Refugee Status, Free of Charge

Posted on November 14, 2014November 14, 2014 by Denise Simon

From the White House website:

Creating an Immigration System for the 21st Century

Our nation’s immigration system is broken. Fixing it is an economic and national security imperative. That’s why President Obama is working to pass a common sense, comprehensive set of reforms that ensures everyone plays by the same rules.

Yeah sure thing White House. And then there is an associated video promoted by the White House:

Barack Obama has touted in recent weeks his assertion that he will proceed within all his presidential power executive action in spite of Congress. Sure there is a Senate bill that the House never took up and there were many reasons most of which it did not secure the border in advance to stop the illegal insurgency.

So the Obama 10 point plan that he threatens to sign before the end of the year includes:

The plan reportedly contains 10 initiatives that include everything from boosting border security to improving pay for immigration officers. The most controversial pertain to the millions who could get a deportation reprieve under what is known as “deferred action.”

Deferred action will include illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, as well as parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents. The latter could allow upwards of 4.5 million illegal immigrant adults with U.S.-born children to lawfully remain.

Senators who oppose deferred action say those who benefit from it will receive work authorization in the United States, Social Security numbers and government-issued IDs.

Sure to cause consternation among anti-“amnesty” lawmakers is a plan to expand deferred action for young people. Obama created such a program for illegal immigrants in June of 2012. For those who came to the U.S. as children, entered before June 2007 and were under 31 as of June 2012. The change would expand that to cover anyone who entered before they were 16, and change the cut-off from June 2007 to January 1, 2010, making nearly 300,000 illegal immigrants eligible.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers also would see a pay raise in order to “increase morale” within the ICE workforce.

DHS also is planning to “promote” the new naturalization process by giving a 50 percent discount on the first 10,000 applicants who come forward, with the exception of those who have income levels above 200 percent of the poverty level.

Tech jobs though a State Department immigrant visa program would offer another half-million immigrants a path to citizenship, including their spouses as well.

Obama has vowed to act in the absence of congressional action and has claimed that congressional action could still supersede his executive steps.

Just in case you need to understand what is in process already, this is a need to know and it is chilling as it is going on presently in the background.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government will launch a program in December to grant refugee status to some people under the age of 21 who live in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and whose parents legally reside in the United States.

U.S. officials say parents can ask authorities free of charge for refugee status for their children in the Central American countries, which are plagued by poverty and vicious gang violence. The program does not apply to minors who have arrived in the U.S. illegally.

Vice President Joe Biden announced the program Friday at the Inter-American Development Bank, where the presidents of the three Central American countries will present a plan to stem child migration from their countries.

U.S. officials said that children deemed refugees will be able to work immediately upon arrival in the U.S., opt for permanent residency the following year and for naturalization five years later. They did not say how long the process of receiving refugee status will take.

Central American children who meet the requirements will be part of a quota of 4,000 people from Latin America receiving refugee status each fiscal year, officials said. The U.S. quota of Latin America refugees currently consists of Cubans and Colombians.

Applicants who don’t meet the requirements will be evaluated to see if they can be admitted conditionally under a non-permanent migratory status that allows them to work temporarily in the U.S.

Biden’s announcement comes as President Barack Obama is poised to unveil a series of executive actions on immigration that will shield possibly around 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally from deportation, according to advocates in touch with the White House.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., criticized the plan, which he described as “government-sanctioned border surge” if Obama acts as expected.

“The policy announced today could open Pandora’s box, allowing potentially even more people to come to the United States. This is bad policy and undermines the integrity of our immigration system,” Goodlatte said in a news release.

The program aims to be a legal and safe alternative to the long and dangerous journey some Central American children take north to reach the U.S. and to reunite with their parents in the U.S. Tens of thousands of unaccompanied child and teenage migrants showed up at the U.S. border earlier this year.

On Wednesday, Salvadoran Foreign Minister Hugo Martinez said the plan includes measures to stimulate economic growth, improve public safety, improve government agencies and provide better education and training opportunities.

