I recently got this story in an eMail from Merrilee Carlson, a Gold Star mother whose son, Michael C Carlson, was killed in Iraq in 2005. Since then she has worked to run the organization Families United for Our Troops and Their Mission (http://www.familiesunitedmission.com), an organization of Gold Star and Blue Star families with the intent of ensuring that the sacrifices made by our soldiers are not in vain, and to ensure that they receive the support they need and deserve.
From time to time they’ll send out news stories that portray the successes & sacrifices willingly made by our troops. Most of these stories are stories that the regular newspapers might possibly put on page 37Q (and television wouldn’t even blink before rejecting the story), because good news about the US isn’t what sells. Plus, these stories don’t jive with the worldview of most media outlets, who find it impossible to believe that men and women would actually willingly give up everything they have to provide freedom to someone they’ve never met, and to preserve the freedom of their fellow Americans, without seeking anything in return.
These are the men and women that Dr. Muayad Muslin Hamid al-Jaburri, an influential Iraqi cardiologist and humanitarian, wanted to say thank you to when he donated a gold eagle-head statue to the Soldiers of Multi-National Division – Baghdad (MND-B) in admiration for their sacrifices while working to make Baghdad a safer place to live. The article does more justice than I can, but to sum up his thoughts: “Now I can walk the streets and see the children playing at the park and going to school… My mother can go shopping without fear, and my wife can safely go to work.”
http://www.mnf-iraq.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=25288&Itemid=224