Two Movies in 24 Hours

I have seen two movies in 24 hours which is very unusual because I can't remember the last movie I actually went to see one in a theater.  Probably it was Runaway Slave.  Maybe True Grit before that.

Steve and I went to see Lone Survivor yesterday and today I went to see Wolf of Wall Street.

We wanted to see Lone Survivor because we'd both read the book when it came out and well, what a story it is!  I thought the movie was very good and it made me even more appreciative (if that's possible) of our military and what they are willing to sacrifice for this country.  Simply amazing.  I was sorry that the movie deviated from the book in the final scenes; wasn't the real story intense and dramatic enough without making up events?  That being said, it was well worth the time to see.  I highly recommend it if you get a chance.

I went to Wolf because my 22-year old son wanted to see it and asked me to go with him.  Yeah, it's not really a movie to see with your kids, no matter how old they are, but there we were.  I have mixed feelings about Wolf.  I thought that artistically the movie was well done, especially with regard to how it represented the eighties.  But there was an awful lot of gratuitous naked people and sex that could have been left out.  The three hour movie could easily have been done in 2 hours if some of that was trimmed.

My other problem with Wolf is that it seems the older I get the less tolerant I am about glorifying criminals.  The guy needed to be in jail (not a federal country club) and needs to be held to his restitution agreement.  I'm all for freedom of artistic expression and I know a lot of people enjoy movies like that.  I have certainly watched my share of Godfather movies and own a copy of Scarface.  I can't really put my finger on why this one bugs me; maybe it's because this real person defrauded other real people and so far doesn't seem to have paid much of a price.  Maybe it's just that I don't like Belfort.  There's nothing likable about him.

Leonardo DiCaprio probably did a fine job in his role of Jordan Belfort (although I think I would have preferred it if he and Matthew McConaughey had switched roles.  McConaughey would have been excellent in that role.)

I am content now to sit back on the couch and stick to reading books.  And considering the previews I've seen, that's probably going to be a very wise decision.

Rick Perry Ad Thanks Veterans

In his latest ad, Rick Perry gets a boost from 'Lone Survivor' Marcus Luttrell:



It's a pretty good ad.

You've read Luttrell's book, right?

Seal of Honor

A few summers ago I read Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell and have referenced Luttrell and his book several times on this blog.  I was even lucky enough to have Mr. Luttrell autograph my copy for me!  If you've never read the book, you should.  It's riveting and well written. 

There's now a companion book, Seal of Honor, about the life of Lt. Michael P. Murphy, the Medal of Honor recipient Luttrell writes about in his book.  During a fire fight on an Afghanistan mountain, Murphy walked into a clearing so he could get a signal and radio for help.  He was killed as a result. 

I'm ordering this one today!

Selling Out the SEALs

Yesterday I started hearing about the SEALs who have been charged for giving a murdering terrorist thug a fat lip. As I read the reports my first reaction was..."there's got to be more to this. This just can't be true as written!" A fat lip? C'mon!

I'm not finding anything else new this morning. It does, in fact, seem that three SEALs will go before a court marital in January to face charges and possibly be kicked out of the military. Incredible.

By now you've seen the report, but here's a snip, just in case, from Fox News:

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

The three, all members of the Navy’s elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral’s mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.

Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named “Objective Amber,” told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.

Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.

You remember the murder of those Blackwater guards? They were killed, burned, dragged through the streets and hung from a bridge while a mob danced around them and the press took pictures.

How long before Abed gets a trial in New York?

I'm reminded once again of Marcus Luttrell and the agonizing decision he and his fellow SEALs had to make on the side of that mountain in Afghanistan. Let the goatherds go, and risk being exposed, or kill them and risk being tried and convicted in the US media?

His buddy, Matthew Axelson said, " We're not murderers. No matter what we do. We're on active duty behind enemy lines, sent here by our senior commanders. We have a right to do everything we can to save our own lives. The military decision is obvious. To turn them loose would be wrong."

While the SEALs capturing this Abed were not necessarily facing the same life and death decision, they probably could have just as easily shot the guy and been done with it, but instead, like Luttrell and his team, decided to put their faith in the system.

Luttrell said in retrospect, after they decided to let the goatherds go, "It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life."

I wonder if that's what our SEALs are thinking now? That putting their faith in the system was not such a good idea. And how will this affect their decisions in the future? Why bring the guy in when all you're going to get is a court martial? The alternatives to that would be to kill him on scene and make the case that you were defending yourself, or let him go, avoid the hassle and let him live to terrorize another day.

I'm guessing it's the hypersensitivity to abuse after Abu Ghraib and Club Gitmo that makes a fat lip worth a court martial. If that is the case, we're in for a world of troubles. In a battle zone, soldiers should not have to worry about such things. These guys did their job. Period. PERIOD!

(More at Memeorandum)

Dasy, Roxana and the Masters

Thank goodness I am finally out for Spring Break! It was a long time coming this year. The kids have been alternately wild and exhausted and the teachers haven't been much better. Time for a break.

My plans for Spring Break include nothing more exciting than some spring cleaning, some blogging, a Tea Party, yard work, and reading. Down time!

