Theodore's World

Great Pictures, Music is from Remember the Titans
This is a wonderful Tribute to our troops.
Please click HERE
Thank you John 5 (VN69/70)

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif.
( March 2, 2006)

Karla Comfort received a lot of looks and even some salutes from people when she drove from Benton, Ark., to Camp Pendleton, Calif., in her newly-painted, custom Hummer H3 March 2. The vehicle is adorned with the likeness of her son, 20-year-old Lance Cpl. John M. Holmason, and nine other Marines with F Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division who where all killed by the same improvised explosive device blast in Fallujah, Iraq, in December 2005.

For Karla Comfort, having the vehicle air brushed with the image of the 10 Marines was a way to pay homage to her hero and his fellow comrades who fell on Iraq’s urban battlefield.
“I wanted to let people know (Marines) are doing their jobs honorably, and some of them die,” said the 39-year-old from Portland, OR “I don’t want people to forget the sacrifices that my son and the other Marines made.”

Leading up to her son’s death, Karla Comfort had received several letters from him prior to his return. He had been deployed for five months, and Comfort “worried everyday he was gone until she got the letters and found out the date he was coming home,” she said.
Marines knocked on the front door of her home in Farmington, Mich., at 3 am with the dreadful news.
“I let my guard down when I found out he was coming home,” she said. “There are times that I still cannot believe it happened. It’s very hard to deal with.”

Karla Comfort came up with the idea for the rolling memorial when she and her two other sons attended John’s funeral in Portland, Ore.
“I saw a Vietnam (War) memorial on a car, and I said to my son Josh, ‘we should do something like that for John,’ she recalled. “He loved Hummers.”
She purchased the vehicle in January and immediately took it to AirbrushGuy & Co. in Benton, Ark., where artist Robert Powell went to work on changing the plain, black vehicle into a decorative, mobile, art piece.
“I only had the vehicle for two days before we took it in,” she joked.

Two hundred and fifty man-hours later, Powell had completed the vehicle. The custom job would have cost $25,000. Out of respect for Karla Comfort’s loss and the sacrifices the Marines made, AirbrushGuy & Co. did it for free. Comfort only had to purchase the paint, which cost $3,000.
“I love it,” she said. “I’m really impressed with it, and I think John would be happy with the vehicle. He would have a big smile on his face because he loved Hummers.”

Karla Comfort gave Powell basic instructions on what to include in the paint job. But in addition to the image of her son in Dress Blues and the faces of the nine other Marines, there were several surprises. “He put a lot more on than I expected,” she said. “I think my favorite part is the heaven scene.”
On the left side of the vehicle, a detail of Marines are depicted carrying their fallen comrades through the clouds to their final resting place. The American flag drapes across the hood, the words, “Semper Fi” crown the front windshield and the spare tire cover carries the same Eagle Globe and Anchor design that her son had tattooed on his back.
“All the support I have been getting is wonderful,” she said.
Karla Comfort decided to move back to her hometown of Portland, and making the cross-country trip from Arkansas was a way for her to share her son’s story. It’s also her way of coping with the loss.
“Along the way I got nothing but positive feedback from people,” she said. “What got to me was when people would salute the guys (Marines). It’s hard to look at his picture. I still cry and try to get used to the idea, but it’s hard to grasp the idea that he’s really gone.”

This post will
stay at the top until after midnight of

              
September 11th

I joined the 2996 Call For Bloggers– to honor a victim of the September 11 attacks. I would like to share with you about a wonderful man and Hero.

Raymond Downey
Deputy Chief Special Operations Command
Laid to rest on May 20, 2002

After serving with the U.S. Marine Corps in the Middle East, Chief Downey was appointed to the FDNY on April 7, 1962.
Raymond M. Downey, as Deputy Chief for the Fire Department of the City of New York will always be the person recognized as the “Father” of modern Urban Search and Rescue techniques.

In March 1998, Chief Downey testified before Congress about the first attack on the World Trade Center. Requesting additional funding for Urban Search and Rescue, at that hearing he said:

…”We, the fire service, are no better prepared then we were back in 1995. Why? The training that has been given with federal funding is not being directed to the “first responder,” and the lack of providing funding for the necessary equipment for these responders is directly related to the lack of our preparedness.
…The first responders, the firefighters…performed heroic actions only because they were able to be on the scene within minutes and were properly trained and equipped. “

In August of 2001, he was placed in charge of all SOC (Special Operations Command) operations – Rescue, Squad, Haz Mat and Marine – and promoted to Deputy Chief.
Chief Downey’s phenomenal 39-year career with the FDNY was built upon success after success and rescue after rescue. Downey became one of the city’s most decorated firefighters and achieved almost mythical status among them for his steely resolve in the face of disaster. Chief Downey received five individual medals for valor and 16 unit citations. Additionally, he was awarded the Administration Medal in 1995 for his efforts on the Bunker Gear Program and interim quartermaster system.

Among the elite rescue firefighters who served under him, Ray Downey was held in awe for his uncanny ability to arrive at a major disaster and size up the mayhem with little more than a glance. In a quiet voice, with no discussion, he would start doling out instructions and assignments and call for equipment no one had thought of. Somehow, miraculously, the chaos would transform itself into a smooth and orderly rescue operation.
That’s why his fellow New York City firefighters called him “God.”

Downey was sitting in his office at the Special Operation Division on Randalls Island, surrounded by photos and mementos of the World Trade Center and Oklahoman City bombings and a long ago blast at a plumbing supply store in Brooklyn.
He harkened back to a blaze he had fought when he was a new member of that big family. A woman had cried out as he and his comrades dashed into the flame and smoke.

“She said, ‘You firemen are crazy. You’re running in when we’re all running out,'” Downey remembered.

He since had become the world’s leading expert in responding to terrorist attacks. He spoke of his work as a member of the Gilmore Commission, a congressional advisory panel that last year issued a report called “Toward a National Strategy for Combating Terrorism.” The group had briefed Vice President Cheney in May, recommending a greater priority on intelligence and preventing terrorist attacks before they occur.
Downey helped pioneer a national network of eight search and rescue teams under the federal Emergency Management Agency. Many of the members of the eight FEMA teams that searched for him were his trainees. And in his spare time, he traveled across the country preaching the need to prepare for terrorism.
Downey also helped teach some of his techniques to senior commanders of the Marine Corps and the Navy, running combat scenarios in high-rise buildings and sewers, some of them in the trade center neighborhood, in 1997.

“Unfortunately, it’s not a question of if, but when the next one comes,” he said.

“The general consensus in the current atmosphere is that the next war we fight will be in an urban area,” Downey told Newsday in 1997.

The commission was meeting as Downey sat in his office. He called them to explain he was occupied with the aftermath of an explosion triggered when two kids spilled some gasoline whose fumes were then ignited by the pilot light of a water heater in the basement of a hardware store.

Downey said he had arrived at the scene to find two firefighters dead in the street and a third one trapped. He had employed the same strategy as at Oklahoma City.

“Basically what I do is size it up,” he said. “I find out where he was last seen and picture in my mind the force of the explosion.”

The rescuers had reached the firefighter too late, and now there would be three funerals. The third found Downey wearing and hurting, but unshaken in his resolve.

“Everybody will just go back to work,” he said. “They are aware of the dangers we get involved in, but they will go out the door again. It’s just not going to stop them.”

Even so, three funerals in two days seemed almost too much for even him to bear.

“We always say, hopefully, that’s the end of it,” Downey said.

“He approached a fire straight on,” said Lee Ielpi, a recently retired firefighter from Rescue 2. “The easy thing to do would be to unscrew your head at a major incident. But he knew exactly what had to be done.”

Downey also made frequent trips to Washington, serving on a congressional advisory panel on domestic terrorism and lobbying politicians to give local firefighters more money. In an interview with Newsday in 1997, Downey warned that the next war would be fought in an urban setting.
His knowledge of how buildings fall apart was so legendary that at national firefighting conferences, whole rooms would go quiet when he walked in.

“He was kind of like a rock star. He was idolized,” said Hal Bruno, chairman of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation.

In New York at 8:48 A.M., a Boeing 767 jetliner crashed into the North Tower 1 of the World Trade Center. A mission that was planned and carried out by followers of Islam.
The first plane had no sooner struck the World Trade Center on Tuesday morning, September 11th, 2001, than Downey was on his way. Then, the second tower. Flames and smoke erupt from # 2 World Trade Center. As the second Boeing 767 jetliner crashes from left to right into the 110- story tower, heavy smoke was visible venting from several floors of #1 World Trade Center.
That morning there was more action than anyone could have foreseen or wanted. Downey’s unit was among the first to be called in when the World Trade Center Towers were attacked. Downey went to lead his men. When the towers fell, he was leading the evacuation.

“He had been warning everyone of this for years,” said Joe Allbaugh, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. For Downey, “it wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when.”

Exactly what transpired is still not clear, but according to one version, Hatton and Brown were inside the first tower when it collapsed. This account has Downey moving up the tower and toward where he hoped some of those trapped could be rescued.
An Air Force F-16 banked overhead, the engine’s roar echoing off the surviving buildings, a sound of power and impotence as the rescuers searched for life in the smoking ruins they call the pile.
Firefighters, cops, paramedics and construction workers labored together as they had after the first World Trade Center attack and the bombing at Oklahoma City, only the horror was magnified a thousand fold and the magnificent Fire Chief Ray Downey was not in command.
This time, Downey was himself one of the victims. He had, as always, been right there with his men, once again trying to will away the mortal danger.

“You say to yourself, ‘Not me,'” he said three months earlier. “But, when the unexpected happens there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He paused.

“I guess that’s the fate we all live with.”

Chief Downey’s body has not been found.

On Friday, October 22nd, 2004, the United States Marine Corps Chemical Biological Incident Response Force Command (CBIRF) dedicated their Training Facility in memory of Deputy Chief Raymond M. Downey. The dedication was at the CBIRF Training Facility in Stumpneck, Maryland.
Congress unanimously approved to name the Deer Park, Long Island, post office after New York Fire Chief Raymond Downey.

John Barbagallo worked in Rescue 2 with Downey….”He was the best fire officer I’ve ever known,” Barbagallo said. “And when you have a good leader, you’d follow him into hell.”

“He approached a fire straight on,” said Lee Ielpi, a recently retired firefighter from Rescue 2. “The easy thing to do would be to unscrew your head at a major incident. But he knew exactly what had to be done.”

To his five children – fire Lt. Chuck Downey of Commack, fire Capt. Joseph Downey of West Islip, Ray Downey Jr. of Babylon, Marie Tortorici of Deer Park and Kathy Ugalde of Deer Park….. Downey was a strict yet loving father who kept his work separate from his family life and encouraged them to channel their energy into sports. When they were growing up, Downey would sometimes work longer shifts just so he could make it to a son’s wrestling match or a daughter’s soccer game.

“He always had that Marine attitude – that tough exterior,” said his son Ray, a physical-education teacher. “But once you got behind that, he really was a softie.”

It may seem darkly ironic that a man who achieved international acclaim for his familiarity with rubbled disasters would himself die in one.
To his family and friends, it makes perfect sense. When a situation turned deadly, Downey would often order his men out just as he was running in.

Some things you learn about people only after they’ve gone. For the family of Raymond Downey, the manila folder was like that.
He never boasted about his accomplishments to his family, never reveled in the praise that seemed to follow him wherever he went.
Except for the manila folder he carried in his briefcase, that is. It was the only indulgence Downey allowed himself; He stuffed it with letters and accolades from a 39-year career and gave it a label in a small, tidy script: “That A Boys.”

His wife, Rosalie, found the folder after Downey, 63, was lost in the World Trade Center attack. “He never complimented himself,” she said. “He always just did what he had to do.”

Sometimes, Rosalie Downey says, she still talks to her husband, a man she met more than 40 years ago when they flirted through a glass partition in a Manhattan bank. She asks him why he didn’t stay out when he led other firefighters to safety that day.

But, she says, she knows better than that. “Then I tell myself, Ray would have never lived with himself.”

OUR ANGEL
By Kathy Downey Ugalde
On that dreadful day
We huddled in prayer
Hearts joined in sorrow
Pain difficult to bear
Our angels climbed up
As they helped others down
The towers may have fallen
But our BRAVEST
Never touched the ground
They kept soaring up
To that heavenly cloud
Shining strength down on us
We are grateful & proud
So please say a prayer
As a tribute to those
Whose love never faltered
And eternally grows

Wild Thing’s additional comment………….
One of my nephews is a firefighter in New York. He was there that morning, as all of them were. He lost 11 of his fellow firefighters including 2 Chiefs. I was honored to meet 4 of his friends that lost their lives on September 11th, 2001. They were in our home and they will never be forgotten, just as Chief Raymond M. Downey will never be forgotten.

And this is my tribute at my website, to all the lives lost that day when Islam rode into our world on planes destined to destroy us, but Islam did not know what Americans are about. They never will, but they do know our response to their evil….and that part I can smile about.

* Basil’s Blog
* Big Dog’s Blog
* Stop the ACLU
You can read Chief Raymond M. Downey’s speech to the Federal Response to Domestic Terrorism Involving WMD Training for First Responders Witness Statement ………..

(more…)

The media won’t do it. This is the unvarnished, undramatized truth of 9/11.
There is no sound with this video, it is raw footage.

Thank you Vinnie for sending this to me.

View
the ABC footage

that
Bill Clinton

Does
NOT
want you to see

Please click HERE to go to the site that has the clips.

Wild Thing’s comment…….
Draft dodger, commie, socialist, coward, murderer, chia pet hair Bill Clinton not only loathes our military, but America as well. He thinks we don’t know these things about him. For him to get his blood pressure up about these clips is not only stupid but shows how he thinks of john Q. public.
We know he lies, he wagged his finger in our faces and told us all he did not have sex with that woman. Oh but that is not the only lie, he is unable to tell the truth about almost everything that comes out of his vile mouth.
He thinks if he keeps clips from being in a film that have to do with him and also his administration he will get off scott free. But why not, he never paid the price for any of his “gates” ( many crimes) except for his impeachment that was hard fought for but only a slap on the hand to him in his mind. He wears his impeachment like a badge of fake honor of how he was picked on my Republicans. waaa waaa waaa What a total asshole Clinton is and we were stuck with him for 8 freakin long years. Because there were enough idiots out there that also didn’t care about having a draft dodger for President for one thing.
The Internet will see to it that millions see the banned segments regardless. They might as well go get angry at Al Gore, since he invented it. heh heh
Why my goodness look at this….. giggle you stinker Berger with your pockets full of documents. Berger forgot about the internet too.
Berger rejected four plans to kill or capture bin Laden….from 2004
President Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, rejected four plans to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, worrying once that if the plans failed and al Qaeda launched a counterattack, “we’re blamed.”
According to the September 11 commission’s 567-page report, released Thursday, Mr. Berger was told in June 1999 that U.S. intelligence agents were confident about bin Laden’s presence in a terrorist training camp called Tarnak Farms in Afghanistan.

JPost.com
A UK-based group of design professionals has petitioned the organizers of an architecture exhibition in Venice to withdraw an Israeli entry, expressing “dismay and concern” that the prestigious event has agreed to host Israelis.
In the petition, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP) called on the organizers of Biennale Architettura, which begins Sunday and runs until November 19, to withdraw Israel’s entry. They said, “We request that the Biennale committee consider withdrawing the Israeli entry as being provocative and counterproductive to the aims of the Biennale, and particularly distasteful in the context of the aftermath of an ugly and unnecessary war in neighboring Lebanon, and a continuing one-sided war in Gaza.”

Wild Thing’s comment……
Being anti-semitic is alive and well, unfortunately. Their evil people that feel like this and make me sick.

* Darleen’s Place

Kerry calls for Dems to rally around pulling troops out of Iraq
Boston Herald
Sen. John Kerry is calling on Democrats to rally around his plan to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraq by next July and redeploy some to Afghanistan.
The Massachusetts Democrat gave a speech this morning at Boston’s Faneuil Hall.
On the eve of Congressional mid-term elections, Kerry says Democrats must propose a new direction to defeat terrorism.
He said Bush “pretends again and again” that Iraq is the central front on the war on terror, but Kerry said it isn’t and “never has been.”
Kerry says the military commitment in Iraq weakens the United States’ ability to respond to threats in Iran and Afghanistan.

Wild Thing’s comment……
We are SO fortunate that this pompous buffoon is NOT Commander in Chief.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has applied for a U.S. visa, according to State Department officials.
The fiery leader plans to attend the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York later this month. Official says that the application, which was submitted last month, is going through the normal processing procedure.
Ahmadinejad is known for his controversial rhetoric. He has called the holocaust a “myth” and has stated that Israel will one day be destroyed. Jewish organizations have already begun planning protests to take place outside the U.N. Headquarters during Ahmadinejad’s visit.
Because he is visiting for the U.N. meetings in late September, the application is being processed with the “U.N. Headquarters Agreement” in consideration, which allows for visits for government officials who want to visit the U.N. in New York.
The official advises that the application will be much like the one Ahmadinejad went through last year for his visa. His application will most probably be denied based on the travel restriction as an Iranian government official, but that should be waived, and he would then be allowed to come into the U.S. for the meeting, but probably with a limited 25-mile travel radius.

Wild Thing’s comments…………
“controversial rhetoric” that is what you call it? So Israel should be “wiped off the map” is controversial rhetoric, Claiming the Holucaust isnt real is controversial rhetoric?
Well God help us! Why don’t we just let all these Islam freaks make the USA into their summer home. Sheesh!
Our government has allowed terrorists Former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami to come here. You can see my other post on this HERE. And our tax dollars are going all out protecting him. Helicopters the whole bit so he is safe while he is here. Just damn!

SOLDIERS PAUSE — U.S. Army soldiers from Battery B, 3rd Battalion, 320th Field Artillery Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, pause at the end of a patrol near Wynot, Iraq. (U.S. Army courtesy photo)

Soldiers from the 542nd Medical Company fly a UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter to a medical evacuation point during a mission near Tal Afar, Iraq

An F-16 Fighting Falcon fires an AIM-9 missile off the coast of South Korea during a live-fire exercise August 18, 2006. The F-16 is assigned to the 80th Fighter Squadron at Kunsan Air Base, South Korea. (U.S. Air Force photo/Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Allen

ONBOARD USS ALABAMA (AFPN) — Airmen with the 22nd and 23rd Special Tactics squadrons quickly descend from a helicopter rope onto the deck of this submarine in the Pacific Ocean during an exercise. The exercise tested special operations infiltration and rescue tactics. (U.S. Navy photo by Master Chief Petty Officer Daniel J. Niclas)