But if military promotions were based on the skills needed “to close with and kill or capture the enemy by fire and maneuver,” then our military is not quite the meritocracy one might like to imagine. For example, let’s say a service member has been trained to jump out of airplanes, to survive for weeks in swamps and mountains with no outside support, to do under-water demolitions, to be a martial-arts expert, to be an expert in both personal and crew-served infantry weapons, to be able to rappel from helicopters or down cliffs, to carry an eighty-pound pack up steep mountains for miles, to be an expert with military communications, to have the medical skills of an Army medic or a Navy Corpsman, to speak at least one foreign language very well, and to be able to get people of varying ethnic, religious and racial backgrounds to work together as a team.

One would think that soldiers or sailors or airmen with those kinds of military skills would be the ones chosen to run our military establishment. Not so. In fact, members of the Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, Air Force Special Operations and the Delta Force are looked down by the “non-elites” who, for the most part, have controlled our armed forces. In other words, having “special” or “elite” in one’s job title is almost the kiss-of-death when it comes to attaining our military’s senior management positions.

Of course, there have been exceptions; however, being “special” or “elite” runs head-on into the other side of our military’s split personality which is: Egalitarianism. Long before anyone ever heard of paratroopers, Green Berets, Navy SEALS, Army Rangers, Air Force Special Operations or the Delta Force, our military had a tradition of trying to treat everyone alike.

The idea behind that may have stemmed from Henry Ford’s use of the interchangeability of parts and the assembly line. One soldier could be inserted in place of another soldier. Uniforms were invented to make everyone look, well…uniform. Wearing something “different” on one’s uniform was sure to draw a reprimand from some sergeant or officer. Even facial hair had to be as uniform as possible. You get the picture.

For example, if you read the memoirs of almost all of the senior officers who were involved in Gulf War I, you learn that General Norman Schwarzkopf detested Green Berets or any kind of “special” forces. Only at the last minute would Storm’n Norman allow our elite forces even the smallest role in Gulf War I. You also learn that if JCS Chairman, Colin Powell, had had his way, Saddam would still be occupying Kuwait while Powell argued for additional diplomacy.

When Colin and I were classmates for nine months at Ft. Benning, it was Colin’s nature to hang back and see which way the wind was blowing. So what the other retired generals have to say about Colin is not surprising.

Post-9/11, our armed forces were leaning more toward the light, “special” operators needed to chase down the radical, Muslim jihadists and leaning away from the heavy, conventional forces designed to stop Soviet tanks at Germany’s Fulda Gap. But now, post-Russian resurgence, we may be headed back toward Fulda-gap thinking.

Either way, and even more than ever, our troops need grass-roots support. Go to: www.LetsSayThanks.com. Let them know you care.

Retired military officer, William Hamilton, a syndicated columnist and a featured commentator for USA Today, served on active duty for 20 years.

©2008. William Hamilton.

Instead of the ramrod bearing of a MacArthur, Gen Petraeus resembles a modest headmaster, albeit one with a personal fitness obsession.

This outgoing yet scholarly figure is now the brightest star of America’s armed forces. Gen Petraeus has emerged from the bloodshed of Baghdad to become the only genuinely successful general of the “war on terrorism”. No other commander in this campaign, which has lasted exactly seven years, would have reached the cover of Time magazine as “Man of the Year” in 2007. If every war eventually makes a military reputation and propels a uniformed figure to global fame, then Gen Petraeus is the Eisenhower of our time.

When he hands over his command in Iraq on Tuesday, he will have achieved a seemingly impossible goal. Gen Petraeus will leave the country in infinitely better shape than found it. The West’s enemies – from “al-Qaeda in Iraq” to the Shia gunmen of Moqtada al-Sadr – are greatly weakened.

Is this achievement genuine – or was Gen Petraeus simply lucky enough to take over at the right time? And if his accomplishment is real, how has he done it?

Luck has smiled on Gen Petraeus to the extent that he has always seemed to be in the right place to learn the lessons of earlier failures. He graduated from West Point in 1970, just in time to imbibe the hard messages of Vietnam without being personally scarred by the war. This led him into a detailed study of counter-insurgency warfare, a subject that became his consuming interest. In 1987, he went to Princeton and produced a 328-page thesis on the impact of Vietnam on America’s high command. Fast forward to March 2003 and the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Gen Petraeus was in command of a spearhead unit – the 101st Airborne Division – and found himself in control of the Shia holy city of Najaf. He had no particular wish to run the place, but amid the breakdown of law and order unleashed by the war, he could not find a civilian mayor to take over. He was in the right place to grasp the central mistake of his high command: the invasion had decapitated Iraq’s leadership without deploying enough troops to secure the country and prevent its spiral into chaos.

