The Department of Defense released the obituaries of 20 military personnel killed in Iraq last week, ranging in age from 19 to 32. Ten of the fallen heroes (50%) were killed by improvised explosive devices. According to the website www.icasualties.org, U.S. deaths in Iraq now stand at 3,798, including five whose relatives are being notified today.
Total U.S. deaths in Afghanistan were 376 as of September 15th, according to the Pentagon.
Duty in Iraq involves all kinds of risks, combat being just one. An increasingly common type of accident involves the collision, or rolling over, of a military vehicle. In many of those instances, the soldiers are speeding to an emergency rescue, or on their way to support an ongoing firefight. As a general statement, however, there are a variety of causes for the deaths.
This was a highly unusual week, in that eight military personnel were killed by noncombat-related injuries. One such hero was Army Specialist Marisol Heredia of El Monte, California.
Marisol was described in an LA Times article as a strong-willed, perceptive young woman with a desire to continually expose herself to new and varied experiences in life. It was that “single-mindedness,” according to the paper, that influenced her to follow her older sister, Claudia, into the Army.
At Mountain View High School in her home town, she had developed a keen interest in the French language and the nation’s customs. Her French teacher, Kris Hanna, said she was a straight A student in the subject, which she took for 3 ½ years, and vice president of the French club.
She also said that her enthusiasm caused her to stand out from the other students. “Marisol was just somebody you wanted to be around, one of those very rare students that you stay in contact with after they graduate,” she said. Hanna also said she had sent a French dictionary to Marisol when she was in Iraq, along with some snacks.
In January, Marisol had been able to join Claudia on a furlough which took them to Paris, where they spent three weeks visiting the Louvre and other sites. One can only imagine that this must have been the highlight of her young life.
Back in Iraq, Marisol was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort hood, Texas. On July 18th, she was badly burned while fueling a generator. During her attempted recovery, she was transferred to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
Her subsequent ability to fight her way through a potentially fatal attack of pneumonia, gave considerable hope to her family, friends and fiancée, Travis Beaumont, a soldier she had met in Iraq.
Claudia, who had, by then, been discharged from the Army, was constantly at her sister’s bedside where, according to the Times, she spent the days “making her laugh, making her smile and reading to her, (especially from) the cards and letters sent by well-wishing strangers.”
Earlier this month, however, Marisol suffered a setback involving an infection. It continued to drag her downhill and she recently passed away. Claudia was quoted as saying “Nobody expected it. Nobody was ready for it.”
Marisol was 19.
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 29
I don't know who is and is not included in the numbers released by the DOD, but I think it's clear that they don't, and can't, tell the full story. As bad as it is that nearly 3800 soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq, things are much, much worse when we add the tens of thousands of wounded, and the significant suffering of families and loved ones.
How can this continue week to week, month to month, year to year?
The perfidity and dishonesty of our "leaders' is terrifying.
Thanks for sharing this story.
I cannot read The Toll each week; it leaves me deeply affected by sorrow and rage.
Wil is right, the extent of suffering is continuously hidden and disguised by our military.
God Bless the troops fighting for freedom, God protect the Iraqi people, and may a day soon come when we never ave to hear news like this.
Thank you for sharing it.
I feel that this terrible administration has betrayed and disrespected every single military person who has, through the years since the founding of the United States of America, given life and limbs to protect the freedoms for which we have always stood. This phoney war, started for dishonerable reasons, perpetuated for greed, and demanding more emotionally from our troops (this means the fighters, not the generals in the protected green zone) than perhaps any other war ever fought by these United States.
In addition it has destroyed the very fabric of our existance as a free nation, and life as we have known it up until now. My father and many others gave their lives on the battlefields of WWII and other wars for all we had, which has been so easily given away in the past six years on the pretext of "safety" but predicated on induced fears.
We need our own Nueremburg Trials to purge our nation's soul of all this perfidity. Retired General Colin Powel lied for his Commander in Chief, I'm sure he was not the first nor the last to do so. But when the Commander in Chief also lies like a rug, something must be done to free those sworn to serve him.
It is also a shame that such a great Americans name is used unwittingly without understanding her wishes or what she wanted the meaning of her life to be at a time like this. I have nothing but pride for Marisol, and sorry to say - the opposite for those of you who use this series ("The Toll") and the deaths of these people as some kind of argument for your cheap political criticisms.
There are many Americans who die every day that have great potential. They die of diseases and accidents and crimes and sometimes by their own hands (40000 suicides in the US per year). Why is it that you self-righteous insensitive bastards (and bitches) don't write about them every week? Does it not fit any burning desire you have to make a futile attempt to put meaning into your own life?
I think those who use the opportunity of other people's deaths to hijack the meaning the of their lives for your own selfish and mostly ignorant purposes are shameful and disgusting. It is almost the same thing as standing up in the middle of a funeral and preaching. Why not let these people's lives have the meaning that "they" chose to give to them? It is ghoulish vampirism to do anything else.
bruce --
See, I think the problem alot of people are having, is that they are unable to look at it as "gee, we lost a whole lot more in WWI, so whats the big deal if only a few thousand Americans lose their lives in an undeclared (read: Illegal) unnecessary farce, based on conquest and greed and premised on lies." And thats even IF some people are still unable to see past the ridiculous fearmongering propaganda that Iraq posed some kind of threat to us, or that "Radical Islam" poses some existential threat to "our way of life."
