USA DOT COM SPECIAL SERIES: Mike Spann -- What he lived for, and what he died for

Mike Spann, Semper Fi

By Verne Strickland  / November 14, 2011

On this website for the past few years, we have reported and commented on heroes and villains, gutter politics, wars, tragedies, personal stories of valor and of treachery, of extraordinary Americans who daily put their lives on the line to prevent our various deadly enemies from snuffing out the flame of freedom. 

But now we encounter a clash of wills, philosophies, and beliefs so totally opposed as to make the eruption of war inevitable, after Islamic radicals drew first blood.

We have never before had the opportunity to report on a story with more gripping personal impact, relevance and drama than this one -- the story of CIA agent and former Marine officer Michael Spann of  Alabama -- the first American to die fighting in the War on Terror in Afghanistan.

This is an epic saga of courage and sacrifice which brings together idealism and bravery, from the quiet and innocence of small town Alabama, to the chaos and dire peril of war in a hostile foreign land.

Though it has the intrigue of a movie script, this is not fiction, but a true-to-life depiction of idealism, danger and betrayal, of commitment to duty on the part of one special American who enters the lair of jihadists in Afghanistan on a quest to pick up the trail of arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden.

At the time of this mission, young Michael Spann was a CIA Special Ops agent who joined the agency to invest all his initiative, skill and bravery in the War on Terror, currently the the greatest threat to freedom in the world.

It was through my friend Ilario Pantano that I was made aware of this story. He directed me to Johnny Spann, Mike's father, who graciously made himself available for lengthy personal talks by phone, detailing this compelling chronicle of a father's search for facts in the death of his beloved son -- a war hero by any measure.

While those interviews with me were doubtless very painful for Mr. Spann, they surfaced intricate personal revelations of his effort to unravel a twisted plot that led finally to a crowded, seething prison in Afghanistan.  He shared facts which he said he has discussed to only a limited degree prior to this.

This has been a deep personal experience for me, and I consider it a privilege to have the opportunity to relate the facts of Michael Spann's personal search for bin Laden, and Johnny Spann's quest for documented evidence about how his son died -- overwhelmed in an intense fire fight at close range with a hoard of captured jihadists who wanted to kill him -- and did.

 

Honorary Marine Guards escort Mike's casket into Arlington National Cemetery on December 10, 2001. 

A full military funeral ensued. The CIA hero died ten years ago -- November 25, 2001

There are many instances in this rawboned narrative revealing the courage of this resilient American family -- a father's refusal to be denied the truth about his son's last moments in a prison compound, later pouring over grainy photos he had recovered of the postmortem of Mike's body at a medical center in Germany, and  the finality of a military funeral with full honors in Arlington. Through it all, grieving father Johnny Spann bore up with dignity and composure.

Johnny Spann's  tortuous journey to the truth is at times quite difficult to absorb, as he tells of examining the lifeless body of his son in a casket, tracking down a film depicting his son minutes before he was killed, and interviewing the men who personally witnessed Mike's death in a uprising by desperate prisoners. To me this amazing American father is no less a hero than the son he mourns.

Havinjg these desperate events related to me by a man who has endured so much to honor his son has rocked me to the core. It surely will have the same effect on you. It will make you feel blessed to realize how our military and defense systems hold the Islamic hoards at bay, keeping us safe and secure. It will also make you proud of those who stand watch, fight our fights and sacrifice life and limb for the sake of freedom.

In addition to recording the heartfelt personal comments shared by Johnny Spann, we consulted dozens of specialized military and intelligence websites which, I feel obligated to say, yielded no classified information while yielding facts which were previously unknown.

This story will be related in several installments to give it adequate space for delivery of key information and documentation. Watch for it in the next few days.This is not foremost a story of loss or defeat It is first of all a story of love and victory. This is the truth about what Mike Spann lived for -- and what he died for.

After following this tumultuous account, you will better understand the price of freedom.

Semper Fidelis.

                                    

With a mistake like that, how can Perry be president? He'll never be perfect (like me).

Posted by TobyToons (Diary)

Thursday, November 10th at 9:30PM EST

150 Comments

Why can't the Republicans nominate a genuine right-wing nut?

Verne Strickland Blogmaster / November 12, 2011

CONSERVATIVES JUST NEED TO COME TO GRIPS WITH THE FACT THAT IT'S ALWAYS GOING TO BE A MITT ROMNEY TYPE WHO LEADS THE TICKET.

By Frank J. Fleming

November 10, 2011 - 12:00 am

Conservatives are fired up. Thanks to the Tea Party and Obama’s general left-wing bungling, we’re mad and ready to go for the throat on government spending.

So who does Intrade show as having a 70% chance of winning the Republican nomination for president? Mitt “Social Security is just fine” Romney.

The left is always shrieking that the Republicans are going to nominate some right-wing nut for the presidency; if only that were true. The Republican base’s perfect candidate would be someone who emerged from his bomb shelter toting a shotgun with the sole purpose of dismantling government.