Gen Petraeus completed another tour of duty in Iraq in 2004/5, when he was in charge of training the new army and police force. These units were America’s “exit ticket” from Iraq, in line with President Bush’s statement that “we will stand down as the Iraqis stand up”. But Gen Petraeus was later criticised for over-optimism and for greatly overestimating the abilities of the newly trained formations. Many were infiltrated by militias and proved unreliable in battle.

Once again, he was in an ideal position to learn some hard lessons: declarations of victory must be avoided and American soldiers would not be able to hand over to their Iraqi counterparts in the near future. Instead, they would have to stay for longer than he once thought.

After this tour, Gen Petraeus returned to America and wrote what was to become the book on counter-insurgency warfare. Together with a Marine Corps general, he produced the US military’s first field manual on this vital subject for 20 years. The 282 pages are a tersely written, closely argued set of instructions on how to win supposedly unwinnable wars. Drawing on a host of historical lessons – from Vietnam to Lawrence of Arabia’s campaign against the Turks – the book could be read as a manual on how to rescue the situation in Iraq.

The central insight was that protecting civilians was the sine qua non for beating insurgents. If people felt safer, they would back the security forces and turn against the gunmen. But this required far more troops than were in Iraq at that time. Most importantly, it also required those forces to live among the population and fight in a completely different way.

Once again, Gen Petraeus was in the right place at the right time. Just as he became the army’s acknowledged expert on counter-insurgency warfare – and the author of an unofficial manifesto for winning in Iraq – President Bush was casting around for a new strategy. After the bombing of a Shia shrine in Samara in February 2006, the bloodshed had escalated to become a sectarian civil war. By the summer, a wave of attacks was killing 2,500 civilians a month.

Mr Bush lost confidence in his military leaders and ordered his civilian advisers to launch a comprehensive policy review. They came up with two key recommendations: send a “surge” of another 30,000 troops to Iraq and adopt the new doctrine of counter-insurgency warfare.

America’s service chiefs were unanimously opposed to the “surge”. They feared the strain on the military machine and gave warning that too few troops would be left to cope with emergencies elsewhere. But in January last year, Mr Bush overrode his key generals and announced that another five army brigades and 4,000 Marines – almost 30,000 troops in total – would go to Iraq. The new units would be concentrated in Baghdad, where force levels would rise from 17,000 to 40,000.

A new strategy required a new commander, and Gen Petraeus was the obvious man.

By: Unknown

"I hope the picture will go through for you - of this Army soldier in Iraq with his tiny 'plot' of grass in front of his tent. It's heartwarming! Here is a soldier stationed in Iraq, stationed in a big sand box. He asked his wife to send him dirt (U.S. soil), fertilizer, and some grass seed so that he can have the sweet aroma, and feel the grass grow beneath his feet. When the men of the squadron have a mission that they are going on, they take turns walking through the grass and the American soil -- to bring them good luck.

If you notice, he is even cutting the grass with a pair of a scissors. Sometimes we are in such a hurry that we don't stop and think about the little things that we take for granted.

Upon receiving this, say a little prayer for our soldiers that give and give (and give up) so unselfishly for us."

This little speech given by a little known US Marine Corps General Officer should be in every paper across the country...instead, it was given to a small group of patriots in San Diego...and now to you.  Thanks as usual to former Marine Seamus for sending it on.  It is worth your time:

I want to open by offering LtGen Mattis' apologies for missing this event. Until recently he certainly looked forward to being here, but an unexpected change in a three and four star executive offsite in Washington prevents him from joining you today. I am his recently joined deputy at the First Marine Expeditionary Force at Pendleton, and will have the honor of taking the next Marine rotation to Iraq early next year. I was also General Mattis' deputy once before when he commanded the 1st Marine Division on the march to Baghdad, Tikrit and beyond four years ago, and when we went back into Iraq in March 2004 relieving the 82nd Airborne in Al Anbar Province.

I am just two months out of the pentagon where I served as the Commandant's Legislative Advisor, and deputy advisor to the SECNAV, so I know the Congress and the Secretary's and Commandant's Hill agendas pretty well. I'll be glad to speak to amphibious ship requirements, V-22 Ospreys, VSTOL Joint Strike fighters, a Marine Corps growing by 27,000 or anything else for that matter during the Q+A.

I left Iraq three years ago last month. I returned a week ago after a two week visit of getting the lay of the land for my upcoming deployment. It is still a dangerous and foreboding land, but what I experienced personally was amazing and remarkable - we are winning, we are really winning. No one told me to say that, I saw it for myself. The higher command in Baghdad told us four years ago when we first took responsibility for the Al Anbar not to worry about victory, as no one-military or civilian-thought it possible. That thirty years from now when the rest of Iraq was a functioning democracy, Al Anbar would still be a festering cancer within...