Heritage Foundation has their own 10 point measure and it does make huge sense.

Consider this, how much money does it really cost taxpayers, the economic landscape, the government, the education system, the healthcare and the culture to accommodate and financially support illegals? No study has been ordered for such a financial review, but whatever it may be, it is far larger than going in fact to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador and building a infrastructure in those countries to keep people there with great success. This is yet another platform where USAID and the State Department foreign affairs has failed.

In closing, President Reagan worked with Congress and Congress authorized amnesty, yet Barack Obama is NOT using Congress.

Tanto Explains 13 Hours of Benghazi

Posted on November 14, 2014November 14, 2014 by Denise Simon

There are quiet heroes all around us, those that run to the sound of the guns. We have read and heard much about Benghazi however, much of what has been telegraphed has been filtered and selected information.

Personally I have been a student of Benghazi since the very second it occurred. Having put my pen to paper, I have researched Benghazi for all the smaller details that could be determined to analyze the ‘why’ of the failures to protect those two compounds from any attack.

There are laws in place as a result of the attack on the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Those laws and procedures are often not followed, they are in fact waived for the sake of obscure diplomatic objectives and such was the case in Benghazi.

So this brings us to the attack on territory that is deemed sovereign even in a foreign country where an Ambassador was murdered. It should be noted here as well, that any Ambassador in country maintains the rank of a 4 star general. Sadly 3 others that terrible night in Benghazi perished as well. Because of waiver to protocol by many powerbrokers in DC that include those at the National Security Council, the White House and the State Department, any response to aid those Americans in Benghazi were left to perish.

Quiet heroes from the CIA annex stepped up against orders to save all they could and did succeed as almost 30 people were evacuated to safety after an intense night of hostilities.

One quiet hero was Kris Paranto. He was joined by several others including Tig and Oz that we have come to know from the Fox’s Bret Baier interview. There were other quiet heroes that night that deserve our praise and honor. Blessings to all of them for doing what they are trained and paid to do, go to the fight and win.

My distinct please was to interview Kris on radio who was generous giving us an hour of his time to offer details and conditions of the 9/11 attack on Benghazi.

Here is the interview with Kris.

The truth has no agenda if those with the truth can tell it.

There is valor in those who have the gravitas and Kris demonstrates those characteristics along with the countless others whose stories we may never know. The other quiet souls are the generous family members who graciously allow sons and daughters to serve across the world in hostile regions. Libya is hostile and has spiraled out of control and many militias there have pledged solidarity is Islamic State (Daesh/ISIS). Libya is a diplomatic failure that began under Hillary Clinton and since has been ignored by John Kerry, the White House and the National Security Council.

The Benghazi boys stood tall to win the fight and save who they could. Well done gentlemen, well done.

Death of Speech ‘Truthy Project’

Posted on November 11, 2014November 11, 2014 by Denise Simon

Alright, it has been proven that the NSA is mining our data, that includes friends, purchases, internet activity and more. Now sadly the government is providing earmarked money for data mining on thoughts and categories of thought and opinion.

A friend that I have had as a guest on radio show, C. Steven Tucker who is a subject matter expert on healthcare and most especially Obamacare had his Twitter account deleted under the ‘Truthy Project”. There were several more accounts that met with the same thought demise. What happened to Freedom of Speech, whether it is true and proven in words with evidence or even partially true or perhaps even false due to misunderstandings or poor assumptions? Demerits and deletions abound in all cases.

What has happened to America and how did we get here?

House Committee Demands Answers on Truthy Project

Taxpayer-funded initiative collected 600,000 political tweets in its ‘database,’ bragged about having conservative Twitter accounts suspended

BY: Elizabeth Harrington

The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee sent a letter to the head of the National Science Foundation (NSF) on Monday, demanding answers about the origins of the nearly $1 million taxpayer-funded project to track “misinformation” on Twitter.

