LTC Ahmed, the commander of an elite police unit in Salah ad Din province,  was assassinated on by a suicide bomber on Dec. 4th in central Tikrit, Iraq. 

Ahmed was among the first to step forward in 2003 and 2004 to work with Coalition forces in Tikrit. 

From the powerful Jabouri tribe centered North of the city, he quickly gained a reputation for being brash, fearless and willing to whatever it took to eliminate terrorists. 

I met him a few times this past October while embedded with 2-32 Field Artillery, the US Battalion that worked side-by-side with Ahmed. 

And he lives up to the quotes about him. 

"He was controversial, flamboyant, brave, and effective," U.S. Col. Walt Piatt told the Associated Press .  "He single-handedly disrupted numerous enemy plots during the last election - He was the go-to-guy in the province." 

During a Joint Security meeting I sat in on he puffed on double corona cigar and then joked that I should be paying him for the privilege of having a picture with him. 

"Angela Jolie wants her picture with me," he joked. 

We then talked about how after I finished up my work with the Army I should spend a few days embedded with him.  (I have been known to take off my body armor and jump in a pick up truck with an Iraqi officer to go for a drive around town .) 

I took down his cell phone number and told him the serious Inshalla--I'll spend a few days with you on this trip unless Allah prevents it.  I ran out of time on this trip to embed with Ahmed but toyed with extending a few days to embed with him.  If I had, I could have been with him on Dec. 4th. 

As I travelled around the province I inquired with other Iraqi police about Ahmed and his reputation.  From Bayji to Dujayl, he was a legend. 

The reports of him personally killing 250 plus insurgents/terrorists are not puffery.  The number of terrorists killed by men under his command is much higher. 

Ahmed had a lot of enemies.  The conventional wisdom is that Al Qaida killed him.  But the facts are probably murkier. 

Someone or some group didn't just want Ahmed dead--they needed him dead. 

Last night the local grade school performed their Veteran's Day program titled "Americans We".  I was very moved by the first song and wanted to share some grade school kids singing something worthwhile.

If you would like a copy of the complete program, please contact us and I'll let the school know if there's enough interest.

"What is your bracelet," she asked, looking at the band of thin steel, laquered black, with a name, date and location etched on it.

I met her as I filled in as the host of a talk radio show--one of the topics was dating and she called in and asked me out on a date.

During the course of dinner and then beverages on the patio I learned my date was a pacifist.  I understand pacifism.  I understand the relgious denominations that follow pacifism as a creed.

I understand it as an ideal.  But I do not understand pacifists as people who hold their belief as an amourphous moral superiority.  As we near the 4th of July the celebration of our Nation, a nation founded and created through a war, I cannot imagine enjoying the liberty we have while finding the men who fought for that freedom to have engaged in an immoral act.

I let the comment go, and shifted the conversation away from warfare--a topic I know way to much about to discuss on a first date.

Later on, after another Mojito had lubricated her even more, she asked about the bracelet I wear.

"THE NAME," I said handing her the bracelet, is of a friend of mine.  Marine Corporal Joshua C. Watkins.

I met Watkins in 2005, when I embedded with elements of my old Marine Corps unit during their deployment to the Fallujah area of Iraq.

Watkins was in Gold Platoon.  I spent most of my time with Silver Platoon.  Gold and Silver were sister platoons of the same 100 Marine infantry element.

I first ran through the canal country with him during Operation Clear Decision--an operation in the Kharmah area.  Watkins was a Lance Corporal then, a member of a team chasing down insurgents on the 'Black List.'

During Operation Clear Decision, I went with Watkins on a dozen house-hits.  Like all the Marines on that team, he never hesitated once to go through the door or down a blind alley.

A few years earlier, before he became Joshua C. Watkins, U.S.M.C., he was a student at the University of North Florida.

The Marine Corps was not a last resort for him, the only option left--he joined the Marines after 9-11 with clear purpose and intention.

In the face of a threat to his country, his family, he displayed fortitude.  And fortitude would be a hallmark of his until his last.

"I REMEMBER HIM so clearly," I told her.

In the late Summer of 2005, Gold and Silver were operating out of Camp Smitty--a combat outpost on the south-west bank of the Euphrates near the Amiriyah/Ferris corridor.

It was a crucible.  110 degrees was a cool day.  The bottled water was 110 degrees.  No electricity, running water.  At that time, Camp Smitty was the last outpost before heading into Al Qaida country.

At night, in between the 8 on 8 off mission cycle, he would come out at night, when it cooled of to 95 degrees, a grin on his face, a quip on his tongue.

Nothing seemed to phase him, nothing got him down, he rarely ever needed to be told what to do.  Even as a Lance Corporal, he was ready to take on more--to be a leader of Marines.

We all came home together from that deployment.  In 2006, Watkins went back to Fallujah, this time as a Corporal of Marines.

"THE LAST MISSION, the very last mission.  Last missions are the worst," I said, remembering a previous last mission where a friend of mine lost a leg and an arm.

In 2006, Watkins and his Marines drew the worst duty possible--securing the highway between Abu Ghraib and Fallujah.

A seven month battle of wits and fortitude against IED teams.

On the very last mission, all Watkins and his Marines had to do was show the unit replacing them around the area they worked--go out, get back alive, pack up and head home to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.

But the enemy had other plans.

The platoon had been in several firefights  along the highway in the summer of 2006--one gunfight was so long and intense they had to be re-supplied with ammunition.

Most of the humvees had been hit with something over the course of the summer.  The new armor kits being so sturdy, the only true threat became a culvert bomb--hundreds of pounds of explosives packed under the road.

The force of one of those explosions will shatter the legs of the Marines in the vehicle.

After surviving all that, they had to do one more mission.

"OCTOBER 21st, 2006, was the day of that mission," I said as she looked at the date etched on the bracelet.

While Watkins was leading Marines in Iraq, I was engaged in the most frivolous of pursuits--running a campaign to pass a tax increase so a group of multi-millionaires could build a sports stadium.

The money from that campaign allowed me to finance the post production of the first Outside The Wire documentary--Call Sign Vengeance.  In the 'Clear Decisions' segment, you can see snippets of Watkins as we run through Kharmah on the trail of the Black Listed insurgent leaders.

October 21st was the last day, the last mission and another gunfight broke out.

I have talked with a few of the Marines from the old unit who were there that day.

Everyone reacted with the cool deameanor and fortitude expected of experienced Marines.

As the bullets flew back and forth, everyone zeroed in the moment.

And one insurgent zeroed in on Watkins.

A bullet caught him in the abdomen.  He was evacuated to the small surgical hospital at Camp Fallujah, smiling through the pain.

Watkins wasn't about to let his injury get anyone down.

In the hospital, as they were preparing him to be flown by helicopter to Baghdad or Balad--some of the best emergency rooms in the world--he was cracking jokes.

"I'll get back home before you guys," one Sergeant recalled Watkins saying.  Not even a bullet hole in his stomache could phase him.

That was Watkins--a Marine who embodied fortitude.

"MARINE CORPORAL JOSHUA WATKINS is a giant and we are standing on his shoulders," I said to my pacifist date.

He did make it home.  But wrapped in an American flag.

The bullet nicked an interior artery, the blood loss was too great for even a giant like Watkins to sustain.

My companion has the luxury of pacifism because of Corporal Watkins.  He stood between her and those who would destroy her.  Watkins stood between us and an evil many fear to acknowledge.

We truly do stand on the shoulders of giants.  Men and women who throughout our nation's history gave all, so that we may have all.

I believe it was General Patton who said something to the effect 'do not mourn such men, rather thank God that such men exist.'

She did not know what to say.  Her easy pacifism was checked.  She understood she could declare herself a pacifist, because Watkins and others like him, from the foundation of this nation, would stand between her and those whose religious beliefs compel them to love death more than life.

 ----

I tell the story of Joshua Watkins often and we cannot hear the stories of the giants of our nation enough--Washington, Knox, Greene, Hamilton and Mordecai Gist.  And foreigners who came to our nation in its war-born infancy like Lafayette and Von Stuben.

And we cannot forget the giants who quietly walk among us now, whose shoulders we stand on while they serve in the cauldron of July heat in Iraq and Afghanistan and North Africa.

You can help keep the memory of Joshua Watkins alive by contributing to the Marine Corporal Joshua C. Watkins scholarship at the University of North Florida.  The giant that he is, even after he gave all, Watkins is helping others to have all.

It is a win-win for them.  If they get away with it, they have stroked their cowerdly egos. 

If they get swept & stomped MCMAP style , they get to be on TV.  And we all know which side the media will take. 

I know a handfull of Marines from the old Platoon stationed in DC.

THE MISSION was a gambit, a dangerous trap and it was fitting that it kicked off on April Fools Day. 

In the Spring of 2005, the 6-lane highway running from Fallujah to Abu Ghraib was a nesting ground for IEDs--the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed so many Soldiers and Marines. 

It was the mission of Vengeance Platoon, a mixture of active duty Marines from Camp Lejeune and reserve Marines from Kansas City, to eliminate the IED threat on the highway. 

At that time, there were very few from-the-factory up-armored humvees.  The armor on the one I was riding in consisted of a kevlar pad duct taped to a 1/3 mild steel 'saloon door.'  A door that, like the swinging doors of the old west saloons, only covered only 3/5 of the opening. 

That armor would do nothing to slow down the shrapnel from an IED made from a 155mm artillery shell.

"When have we ever taken a hero on the battlefield and put them up on a pedastal that we would put an athlete?" David Bellavia asked.

For expressing that sentiment, Bellavia has bourne the scorn of lesser and 'accurs'd' men. 

I interviewed Bellavia during the Vets for Freedom National Heroes Tour stop in Kansas City at the World War I Museum. 

A Silver Star recipient, Bellavia has been nominated for the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Battle of Fallujah in 2004.  Bellavia went into a house full of terrorists.  Bellavia came out alive--the terrorists didn't.

In the stone and glass interior of the WWI museum, it struck me that Bellavia has much in common with WWI's most famous hero--Sgt. Alvin York .