Continued after the Jump.

...Our success, so we were told, would be in containing violence, not defeating the Al Qaeda and other foreign born terrorists that were deeply entrenched in the Province. The reality is that today the incidents of attack in Al Anbar-mostly by Al Qaeda-are down by over 80% in the last six months-that translates to dozens and dozens everyday then, to perhaps three or four today. Since the spring local inhabitants and their sheik leadership, are now joined with us at the shoulder in fighting the extremists that plague their country. Three weeks ago I went to a gathering of sheiks from the Province outside of Ramadi that numbered over 300 of the most influential men in the west. Three years ago my entire days and nights were devoted to tracking many of these same men down, and capturing or killing them, which is exactly what they were trying to do to me. However, by relentless pursuit by a bunch of fearless 19 year olds with guns who never flinched or gave an inch, while at the same time holding out the carrot of economic development, they have seen the light and know AQ can't win against such men. By staying in the fight, and remaining true to our word, and our honor, AQ today can't spend more than a few hours in Fallujah, Ramadi, or the Al Anbar in general, without being IDed by the locals and killed by the increasingly competent Iraqi Army, or by Marines.That's the way it is today in this war, but it is also the way it has been since the birth of our nation.

Since our Declaration of Independence 42 million Americans have claimed the honor of having served the nation in its military forces. Since that time over a million have lost their lives serving the colors, with millions more wounded. Since George Washington first took command of the Continentals besieging Boston, America's warriors have stepped forward and endured horrors unimaginable to most Americans, and saw it all with their young eyes so those safe at home would never have to. With all this service and loss of life, we as Americans can be proud of the kind of people we are as we have never retained a square foot of any country we have defeated. We possess no empire. No man or woman call us master, as we have never subjugated any society. On the contrary, billions across the planet -and billions more yet unborn-are today free and increasingly prosperous because America took a stand; but it has always fallen on the shoulders of our soldiers, sailors, airmen Coast Guardsmen, and Marines that the task fell to...and they have never wavered. Never, with the exception of World War II, has it been particularly crowded at the recruiting offices, and in recent years it's an increasingly slim slice of the American public who believe in this country enough to put life and limb on the line particularly in the Army and Marine Corps to serve without qualification, and without personal gain. Yet still for whatever reason they come-even though there is great pressure from our society to sit it out and not get involved.

The reality was that when many in this room grew up, and I know I am showing my age here, we were surrounded by men, real men, who had gladly worn the country's cloth in wars against fascism and communism. The earliest memories we had as kids back then were of comic books and paper backs that honored the sacrifices of the super heroes of those conflicts. It was a time when little boys could play guns, and weren't considered at risk to be psychopaths. To stand up when the national anthem was played or say the pledge of allegiance and a prayer to any God you worshiped before school, wasn't considered offensive to the sensitivities of the nation's selfproclaimed intellectual elite. Places like Guadalcanal, Coral Sea, Normandy, Iwo Jima, the Chosin Reservoir, and Hue City, were real to us then, and we knew without thinking that we owed the nation a debt.

We live in a very different world today, and we have indeed lost something of quality over the years. We don't always see that same selfless devotion to something bigger than self, which the lucky among us learned from past generations. Today, unfortunately, to most it's about quick gratification, and what's in it for me. Memorial and Veteran's Day are more about a day off to take advantage of the big sales at the malls, or fighting the traffic to get a long weekend at the seashore. But we should not forget that as we stand here today we are at war, and a new Greatest Generation is fighting a merciless enemy on our behalf in the terrible heat of Iraq, and mountains of Afghanistan. Like it or not America is engaged in - and winning - a war today against an enemy that is savage, offers no quarter, whose only objectives are to either kill every one of us here in our homeland, or enslave us with a sick form of extremism that serves no God or purpose that rational men and women can ever understand. Given the opportunity to do another 9/11, our vicious enemy would do it today, tomorrow, and everyday thereafter. In addition to killing thousands of innocent victims that day, they also killed hundreds of heroes: police, firefighters, and first responders of every sort that were not victims in their deaths, but the first fallen warriors of this generation's war. Given nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons-and the experts bet they will get them-these extremists would use these terror weapons against our cities, and smile. I don't know why they hate us, and I frankly don't care and they can all go to hell, but they do hate us and they are driven irrationally to our destruction. The best way to fight them is somewhere else, and for whatever reason they want to destroy our way of life I thank God we still have enough, just enough, young people in American today willing to take up the fight and defend us all.

