq, oversees a grassroots effort recently launched by a small group of active-duty servicemen and women hoping to communicate to Congress “the troops’ desire to remain in Iraq” until the mission is complete.
The effort, AppealforCourage.org, has been collecting signatures for a petition that reads:
As an American currently serving my nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to fully support our mission in Iraq and halt any calls for retreat. I also respectfully urge my political leaders to actively oppose media efforts, which embolden my enemy while demoralizing American support at home. The War in Iraq is a necessary and just effort to bring freedom to the Middle East and protect America from further attack.
AppealforCourage.org is a petition limited to service folks and is a counter-effort to antiwar AppealforRedress.org.
As of this writing, AppealforCourage.org, has received 2,172 signatures. AppealforRedress.org, has received 1,855. It’s not a lot of signatures for either group relative to the size of the U.S. armed forces. But as Nichols explains, “Appeal for Redress has received quite a bit more media exposure than Appeal for Courage, and we’ve exceeded their number of signatures in a third of the time it took them to collect theirs.”
Dont forget to read the article,"Baghdad Calling" at NRO...U.S. Navy Lt. Jason Nichols makes it well worth the time.
Posted by Post Scripts at April 23, 2007 09:56 PM
Comments
UPDATE FROM:
The Tank blog at NRO
Appeal for Courage's Numbers are Soaring [W. Thomas Smith Jr.] Navy Lt. Jason Nichols in Baghdad informs me that AppealforCourage.org has received more signatures over the past 24 hours than they have in any 24-hour period since they began their petition in mid-February.
And the numbers — nearly 300 new signatures from active-duty servicemen and women since yesterday morning — are climbing hourly.
As we mentioned in Baghdad Calling, the military's awareness of the petition has been accomplished primarily through word of mouth.
Today, according to Nichols, "Everybody here [in Iraq] seems to be talking about us thanks to National Review Online."
Posted by: Tina at April 24, 2007 09:33 PM