The Truthy project, being conducted by researchers at Indiana University, is under investigation for targeting political commentary on Twitter. The project monitors “suspicious memes,” “false and misleading ideas,” and “hate speech,” with a goal of one day being able to automatically detect false rumors on the social media platform.

The web service has been used to track tweets using hashtags such as #tcot (Top Conservatives on Twitter), and was successful in getting accounts associated with conservatives suspended, according to a 2012 book co-authored by the project’s lead researcher, Filippo Menczer, a professor of Informatics and Computer Science at Indiana University.

Menczer has also said that Truthy monitored tweets using #p2 (Progressive 2.0), but did not discuss any examples of getting liberal accounts suspended in his book.

“The Committee and taxpayers deserve to know how NSF decided to award a large grant for a project that proposed to develop standards for online political speech and to apply those standards through development of a website that targeted conservative political comments,” wrote Chairman Lamar Smith (R., Texas) in a letter to NSF Director France Cordova.

“While some have argued that Truthy could be used to better understand things like disaster communication or to assist law enforcement, instead it appears Truthy focused on examples of ‘false and misleading ideas, hate speech, and subversive propaganda’ communicated by conservative groups,” he said.

Smith is asking for the original application for the study, and “every internal and external e-mail, letter, memorandum, record, note, text message or other document” sent or received by the NSF about Truthy since the study began in 2011.

Smith’s letter references a publication co-written by Menczer which explains how the project was used to track tweets before the 2010-midterm elections.

In “Abuse of Social Media and Political Manipulation,” a chapter for the book The Death of the Internet, released in 2012, Menczer writes how his team successfully had Twitter accounts suspended.

“With the exploding popularity of online social networks and microblogging platforms, social media have become the turf on which battles of opinion are fought,” the chapter begins. “This section discusses a particularly insidious type of abuse of social media, aimed at manipulation of political discourse online.”

Truthy tracked up to 8 million tweets per day in the run up to the 2010 midterms, and stored 600,000 political tweets in their database, contrary to Menczer’s claim that Truthy does not “have a database.” This section of the Truthy website was recently deleted, following an editorial by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai warning the project could be misused.

“The streams provided our system with up to 8 million tweets per day during the course of the study,” the paper said. “These were scanned in real time by our system. In total, our analysis considered over 305 million tweets collected from September 14 until October 27, 2010.”

“Of these, 1.2 million contained one or more of our political keywords; detection of interesting memes further reduced this set to 600,000 tweets actually entered in our database for analysis,” the paper added.

“We don’t have a database,” Menczer said when attacking the Washington Free Beacon’s initial story on Truthy.

The database was used to identify “several Truthy memes, resulting in many of the accounts involved being suspended by Twitter,” the chapter said.

Truthy was able to suspend the account of C. Steven Tucker, a health insurance broker, who often used the hashtag “American Patriots,” or #ampat, from his two Twitter accounts.

“This activity generated traffic around this hashtag and gave the impression that more people were tweeting about it,” the chapter said. “These two accounts had generated a total of over 41,000 tweets.”

Another account, @PeaceKaren_25, was suspended after tweeting in support of Speaker of the House John Boehner (R., Ohio) over 10,000 times in four months. “A separate colluding account @HopeMarie_25 retweeted all the tweets generated by @PeaceKaren_25 supporting the same candidates and boosting the same websites,” the paper said.

Smith said it is troubling that the project was able to delete and suspend Twitter accounts.

“Whether by amazing coincidence or on purpose, it appears that several social media accounts highlighted by Truthy were subsequently terminated by the owners of the social media platforms, effectively muzzling the political free speech of the targeted individuals and groups,” he said. “In presenting and publishing the findings of their work, the Truthy research team proudly described how the web service targeted conservative social media messages. Their presentations featured examples of what they found to be online political speech ‘abuses’ by supporters of these groups.”