This fight is today, not against some potential peer competitor that might emerge 30 years from now, and will be with us for another generation or more. Our enemy is on a 100 year campaign to victory, and believes without question that he is winning. We, on the other hand, look out two years at best and seem to be wavering and looking for a way to rationalize our way out. The problem is our enemy is not willing to let us go. Regardless of how much we wish this bad dream would go away, he will stay with us until he hurts us so badly we surrender, or we kill him first. To him this is not about jobs, economic opportunity, or solving social problems in the Middle East. It is about way of life, about everyman's and every woman's worth and equality in the eyes of the law, about the God given rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He doesn't believe in these cherished concepts - we do. Our positions are irreconcilable.

The good news is our service members are as good today, as their fathers were in Vietnam, and their grandfathers were in Korea and World War II. In my two tours in Iraq as an infantry officer with the 1st Marine Division I never saw an American hesitate, or do anything other than lean into the fire and with no apparent fear of death or injury take the fight to our enemies. As anyone who has ever experienced combat knows, when it starts, when the explosions and tracers are everywhere and the calls for the Corpsman or medic are screamed from the throats of men who know they are dying - when seconds seem like hours and it all becomes slow motion and fast forward at the same time-everything in one's survival instinct says stop, get down, save yourself -yet they don't. When no one would call them cowards for cowering behind a wall or in a hole looking to their own self preservation, none of them do. It doesn't matter if it's an IED, a suicide bomber, mortar attack, fighting in an up stairs room of a house, or all of it at once; they talk, swagger, and, most importantly, fight today in the same way our young warriors have since the Revolution. They also know whose shoulders they stand on, and would die before anyone of them shamed any veteran of any service, living or dead.

You should see them. They have a look in their eye and a way of walking that marks them as warriors as good as any that have ever marched to the guns, but they are not born killers. They are, on the contrary, good and decent youngsters mostly from the neighborhoods of our cities, and small towns across America. Almost all are from "salt of the earth" working class homes, and more often than not are the sons and daughters of cops and firemen, factory workers and farmers. Kids who once delivered your papers, stocked shelves in the grocery store, played Little League, and served Mass on Sunday morning. They were athletes, as well as "couch potatoes," drove their cars and motorcycles too fast, and blasted their music a bit louder than they should. They are ordinary young people, performing remarkable acts of bravery and selfless acts of devotion to a cause bigger than themselves. They could have done something more self serving, but chose to serve knowing full well Iraq and Afghanistan was in their future. They did not avoid the most basic and cherished responsibility of a citizen, on the contrary they welcomed it. They did not fail in school and without prospects, as the chattering class believe is why they are in the military and fighting and dying for the nation, but rather are the best our nation has to offer and have put every one of us above their own self interest. They are all heroes, but they know and understand fear in a way that few Americans do. It is not as much the fear of death or maiming they think about, but, rather, they are most terrified of letting their buddies down...but they never do.

Ladies and Gentlemen I had a unique experience a few years ago when serving as the Assistant Division Commander, of the 1st Marine Division. We were just south of Iraq along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, and poised to launch an attack that would take us over the next three weeks 650 miles into the guts of Iraq, far beyond Baghdad and indeed to Saddam's hometown palace in Tikrit. When the artillery fires commenced just as the sun went down, and the evening sky above us was one endless formation of Marine, Navy and Air Force fighter aircraft speeding north to smash targets deep in Saddam's vitals, I was sitting taking it all in with my driver Cpl Dave Hardin from Dallas, and with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times. The reporter asked me a question that I'd never considered in my entire 36 years in the Marine Corps as both enlisted man and officer before the asking, but one I took up in my mind when he did. He pointed out the size and capability of the Iraqi forces in front of us that was many, many times bigger than we were in men, tanks, and artillery. He emphasized much to my discomfort the massive supplies of chemical weapons Saddam was thought to have, and the multiple means he had to rain their terrible kind of death upon us. He asked if I'd ever contemplated defeat. If it was even possible? My thoughts immediately took me back to trips I'd made to Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Inchon Korea, and Vietnam, and the conversations I'd had with veterans of those battles, mostly old men now. They tell of friends who made it, and many who didn't. About the good times, and the bad, but mostly about the good as is typical of our veterans. My response to the reporter was something like: "hell these are Marines. Men like them held Guadalcanal and took Iwo Jima, Baghdad ain't shit." This same sentiment could, and does, apply to any American serviceman or woman. We who serve, who are sent to fight wars and have nothing whatsoever to do with starting them, have never known defeat on the battlefield. When we have lost, we lost at home, and others declared defeat - not us.

