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March 2003, Week 5

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Subject:
OT: Quotes of the Day
From:
Wirt Atmar <[log in to unmask]>
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Date:
Sat, 29 Mar 2003 05:50:52 EST
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Sgt. Mark N. Redmond said following the battle at Kifl:

"I expected a lot more people to surrender," he said. "From all the reports
we got, I thought they would all capitulate."

In the three days that followed, they did not, and he fired every weapon on
his Humvee, including a 50-caliber machine gun, his M-4 rifle and a grenade
launcher -- everything except the shoulder-fired antitank missile. Many of
the Iraqis, he said, attacked headlong into the cutting fire of tanks and
Bradley fighting vehicles.

"I wouldn't call it bravery," he said. "I'd call it stupidity. We value a
soldier's life so much more than they do. I mean, an AK-47 isn't going to do
nothing against a Bradley. I'd love to know what Saddam is telling his
people.

"When I go home, people will want to treat me like a hero, but I'm not," he
went on. "I'm a Christian man. If I have to kill the other guy, I will, but
it doesn't make me a hero. I just want to go home to my wife and kids."

========================================

Maj. Mark B. Nordstrom, Chief Chaplain, said he spent more than six hours
with the troop's soldiers on Thursday after they returned from Kifl.

Major Nordstrom belongs to a branch of the Mennonites with a pacifist
theology. He has given this some thought. He cites St. Augustine's theory of
just war: "War is love's response to a neighbor threatened by force."

"We're in the thousands now that were killed in the last few days," he said
today. "Nothing prepares you to kill another human being. Nothing prepares
you to use a machine gun to cut someone in two.

"They tell stories amongst themselves," he added of the soldiers. "When I
come up, they tell different stories. It bothers them to take life,
especially that close. They want to talk to me so that they know that I know
they are not awful human beings."

========================================

  --http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29INFA.html

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