A spokesman for Indiana University said that they are “aware of the letter but have no comment.”

Pathetic condition in America without so much as a whimper from informed patriots.

Iran’s 9 Points to Destroy Israel

Posted on November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 by Denise Simon

Iran general: ‘Our hands are on the trigger’ to destroy Israel

Revolutionary Guard air force chief quoted as saying his forces are ready to act as soon as they receive the order

The air force commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was quoted by Iran’s Fars news agency as saying Tuesday that Iran’s military has its finger on the trigger to destroy Israel as soon as it receives the order to do so. Iranian leaders regularly issue threats against Israel and the United States, but the wording ascribed to Salami on Tuesday was particularly aggressive.

—–
But is the White House and SecState listening? Of course they are and they are dismissive. John Kerry should be recalled as SecState and needs to be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors as Israel is the sole democratic ally in the Middle East. Israel and the United States have a historical deep partnered relationship as mentioned hundreds of time even by the Obama administration.

So Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei repeats his threat and then just lays it out specifically. Ayatollah Khamenei says West Bank should be armed like Gaza, and Jewish population should return to countries it came from

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called over the weekend for the destruction of Israel, stating that the “barbaric” Jewish state “has no cure but to be annihilated.”

A plan titled “9 key questions about the elimination of Israel” was posted on his Twitter account Saturday night, using the hashtag #handsoffalaqsa, in reference to the recent tensions on the Temple Mount.

The sometimes grammatically awkward list explained the how and why of Khomeini’s vision for replacing Israel with a Palestinian state.

The first point stated that “the fake Zionist regime has tried to realize its goals by means of infanticide, homicide, violence & iron fist while boasts about it blatantly.”

Due to the above, Khomeini argued, “the only means of bringing Israeli crimes to an end is the elimination of this regime.”

Embedded image permalink

However, he noted that destroying Israel would not mean the “massacre of the Jewish people in this region” but rather “the Islamic Republic has proposed a practical & logical mechanism for this to the international communities.”

The “proper way of eliminating Israel,” he suggested, is through a “public and organized referendum” for all of the “original people of Palestine including Muslims, Christians, and Jews wherever they are…” However, “the Jewish immigrants who have been persuaded into emigration to Palestine do not have the right to take part.”

The resulting government would then decide if the “non-Palestinian emigrants” can remain in the country or should “return to their home countries.”

Khomeini charged the international community with overcoming the “usurper Zionist” objections to his “fair and logical plan.” Until the referendum, Israel should be confronted with “resolute and armed resistance.”

The Iranian leader also called for arming the people of the West Bank and Gaza to fight against Israel, and rejected “arbitration by UN or other international organizations” because “the fact that Yasser Arafat was poisoned and killed by Israel…proves that in the viewpoint of Israel ‘peace’ is simply a trick for more crimes and occupation.”

“This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated,” Khamenei wrote in an earlier tweet on Friday.

“West Bank should be armed just like #Gaza. Friends of Palestine should do their best to arm People in West Bank,” he declared in another.

The Iranian supreme leader first called for the arming of Palestinians in the West Bank in July, during the summer’s 50-day conflict.

In late August, Iran said it was stepping up efforts to arm West Bank Palestinians for battle against Israel, with Basij militia chief Mohammad Reza Naqdi saying the move would lead to Israel’s annihilation, Iran’s Fars news agency reported.

“Arming the West Bank has started and weapons will be supplied to the people of this region,” Naqdi, who heads the nationwide paramilitary network, said.

“The Zionists should know that the next war won’t be confined to the present borders and the Mujahedeen will push them back,” he added. Naqdi claimed that much of Hamas’s arsenal, training and technical knowhow in the recent conflict with Israel was supplied by Iran.

Stuart Winer

Marissa Newman Marissa Newman is a breaking news editor at The Times of Israel.

AP, AFP contributed to this report.

10 Years, Fallujah, then and now

Posted on November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 by Denise Simon

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – It has been a decade since Marines fought for their lives — and their brothers-in-arms — in Iraq’s bloodiest battles, which would spark a turning point in the eight-year war.

Nearly 100 Americans, mostly Marines, would die in the battles of Fallujah during some of the toughest fights in the campaign. Fallujah secured its place in Marine Corps heritage, alongside battles fought during the same era, like that in Sangin, Afghanistan, as well as those of past wars, like Iwo Jima and Tarawa.

WEBCAST: Commemoration of the Second Battle of Fallujah, Operation AL FAJR

On Sept. 14, 2004, Maj. Gen. Larry Nicholson, then a colonel, was medevaced from the city that had become an al-Qaida stronghold after he was wounded in a rocket attack the day after taking command of 1st Marine Regiment. Back stateside, Nicholson recovered at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, as Operation Al-Fajr, a door-to-door fight in Fallujah, kicked off on Nov. 7.

Within months, Nicholson was back in Iraq, seeing the last moments of the operation and how the city would change for years to come.

“I think Fallujah will always be remembered as that gritty, hard fought, room by room, house-by-house battle where our Marines and soldiers prevailed,” Nicholson told Marine Corps Times. “It will always be synonymous with an urban fight where small unit leaders won the fight.”

It was Marines and soldiers fighting block-by-block, street-by-street, kicking in doors during the most intense urban warfare the Corps waged since the battle of Hue City in Vietnam in 1968.

Nicholson, now the commanding general of 1st Marine Division, planned a reunion and commemoration here for Marines who fought in the deadly battles in Fallujah. He shared his thoughts about the battles during an interview here on Nov. 5. Excerpts, edited for space and clarity:

Q. What made the battles of Fallujah important, and why will they be studied by recruits and senior officers?

A. I think it was really a turning point in the war there in the sense that no matter what we were trying to do, the largest city in Anbar province was occupied by al-Qaida, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. There was no Iraqi government, no police — this was a terrorist stronghold. By the time of the battle, a city of normally 400,000 people was just 10 percent of that, determined to be the elderly, the infirm and the enemy.

It was very challenging for Marines going house to house to house to identify who was left. And of course, many were abandoned, and when you hit a house where the enemy was well-entrenched and well-supplied, there were some incredible fights.

Q. What sorts of changes did you start to see?

A. After the city was cleared, it really began the awakening. Giving that city back to the Iraqi people was critically important. It facilitated elections in Fallujah, and also in Ramadi and all over Anbar province.

When we came back with the 5th Marine Regiment in 2006, we started to see a lot of dramatic change in terms of Iraqis taking responsibility for their own security. We started to see Iraqi tribal leaders turning against al-Qaida.

That really hit full throttle in late 2007. The Sons of Iraq was exploding all over Anbar, all over Iraq. By 2009, it was relatively quiet, and we left and turned Fallujah over to the armed forces of Iraq. None of that would have been possible without taking Fallujah away from the enemy.

Q. What are some of the major accomplishments that stand out when you remember Fallujah?

A. Lance Cpl. Chris Adlesperger’s Navy Cross citation is one I’m very familiar with, having known his family. He’s one of eight Navy Crosses Marines earned in Fallujah, and what that young Marine did was so far above and beyond any reasonable expectation and is what helped characterize this as an iconic battle. And I’m a beneficiary of it still today.

When I talk about Marines about Fallujah, I think about the individual actions. There weren’t great formations of battalions or companies or platoons. We were down to squads and fire teams. The amount of trust and confidence and responsibility put on young lance corporals and corporals was phenomenal. And they answered the bell every time.

When I think of Fallujah, It’s not the generals and the colonels. Our job, I think as leaders, is to man, train and equip our young Marines to make them successful in the fight. And if ever there was a validation of that, it occurred in Fallujah, where young lance corporals and corporals and sergeants were leading fire teams and squads and doing incredibly heroic things. That’s what won that battle.

Q. You were wounded right after you took over as head of 1st Marine Regiment. What was this like for you, following the battle as you recovered in Bethesda?

A. What a mix of emotions. For me, I went from being very angry I wasn’t there to feeling guilty. But you’re immensely proud as you’re watching and you’re glued to this thing. And you’re watching what’s occurring and you’re hearing from old friends and teammates and you’re incredibly proud of what your team is accomplishing, even if you can’t be a part of it.

And that’s not unique to me. Even tremendously, egregiously wounded Marines laying in a bed at hospital without a limb will say, “Sir, I want to get back in the fight.” And I’d say, “OK, OK, I get that. But let’s take care of you for awhile.”

All of us — Marines, sailors, soldiers — we build teams, we train as teams, we deploy as teams and we fight as teams. When you can no longer be part of that team, it’s tough, no question.

Q. You also have two sons who were deploying. How did your family take your return to Fallujah?

A. My oldest son was in Fallujah during my second tour, and my youngest son was in Afghanistan during my tour there. I served in combat with both of my sons.

It’s really much harder for my wife. She knew what I did for a living when she married me, but I don’t think she knew a part of that deal was that my sons would be deploying to combat as well. They’re both home now, and I know she’s very pleased. From 2004 to 2013, either I or one of my sons was deployed for seven of those nine years.

Q. When you went back, could you tell Fallujah was going to be so pivotal?

A. We knew early on. Of course, there were two battles — there was one in April that didn’t end the way we wanted. We knew that there was only one way we were going to dissolve what was happening there, and we were going to have to come in and take this city piece by piece.

Q. Just five years later, the Islamic State group is seizing portions of Anbar province. What do you say to Marines who are wondering whether the fight there was worth it?

A. We did our job and we did it well, despite what’s going on there today, or in the past or in the future — there’s not much we can do about that. While we were there, we did our job and we did it very well and at a hell of a cost.

I think this was one of those iconic and epic Corps battles; we knew exactly what we had to do. There was no ambiguity in terms of our mission. Our mission was to kill, capture and eject the enemy from Fallujah, and that was accomplished.

——

AFGHANISTAN – Every Nov. 8, Chaplain Ric Brown posts a photo and bio to his Facebook timeline of his friend, Command Sgt. Maj. Steven Faulkenburg.

This year will mark 10 years since he died.

It was during the opening hours of Operation Phantom Fury, the military name for the Second Battle of Fallujah, which commenced on November 7, 2004. Faulkenburg was at the head of a group of Iraqi soldiers, whom he led into an intense urban battle like they were his brothers. They were among the first to engage the enemy in their stronghold.

“The insurgents catch them cold. Buildings on both sides erupt with muzzle flashes… it is the first major firefight of the battle.” (From House to House: An Epic Memoir of War)

It is strange to think how quickly a decade has passed since that battle. What was once so emblematic now seems like a curious footnote.

The Islamic State has control of the city that Americans bled so mightily to secure. In a little over ten years, then, Fallujah has gone from Baathist control, to nominal coalition forces, to Iraqi security forces, to a foreign insurgency, back to Americans, to the Iraqi government, and now to a Sunni-led terrorist quasi-state.

As The United States quietly exits the war stage in Afghanistan, Soldiers and those who support them would do well to remember the ferocity and commotion in Iraq a decade ago. 2004 was the second calendar year of Iraqi Freedom. Troops were pouring into the country to quell a growing insurgency after the U.S. had toppled the government and dismantled its military.

Chaplain Brown was one of those nearly 100,000 troops.

I met him in May of this year. He was serving as the 4th Infantry Division chaplain as that unit prepared to leave Afghanistan. I was just arriving in Kandahar with my unit, and we were attached to the 4th ID. Brown was my chaplain.

At the time I was immersed House to House: An Epic Memoir of War, in an effort to acquaint myself with a chapter of American military history that was too quickly being forgotten.