America's Armed Forces today know the price of being the finest men and women this nation has to offer, and pay it they do everyday in Iraq and Afghanistan. Over four-thousand one hundred in all services have died in Iraq and Afghanistan, over a thousand of this number Marines, and Sailors serving with Marines - our precious Docs. And the sacrifice continues as Americans have gone to God since we all went to bed last night and slept free and protected. Their mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, aunts, uncles, cousins and fiancés have only just learned of their deaths and begun to deal with the unimaginable pain that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Thousands more have suffered wounds since it all started, but like firefighters and cops who fall protecting us here in America, they are not victims as they knew what they were about, and were doing what they wanted to do.

Many of today's pundits and media commentators want to make them and their families out to be victims but they are wrong, and this only detracts from the decision these patriots made to step forward and protect the country that has given so much to all of us. We who are serving, and have served, will have none of that. Those with less of a sense of service to the nation never understand it when strong men and women stand tall and firm against the our enemies, just as they can't begin to understand the price paid so they and their families can sleep safe and free at night-the protected never do. What they are missing, what they will also never understand, is the sense of commitment, joy, and honor, of serving our country in its uniform, but every American veteran, and their loved ones who supported them and feared for them everyday, do.

It's been my distinct honor to have had the opportunity to be here today with you. Rest assured, my fellow citizens, the nation you are a part of, this young experiment in democracy called America started just over two centuries ago, will forever remain the "land of the free and home of the brave" so long as we never run out of tough young Americans willing to look beyond their own self interest and comfortable lives, and go into the darkest and most dangerous places on earth to hunt down, and kill, those who would do us harm.

The National Rifle Association conference yesterday in Washington, D.C. drew lots of media attention because of the high powered presidential candidates invited to speak. McCain got in a line on a protester, Thompson got in a line on Bill Clinton, and Rudy tried to make peace with his previous anti gun positions; stories for which Drudge has linked to on his site. But to my complete shock, the best speaker of the evening was not Fred, nor Newt nor Mike Huckabee all of which I enjoyed immensely.

Flying at over 70,000 feet above sea level, a lone pilot of an American U-2 spy plane scoured the rugged Afghan mountains near the southern city of Kandahar during a classified mission in mid-September. While the plane's high-tech camera was sending back detailed photographs of the Taliban strongholds below, coalition soldiers operating in the area got embroiled in a firefight with insurgents. The U-2, which flies too high to be heard or seen on the ground, was dispatched to relay images of the battle, locate any targets, and identify possible escape routes—all in close to real time. Soon after, the plane headed up to eastern Afghanistan to sweep the area for any electronic communications between Taliban fighters. The U-2's sensor picked up several suspect transmissions, and the plane was sent to take high-resolution images of possible targets. After nine hours over Afghanistan, the U-2 returned home to its base at a secret location in southwest Asia.

This mission, typical of the almost daily flights over Afghanistan and Iraq, is vastly different from the U-2's maiden mission 51 years ago. In that first operational flight on June 20, 1956, pilot Carl Overstreet flew a carefully planned route behind the Iron Curtain to provide valuable glimpses of military targets inside Czechoslovakia and Poland. It took more than two days for the film to be developed and delivered to analysts in Washington.

Workhorse. Implausibly enough, the gliderlike U-2, whose mere existence was once one of America's most prized secrets, has been adapted to the age of al Qaeda and has emerged as an indispensable workhorse in the skies today. In just the past two years, the number of U-2 missions flown has increased by 20 percent, taking its operational pace to an all-time record. "It's busier than ever," says George Zielsdorff, the U-2 program director for Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor that built the original plane in a mere nine months under a CIA contract.

In fact, demand for the plane's sophisticated set of cameras and eavesdropping equipment is so high that some are questioning the U.S. Air Force's plan to retire the legendary aircraft in the coming years. Military planners are eager to bring on the U-2's successor—an unmanned high-altitude plane called the Global Hawk. But there is one problem: A version of the Global Hawk drone that can match the U-2's capabilities is still at least two years away from deployment.

Even with the U.S. intelligence community's array of spy satellites, surveillance aircraft, and other reconnaissance tools, the U-2 still boasts unique capabilities that fill a crucial gap. While satellites steadily orbit the globe on a predictable schedule, providing only momentary glimpses of any particular scene, the U-2 can fly over a target area for hours—a trait referred to as "persistence" by Air Force strategists. "We're talking now about a strategic environment where you're not so much tracking large army formations or hard targets, but you're talking about individuals and a network," says Col. Charles Bartlett, director of the Air Force's unmanned aerial systems task force. "To do that effectively, you need to have persistence, and you need to build patterns of behavior." While the better-known Predator drone can provide similar coverage when the weather is decent, it can be audible from the ground, unlike the higher-flying U-2.

