Word: deserter
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Corporal Abraham Hernandez remembers his death as "humbling." It happened during a Pentagon war game last month at an abandoned Air Force base in the California high desert. Hernandez was hit while he and his Marine platoon were trying to secure a landing zone for a helicopter that was bringing in troops to help take the "city." The enemy, masked by surrounding buildings and sandbag bunkers, fired on the group. The laser-activated beeper on Hernandez's belt went off, signaling that he had been killed in action; 22 of his 27 fellow platoon members suffered the same fate...
...second place, President George W. would never ask his father, "What'll I do about Iraq?" The son would consider that inappropriate, unwise and unfair for both of them. George W. knows all about how his father handled Desert Storm. He does not need to be told again. He does talk with the former President about people and events in the world...
...stay silent as commentators traffic in the cliche that the coming confrontation with Saddam is the result of a Bush failing "to finish the job the last time," the son trying to avenge his father's loss of nerve. If anything, Bush is even more convinced these days that Desert Storm was fought properly and ended properly. He points out that the objectives were set, the war fought and won, and to world acclaim America went home, avoiding what could have been an endless and bloody bog. "Finishing the job" would have meant a huge and perhaps unsuccessful search...
...love with a college student named La Donia Miller, the woman who would become his wife. Despite his dad's warnings, he also fell in love with the idea of becoming a warrior. A three-year stint in Germany--tagging along on road marches, soaking up the camaraderie of Desert Storm veterans--led him to re-enlist. While in Europe, he spent six months in Bosnia. Suddenly the supply guy "was in full battle rattle, doing patrols," he says. "I loved being out there with them guys...
...substitutes a lust for violence for a love of peace. They abhor liberty and justice. Their choice of civilian and governmental targets indicates that they understand one essential truth about America--the people rule here, not mullahs or kings or generals or the megalomaniacal son of an oil-rich desert kingdom. They believe that the right of individuals to pursue happiness makes societies weak, and that liberty begets only materialism. Since they were routed from Afghanistan and many of their fighters are dead or in captivity, the magnitude of their misjudgment is evident...