Yeah ... I don't look at it that way either Steve.
The problem with you is that you cannot make an argument,
suggest an action, design a government or do much of anything
unless you have something to attack or ridicule and distort.
I don't think is too illogical to assume that the radical Islamicists
if they can will live up to what they have continually said, and to
what the more moderate elements of Islam is failing to stand up
to. It ought to be hint big enough to get through your skull that
if they moderate Muslims are not standing up to these guys they
are in effect taking them much more seriously than ever we are.
Keep dreaming that we can all just live in our insulated comfortable
American bubbles and not pay any price for it, or expect to make
any sacrifice. You'll get it one day that things are not black and white
and mistakes do not mean one quits and lies down and dies.
> Good War". I feel this is an absolutely ludicris statement,
> because it is like saying the "Last Good Genocide" or the
> "Last Good Holocaust" or something.
No it is not.
You are equating defensive war with offensive war, and war with genocide.
I thought you were making sense earlier, but that statement is idiotic.
Most Iraqis had relatives or friends that had been singled out and
screwed over or murdered by Saddam Berf. I cannot think of where you
must be coming from or why you want to go on like this with imaginary
comments. I think about it, and they are not worth addressing really
except to point it out to some possible people who might read this
and take it at face value.
Excuse me if I'm now, after four long years, sick to death of revisionist history and overblown claims of existential threats being used to justify a policy of preemptive aggression and continued occupation of lands we had no right to go into in the first place.
Iraq was never a threat to our national security. their armed forces were decimated. Saddam was described by the radical jihadists as one of the "near enemy." Clearly our foreign policy-makers have no qualms with befriending tyrants for their own ends, as evidenced by the fact they call an unelected military dictator an "ally" in Pakistan's Musharref, and the despotic monarchy of Saudi Arabia are like extended family to the Bush's.
In light of that, I don't see why it wouldn't have been just as good policy to reach out to Saddam, to establish diplomatic relations (particularly in light of the fact that he was cooperating with the UN and the weapons inspectors at the time of invasion), to offer productive relations in exchange for cooperation with our anti-terror efforts. After all, American policy-makers had no problem selling Saddam bio-cheme weapons and providing other material support back in the '80's when he was fighting against the Iranian revolutionaries that we didn't like (in spite of the fact that we were also arming and funding those same Iranian revolutionaries through back-channels, due to Ollie North and Co.'s operations out of the basement of the White House that Reagan allegedly had no knowledge of).
The excuse being offered now to stay and continue the occupation that just so happens to be funneling billions opf taxpayer dollars to politically-connected private contractors every week, is that it is the 'central fight in the war on terror,' and that 'radical Islam' will eventually wipe out the civilized world if we don't stay in Iraq.
The idea that a stateless, ragtag, group of fanatical individuals, with no military to speak of, with limited funds, poses such a threat to "our way of life," is ridiculous on its face. The only threat to our way of life, is posed by us; when we allow ourselves to be cowed into accepting the nullification of our civil liberties, and into accepting undeclared, preemptive invasions of nations that pose no direct or immediate threat to us.
I don't suggest that we "live in a bubble." Only that we cease to allow our government to start wars-for-conquest-and-profit. If terrorism is such a huge threat to our homeland, then why isn't anything being done to secure our borders, or to enforce immigration laws that are already on the books?
I suggest we use our military to defend our homeland, not to invade others' in unconstitutional actcs of aggression.
I suggest that we "spread freedom" by way of trade, and setting a good example. How can we speak of "spreading freedom" with a straight face, when we are giving up freedoms so easily in our own country?
Perhaps if we stop being murderously meddlesome in the interior affairs of other nations, we won't find that so many foreigners are willing to strap on bombs to kill Americans. Just perhaps.
> No, Bruce......I'm equating war with killing human beings------PERIOD.
Then you are an even bigger ass that I had thought.
lay down and die? A tad bit melodramatic, aren't we?
how would a policy of staying out of the internal affairs of other nations; befriending and trading with other countries, cause us to "freeze...starve...and be enslaved"?
"mind our own business" does not automatically translate into "sit back and allow foreign powers to invade and conquer us."
Just because there's a bunch of chest-thumping morons running around spouting emotionally-charged rhetoric about "appeasement," doesn't mean its actually good policy to stay in a foreign country and continue to fight simply because the citizens of that country are killing our soldiers because they don't want us there.
WHy don't we just go ahead and invade, hmmm... say, Brazil? Surely, if we did so, and then stayed and occupied them, Brazilians would take to killing our soldiers and killing each other for power.
Then, we'd absolutely HAVE to stay, because since they were fighting us, it would be "appeasement" to leave, and we just can't have that.
All that propaganda rolling in your head is starting to take its toll.
God Bless
10*
Please be sure and post all of your photos, posts and videos to the group and don't forget to stop by and comment on group content!