In its first life, the U-2 was a straightforward reconnaissance plane, offering revolutionary peeks inside forbidden places like the Soviet Union and Communist China. Former CIA Director George Tenet once called the U-2 one of "the CIA's greatest intelligence achievements." It was still cloaked in secrecy when it made 24 daring flights over the Soviet Union from 1956 to 1960, helping to shatter alarming myths that Moscow was building significantly more missiles and bombers than the U.S. military. The danger became all too real in 1960 when the Soviets fired a missile that exploded just behind a U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers, who was captured by the Soviets after he parachuted to the ground. The incident turned into a prime-time Cold War drama, and the CIA was forced to end its flights over the Soviet Union. Powers was, after a show trial, later returned to the United States in a prisoner exchange.

The U-2 took center stage again in 1962, when a flight's photographs detected Soviet long-range missiles in Cuba, sparking the Cuban missile crisis. Two years later, after China's first nuclear test, U-2 missions took air samples to assess the aftermath. "It had probably some of the most strategic impact of any aviation operation ever," says Tom Ehrhard, an Air Force veteran now at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. "We never bought enough of them." U-2s have also flown over most of the conflict zones in recent years, including Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, and Afghanistan.

The conservative radio talk-show host turned an inflammatory letter written by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and signed by 41 of his fellow Democrats into a more than $4.2 million gold mine for the kids of Marines and law enforcement personnel killed in the line of duty, all courtesy of eBay.

The Eugene B. Casey foundation Betty Casey coughed up more than $2.1 million to be the sole owner of the letter sent to the radio host's boss demanding that Limbaugh be reprimanded for a "phony soldier" comment he made on air. Limbaugh has pledged to match whatever was paid for the letter.

Limbaugh described Betty Casey, a trustee of the foundation, as a loyal listener to his show.

“She gives significant sums to hospitals, hospices, colleges and private schools,” Limbaugh said during his radio show Friday afternoon, just after the eBay auction ended. “Betty has been a listener to my program since its inception, and we can't thank her enough for her support. This was kind of the last straw for her, what Harry Reid did here.”The letter, sent by Reid and signed by his Democratic colleagues, was delivered Oct. 2 to Mark P. Mays, president of Clear Channel, the parent company of the conservative talk show host’s radio broadcast.

Click here to read the letter sent by Reid to Clear Channel's Mark Mays.

In exchange for the $2.1 million, the Maryland-based Eugene B. Casey Foundation, will receive the letter, the Halliburton briefcase in which the letter is secured 24 hours a day, a letter of thanks from Limbaugh and a picture of him announcing the auction at a speech in Philadelphia last week.

The foundation released the following statement on acquiring the letter:

"The Eugene B. Casey Foundation believes freedom of speech is a basic right of every citizen of this country. Their purchase of the smear letter was to demonstrate their belief in this right and to support Rush Limbaugh, his views and his continued education of us."

Proceeds from the auction will benefit the Maine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, a nonprofit that gives scholarship assistance to children of Marines and federal law enforcement personnel whose parents die in the line of duty.

Limbaugh has denied the term "phony soldiers" referred to former servicemen and women who served in Iraq and now oppose the war, but to those who lied about their service. A literal reading of the Sept. 26 show in question shows that the controversial host did not say that soldiers opposing the war are "phony."

On his Friday radio show, Limbaugh said Reid’s letter was an “abuse of power against a private citizen.”

“Harry Reid in a speech on the Senate floor at 12 noon today, a little over an hour ago, attempted to hone in on all this and take some credit for it, claiming that he and I had buried the hatchet, or implying that that had been the case, and then kept using the pronoun "we" in discussing how good this was, the money going to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation,” Limbaugh said on his show.

“Three words, that means, ‘Rush, you win,’” Reid told his colleagues on the Senate floor. “I asked Sen. Reid to match and all the other senators who can afford to do so. I haven't heard from them on that. I asked Sen. Reid to go on the program and discuss his discussion of me as "unpatriotic." He did not accept my offer to do that and now has the audacity to climb aboard this, praising the effort, saying that "he" never knew that it would get this kind of money.

He also announced an unknown number of certified copies of the letter signed by him will be sold on for $1,000 on his Web site, with proceeds going to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation.

So did the foundation get their money's worth?

Kieta, the vice president of AmericanMemorabilia.com who goes by only one name, said what makes the letter appealing to a buyer is all the media attention the correspondence has received, but it holds no real historical or collector value.

“If you compare it to an Abraham Lincoln document, there is obviously no comparison,” Kieta said. “This is strictly a promotional marketing ploy. Historically speaking, is it a historical document? I wouldn’t categorize it as a historical document.”

Certain rituals are performed each time a combat patrol ventures beyond the base perimeter in Iraq: Squad leaders go over operational details. The vehicle and communications gear is checked. Weapons, locked and loaded. Final permission from command for the mission, awaited. All performed to a backing pastiche of heavy metal and aggressive rock, likely recognizable to any young man whose youth lays claim to some segment of the last two decades...or, at least, recognizable to someone with trailer park roots like mine. You've got your AC/DC, your Metallica, your Guns N' Roses. No real surprises there.

Amongst these familiar strains and roars, however, one unfamiliar bouncy, slick-yet-overdriven track with the menacing refrain, "Let the bodies hit the floor!" was an obvious favorite. I heard the song so often my mind would sometimes momentarily process other sounds -- not even necessarily music -- as that song playing somewhere. Finally, sitting in an idling Humvee at a base gate outside Samarra one day as the song blared for the umpteenth time, I asked the driver who composed it. He looked at me as if I had just beamed in from a cultural black hole rivaling the planet the Robinsons found themselves on in Lost in Space.

"It's Drowning Pool," he said, flavoring his incredulity with a mere dash of disdain. "Did you really not know that?"

No, I really didn't. It wasn't the only thing I had no clue about during my short time in Iraq. Not by a long shot.

"YOU KNOW, WE STARTED THIS BAND so we could have beer money on weekends and somehow a few years later we found ourselves on stage in Iraq," Drowning Pool bassist Stevie Benton laughed when I related this anecdote to him recently between stops on the band's This Is For the Soldiers Tour, proceeds from which benefit veteran advocacy groups and the USO, organizers of the band's successful Iraq jaunt. "It's a little bit crazy."

Benton first began to notice a burgeoning number of soldiers turning up at shows a year or two after "Bodies" hit the airwaves. Fans became friends, and friends soon surprised, awed and humbled the band with tales of how the song had affected them. "I never thought we'd ever accomplish anything that would have significance for anyone's life, so to hear over and over again that a song we wrote helped these troops through such a scary, dangerous time is just...overwhelming," Benton said. "It's more than I ever, ever hoped to accomplish in my career playing in a stupid rock band."

Despite these relationships, however, the members of Drowning Pool prepared for the worst on their first trip to Iraq, Benton admitted.

"Our exposure to the war previously was only what everyone else here sees -- CNN, things like that," he explained. "So we really thought we were going to be playing in front of a lot of demoralized people; people completely down on themselves and what they're doing..." Benton trails off for a moment, as if attempting to reconnect with a preconception made hazy and out of reach by experience. "Actually being there changes your perspective on a lot of things. The vast majority of servicemen and servicewomen we met were as enthusiastic as possible to be serving their country and doing what they're doing.

"Here we are in the U.S. debating the war and everybody has got their stance and all these hardcore political views, and then you meet these soldiers who are just so above it all, just doing their duty," he continued. "They don't have the convenience we have here of dealing with the war as just another thing to argue over and take sides on. For them it's real. The commitment is real. The sacrifice is real. The honor is real."

And what is a homesick audience of soldiers in Iraq like?

"The enthusiasm would blow your hair back," Benton answered in a reverential tone. "It was just unlike any other show we'd ever played."

TO SAY DROWNING POOL'S experiences have left them out of step with many of their peers would be an understatement. While members of Metallica and Rage Against the Machine expressed horror upon learning their bands' songs were being used during interrogations in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Benton responded in perhaps the most politically incorrect way imaginable. "People assume we should be offended that somebody in the military thinks our song is annoying enough that, played over and over, it can psychologically break someone down," he told a Spin magazine reporter who confronted him with reports that "Bodies" was an interrogator favorite, adding, "If they detain these people and the worst thing that happens is they have to sit through a few hours of loud music -- some kids in America pay for that."

During our conversation Benton showed little interest in revisiting past controversies, but remained steadfast in his core support of the military. "I wouldn't trade our experiences with the U.S. military for a million records sold," he said. "Once you see how much our soldiers give of themselves, it's hard to not want to do whatever you can for them."

Case in point: At nearly seven hours, Drowning Pool holds the record for the longest USO signing/meet-and-greet session, and those interactions with the troops in a war zone -- signing records for fans that moments later jumped into Humvees headed out on patrol, for example -- were profound experiences. After the band returning from Iraq, the general feeling was that while it was flattering that the military had adopted "Bodies," a new, more intentional song was necessary to cement Drowning Pool's newfound sense of camaraderie with the troops. Hence, "Soldiers," the band's latest single and a high-energy ode to U.S. servicemen and women, sans any of the pity or hushed, lament-friendly acoustics typical of such odes.

"We didn't want anyone nodding off 'cause there's some sappy power ballad on the radio," Benton said. The band left the sap out of the lyrics as well, with lines such as, "Gut tight/Hold steady/Bellicose/And ready/There is no compromise/Your pain, your worth, your sacrifice," leading into the growled chorus, "This is for the soldiers!"