As far as the news goes, I'm sort of behind on things this week. The story that has caught my attention this week has actually NOT been about D'Ohbama and his Apology Tour of Europe, but about Marcus Luttrell's dog. That story just breaks my heart. I've been upset about Dasy all week, and then I read this:

"Luttrell said he’s left town for now and wants to stay as far away as he can. Talking from a place he described as 'the middle of nowhere,' Luttrell said he knows the attack on Dasy pushed him to a place where he doesn’t want to be.

“'I was trying to talk myself out of being who I am,' he said. 'Talking to myself about not doing the one thing I am good at.'”

So say a prayer for Marcus Luttrell and be thankful there are guys like him. Here is Brandon Friedman's post about the incident and an embed of Luttrell's Glenn Beck interview.

The other news story that I'm just fixated on is the Roxana Saberi story as you can tell by my frequent updates on this blog about it. Part of what bothers me about that story is the willingness of people to blame her rather than have compassion for her. "Well she shouldn't have been over there in the first place!" Bah. Her situation looks grim, so hold a kind thought for her and her family. And don't forget that American Robert Levinson is over there somewhere also. What exactly is our State Dept. doing about these folks? Enough?

The Masters is calling from my television. Nothing in the world prettier than Augusta in April.

Happy Spring Break to me!

(Photo: Dasy, courtesy of Marcus Luttrell via Houston Chronicle)

Rules of Engagement

There is a point in Marcus Luttrell's Lone Survivor when he describes his team's initial encounter with the Afghan goatherds who ultimately got his teammates killed.

Luttrell, Matthew Axelson, Michael Patrick Murphy, and Danny Dietz were assigned a mission to kill or capture a high ranking Taliban official in what was called Operation Redwing. Luttrell was the only one of the four to survive the mission and Michael Murphy became a Medal of Honor recipient.

As they were on the side of that Afghan mountain, keeping watch, they encountered a group of goatherds and had to make a decision whether to let them go or kill them. Luttrell quotes Murphy as saying

"If we kill them, someone will find their bodies real quick. For a start, these fucking goats are just going to hang around. And when these guys don't get home for their dinner, their friends and relatives are going to head straight out to look for them, especially for this fourteen-year-old. The main problem is the goats. Because they can't be hidden, and that's where people will look. When the find the bodies, the Taliban leaders will sing to the Afghan media. The media in the U.S.A. will latch on to it and write stuff about the brutish U.S. Armed Forces. Very shortly after that, we'll be charged with murder. The murder of innocent, unarmed Afghan farmers."

So what did they do? They debated both options, they voted, then they let the goatherds go. And the goatherds ratted them out and they all, except Luttrell, were killed.

This story illustrated to me, even back when I read it in 2007, that the media has no business in American military decisions. The fact that these soldiers had to stop on the field of battle and make this particular life and death decision based on how they would be treated in the media is just crazy. Luttrell says they ALL knew that letting the goatherds go was a bad call. But they didn't want to be raked through the media and called murderers.

This is not something they should have had to be concerned about.

Which brings me to U.S. District Judge John Bates and his decision today that prisoners in the War on Terror can use U.S. civilian courts to challenge their detention at Bagram Airfield.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air points out that "The Constitution gives the judiciary no role whatsoever in the prosecution of war or in handling the prisoners our military captures. War powers are explicitly split between the executive and legislative branches. The practical reading of this order is that the federal courts have some sort of jurisdiction over military activity in Afghanistan, which proceeds from the equally fallacious rulings about Gitmo."

In addition, Article 84 of the Geneva Convention clearly states that prisoners of any stripe shall not get tried in civil courts.

Ed goes on to say that this order "interferes with military operations by treating captured prisoners as having Constitutional guarantees intended for the maintenance of civil order. Prisoners now will get the right to habeas corpus, turning soldiers into police officers and key intelligence into discovery material. No one can fight a war with a Miranda warning in their back pocket, nor should they."

He's exactly right. There's a nasty wave of anti-American, anti-military sentiment blowing through the courts from the dropped charges on USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, to the Urbina decision and the Boumediene decision, to the upcoming Uighur release, and now Ayman Saeed Batarfi's upcoming release, not to mention Binyam Mohamed who has already been released to Britain.

So what would Marcus Luttrell and his team have had to do? Clinging to the side of the mountain with very little room to maneuver, they'd have had to pull out a Miranda card and read these guys their rights? Transported them to a holding facility? Allowed them one phone call and a lawyer? Secure the crime scene?

These nitwits in the judiciary need to realize that the battlefield is not an urban crime scene and can not be treated in the same way. If military prisoners are tried in civilian courts, under civilian rules, where will it lead? Some suspect it will lead to our guys just killing the prisoners rather than going through the headache of the alternative.

We need to trust our men and women in uniform to do what they were trained to do. They don't need us second guessing them.

Medal of Honor Day

Today is Medal of Honor Day. Take the time and read about Medal of Honor recipients here.

Marcus Luttrell is not a Medal of Honor recipient but is a survivor of Operation Red Wing in which his buddy Michael Murphy gave his life to save his fellow soldiers and try to get them out of a very bad situation. Monsoor was awarded the Medal of Honor by George W. Bush. If you've never read Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell, go straight to your library, or to Amazon, and get it. It's a fascinating and thrilling read. Here is an interview with Marcus: