November 17, 2004
The Sheepdogs
I found this in an unlikely place....the site of the Embedded "journalist" that has put a young Marine through hell for doing his job. Most of his stuff is anti-war, then he comes up with a personal account of an ambush that shows that he almost "gets it" and this great poem:
Wanting nothing more than peace to keep
To graze, grow fat and raise their young,
Sweet taste of clover on the tongue.
Their lives serene upon Life’s farm,
They sense no threat nor fear no harm.
On verdant meadows, they forage free
With naught to fear, with naught to flee.
They pay their sheepdogs little heed
For there is no threat; there is no need.
To the flock, sheepdog’s are mysteries,
Roaming watchful round the peripheries.
These fang-toothed creatures bark, they roar
With the fetid reek of the carnivore,
Too like the wolf of legends told,
To be amongst our docile fold.
Who needs sheepdogs? What good are they?
They have no use, not in this day.
Lock them away, out of our sight
We have no need of their fierce might.
But sudden in their midst a beast
Has come to kill, has come to feast
The wolves attack; they give no warning
Upon that calm September morning
They slash and kill with frenzied glee
Their passive helpless enemy
Who had no clue the wolves were there
Far roaming from their Eastern lair.
Then from the carnage, from the rout,
Comes the cry, “Turn the sheepdogs out!”
Thus is our nature but too our plight
To keep our dogs on leashes tight
And live a life of illusive bliss
Hearing not the beast, his growl, his hiss.
Until he has us by the throat,
We pay no heed; we take no note.
Not until he strikes us at our core
Will we unleash the Dogs of War
Only having felt the wolf pack’s wrath
Do we loose the sheepdogs on its path.
And the wolves will learn what we’ve shown before;
We love our sheep, we Dogs of War.
Russ Vaughn
2d Bn, 327th Parachute Infantry Regiment
101st Airborne Division
Vietnam 65-66
That Mr Sites knew the probable result of the tape he turned over to the general feed, there can be no doubt, judging from the stories on his site.
In my mind, the fact that Mr Sites MUST have known the results of his actions on the morale of our troops and the propaganda uses of the tape by the Islamofacists and their mouthpiece Al Jazeera, makes him, at the least, a collaborator, and at the worst, an active, willing agent of the enemy.
I would hope for his sake that he is sent home to the US on the next plane outbound. If he is sent out with another unit as an embed, I do not believe that he would survive the next encounter with an enemy force. I personally would be hard pressed to lay my life on the line for him, given his prior actions.
I have an old grunt VN vet (USMC) from the Tet offensive who rents a room in my basement. He feels the same as you do Delft.
Yep, there's gonna' be a few 'accidents' with the embedded if they don't weed out the self-serving Pulitzer seekers.