Its author, Staff Sgt. David Bellavia, also knew Faulkenburg, counting him more a father figure than a friend. Bellavia was an infantryman whose prose matches the tempo and efficiency his military occupation demanded.

“A bullet strikes Faulkenburg just above his right eyebrow, a millimeter below the rim of his Kevlar helmet. He falls. The fight rages. Inspired by his examples, the Iraqis charge on and drive the enemy back. Others risk their lives as they dash to Faulkenburg’s aid. Our sergeant major lies unmoving in the street.” (From House to House: An Epic Memoir of War)

It is a harrowing account of what was probably the most ferocious battle in over a generation of Americans fighting. A character in his tale is his chaplain-the same one I had just met in Kandahar.

“Sergeant Bellavia,” said Brown one evening before the battle, “would you like to pray with me?”

Bellavia, a squad leader with Alpha Co., 2nd Bn, 2nd Infantry Reg., “Ramrods,” participated in some of the most hellish combat of the battle. He writes reverentially of Brown, whose calm and earnestness underscored the violence and chaos about to be unleashed on the men of 2-2.

“Lord, give this young man the strength and wisdom to protect his soldiers. Give him the courage and conviction to deliver them from the unknown. Give him the faith and guidance to know your path, Lord. Give him the perseverance to stay on it.” (From House to House: An Epic Memoir of War)

As I passed by the chaplain one day in southern Afghanistan a decade later, I asked him, “Did you serve in Iraq in 2004?”

“Yes,” he said with a smile. (Chaplain Brown almost always wears a smile).

“Were you featured in a book about your service in Iraq in 2004?”

“Come talk to me about it sometime,” he replied, knowingly, his smile growing.

So I did.

We sat for about an hour and chatted. It was not long enough for me to satisfy my curiosity about the Battle of Fallujah, and not long enough for him to do his experiences-or his fallen friends-justice.

He described, in spiritual terms, what Bellavia wrote about in House to House.

The story needed an inject of something good. According to Bellavia, Fallujah was hell. Empirically, it was the bloodiest urban battle since Vietnam. But you wouldn’t know that from talking with Brown, who seemed as comfortable as a little old lady in one of his stateside church services.

Brown was on the front as the task force prepared to breach the outer berms guarding the city. He took indirect fire in his soft-side Humvee, but made sure, according to his own recollection and that of Bellavia, to check on Soldiers under his pastorship.

“I went from vehicle to vehicle so I did the same thing when we got staged that day. Talking, praying, heading in one direction and then the mortars started coming in in like they were targeting me. My assistant yells, ‘mortars!’ ‘I know! but we gotta go check on these people,’ I reply. Besides, the safest place to be is where the mortar just hit, so we checked on one side and head to the other side of the perimeter. By this time the company commander says he wants everyone in the vehicles. But I’ve got a canvas top. Just then, a mortar round did hit close to one of my guys, so we had to go check on him.”

What motivates a Soldier like Brown to walk around in defiance of the enemy’s indiscriminate firepower?

“I like what Stonewall Jackson said,” he told me. “My religious beliefs teach me to feel as safe in battle as in bed.” Essentially, that’s the way I live my life. I try not to take unnecessary risks, but there are some risks that are worth taking. Being where your boys are, being in the thick of it… there is no way I was going to miss being in Fallujah. I was not fearful.”

Bellavia can’t make the same claim; he readily admits to the fear that taunted him in fits throughout the operation. His account of the battle is gritty and honest. But he was there to kill, while Brown was there to help young men like Bellavia find strength to complete their awful task, and to help remember those whose missions were cut short.

Today marks exactly ten years since Brown, Bellavia, Faulkenburg, the Ramrods, Task Force 2-2, and the rest of the Marines-led warriors that were part of Phantom Fury began amassing themselves on the outskirts of a city that would soon be awash in blood and brass.

And Chaplain Ric Brown will be posting more memorial photos to his Facebook timeline of some of those Soldiers who gave their lives a decade ago.