The response to the song from soldier and civilian alike has been almost uniformly positive. Almost.

"With everything attached to 'Soldiers,' the only problem we've had is a few people wanting to catch us up in an argument about the war," Benton said. "It's hard with those people to keep the focus on the troops and convince them that what we're doing isn't pro-war or anti-war, Republican or Democrat. We're just trying to keep in mind the ones who are really involved here."

All in all, though, Benton said the band doesn't worry too much about any outside criticism. The men and women they wrote "Soldiers" for get it, and that's enough for them.

BAGHDAD — Senior leaders from both the government of Iraq and United States Army came to visit Soldiers at Patrol Base Hawkes, Oct. 27, to get an assessment from troops on the ground.

Gen. David Petraeus, Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, Dr. Ahmad Chalabi, director of services in Iraq, and Dr. Safi Al-Sheik, director of the Iraqi national reconciliation committee, met with Soldiers and leaders of the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Stewart, Ga., who are operating in the Arab Jabour area.

Col. Steve Boylan, a spokesman for Petraeus, said the visit was meant to provide the leaders a better view for what Soldiers on the ground are experiencing as they implement Petraeus’ counter-insurgency strategy. Petraeus is the author of the Army counter-insurgency operations manual, FMI 3-07.22.

“You can only gain so much from reports,” Boylan said.

The three supplemented their knowledge on the ground with face-to-face talks with Lt. Col. Ken Adgie, 1-30th battalion commander, and Col. Terry Ferrell, 2nd BCT commander.

“It’s been hard, but it has worked,” said Adgie, of Petraeus’ counter-insurgency plan. Comparing it to a drop of oil in water, Adgie said the drop, once small, has spread.

Arab Jabour was a safe haven for al-Qaida before the 2nd BCT entered the area; no Coalition presence or Iraqi security forces had been there since the conflict began over four years ago.

However, Adgie said the tide is turning, crediting in part the Concerned Local Citizens (CLC) program in the area, who now number 699.

The program, in which local citizens act as security for their neighborhoods, has helped push al-Qaida from the area. Retired Iraqi Army Brig. Gen. Mustafa Kamel helped to form the CLC program in Arab Jabour.

“Gen. Mustafa has given the people hope,” Adgie said, describing the concerned citizens as “braver than the brave.”

Displaced citizens are beginning to return to the area, bringing back specialists like doctors and engineers, Adgie said.

Water pumps are also being repaired, an important development because the people of Arab Jabour are primarily farmers, depending on pumps transporting water from the Tigris River for irrigation.

Adgie said he will continue to expand on these successes as the focus changes from security to reconstruction, an important part of Petraeus’ counter-insurgency policy.

Petraeus pointed out similar successes exhibited in the Anbar province and the former “Triangle of Death,” which he now calls the “Circle of Life.”

As Arab Jabour experiences a rebirth, an important step is involving the Iraqi central government.

“How do we connect the dots between pieces of the government?” Adgie asked. “They are smart guys (the leaders in Arab Jabour). They just need some help.”

The Iraqi government has been reluctant in offering this help to Arab Jabour and other predominantly Sunni-based areas for fear that the CLCs will turn into anti-government militias.To help alleviate this fear, Adgie said the CLCs will transition into a police force the area.

Two hundred fifty-eight have volunteered to become police officers, more than double the 120 Adgie believes would be needed to police the area.

The measure of incorporating the CLCs into Iraqi security forces is necessary to enable them to stand up on their own once American forces transition from combat roles to more advisory roles.

“We made a lot of good friends,” Adgie said. “We refuse to let al-Qaida back in.”

Keeping al-Qaida out is a priority, Ferrell said, now that operations are being geared toward reconstruction in Arab Jabour.

Toward that end, a Provincial Reconstruction Team was added to the 2nd BCT at the beginning of October.

The team is already working to restore such basic infrastructure such as clinics, schools and fresh drinking water, Ferrell said, noting that about $1.9 million in commander's emergency relief program funds was available to contractors in the area.

One pressing need is local health care facilities; Arab Jabour residents can only get health care by traveling to Baghdad.

Hearing Adgie and Ferrell’s comments and concerns, Chalabi said he would speak with the Minister of Health about getting the government involved in the area.

Chalabi said he would also work with the ministry of water to help with the repair of a sewage treatment facility.

The facility, currently inoperable, is repairable. Once repaired, the facility can provide 200 jobs and help relieve sewage problems in the outskirts of Baghdad.

Before leaving, Petraeus recognized one Soldier from each of the 1-30th Inf. Regt.’s seven companies by presenting them with a commander’s coin of excellence. Soldiers on their third tour of duty were also awarded with a coin.

(Story by Sgt. Kevin Stabinsky, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division)