We want someone who can barely restrain himself from violence when talking to the normal useless, arrogant, tax-and-spend politician. Someone who, when given a bill to raise taxes, wouldn’t only veto it but would also publicly burn it and then hunt down the perpetrators who wrote it.

So who have the we nominated for president in the past? John McCain. George W. Bush with his “compassionate” conservatism — not that mean old conservatism that holds people responsible for their actions. Bob Dole. Exciting, right?

Obviously there is some sort of disconnect between what the conservative base of the Republican party wants and who the party ends up nominating for president. The states that go first in the primary and thus hold the most influence — New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, Florida — seem random, but from the results in past elections one has to conclude they were chosen by some sort of RINO genius to ensure that only a milquetoast right-of-center candidate will win the nomination.

Right now the country is a car speeding towards a cliff due to out-of- control spending, and conservatives want a president who will seize the wheel of that car and turn it around. But the Republican we nominate is always someone who only promises to ease up on the gas a little.

The left don’t have this problem. They nominate impractical left-wing nuts for president all the time. In fact, their more centrist candidates like Bill Clinton are the exceptions, not the rule. So why is that? Are the left just more devoted to their cause than we are?

The problem is that at the end of the day, conservatives are just practical people. Why do we have the bomb shelters? We like to survive. And you don’t survive by getting caught up in wild-eyed fantasies.

While we want to nominate some crazed anti-politician, at the end of the day we can’t pull the trigger when we know it just means we’re guaranteeing four more years of having a far left Democrat in charge. Sure, we’d love to send an extreme right-winger to the White House screaming about how Gardasil makes you retarded — if for no other reason than to make the left apoplectic — but we know that’s not going to happen.That’s why we always end up with someone like Mitt Romney, the creator of Obamacare’s predecessor.

Yes, conservatives loathe him, and he loathes us, but he seems like the best chance to win.
And maybe it’s best that there is some loathing between conservatives and our presidential nominee. The last thing we want to do is fall in love with a politician. Because what type of people become skilled politicians? People who hate government? No, those people never learn to work in the system. The people who succeed in politics are those who kinda like government and see it as a great tool for change — i.e., they’re the enemy.

No one gets to the level of being able to run a skilled campaign for president and remains a true conservative. So that’s why conservatives holding onto Reagan as the ideal politician hurts us in the end. We have this fantasy that the move to reduce government will one day be led from the top, but it’s just not going to happen. Anyone who makes it to that level is no longer one of us.

Conservatives just need to come to grips with the fact that it’s always going to be a Mitt Romney-type who leads the ticket, which is why we can’t make the president the standard bearer for conservatism.

When the car is speeding towards the cliff, we have to be on the hood of that car, screaming at the driver, “TURN THIS THING AROUND!” So the ideal candidate for conservatives isn’t some extreme right-winger. It’s a skilled politician we know we can bully.

http://pjmedia.com/blog/why-cant-the-republicans-nominate-a-genuine-right-wing-nut/?singlepage=true

Frank J. Fleming is the author of the ebook "Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything" (coming out November 15th from HarperCollins), writes columns for PJ Media and the New York Post, blogs at IMAO.us, and knows that true conservatives never emerge from their bomb shelters when a Democrat is president.

Veterans Day 2011: Former Marine combat officer Ilario Pantano saddened by renegotiation of veterans' benefits.

From an interview by Verne Strickland with combat veteran Ilario Pantano

Veterans Day is a very hard day for me, as is Memorial Day, or any day when I’m reflecting on service with sacrifice. I’m not thinking about myself but I am thinking about my men and I’m thinking about some of the men who are not with us anymore. That’s always very hard for me, and very somber. 

Veterans Day 2011 is a decade after the beginning of what we know now as the War on Terror. There’s one person who stands out to me, and I think you’ll be writing about in the near future – Michael Spann. In the days after 9/11 I remember watching the TV and breathlessly waiting for news about what we were going to do with this Taliban deal in Afghanistan, and I recall seeing this face of a clean-cut young gentleman who had been a former Marine officer who later was a CIA Special Operations officer, and I was thinking, here was the first American killed in the War on Terror in the search for bin Laden. 


Marine Lieutenant Ilario Pantano with Staff Sergeant Jason Glew, his senior
NCO in Al Anbar

I remember how that affected me, and how it pulled a trigger for me, like I needed to do more. And I was already committed to going back into the Marines and getting back into the fight. Do you know that today people talk about the one percent and the ninety-nine percent? I’m part of the .045 percent –- less than half a percent is the percent of our population that served in some capacity in the War on Terror over the last ten years. That is quite a burden. I think that maybe there was one member of Congress who actually had a son who was in the War on Terror.

I feel that increasingly we have moved away from a society that understands and fully shares the sacrifice. We are quick to give a lot of lip service to the guys and gals in uniform, buy them a free lunch and all of these things. But the bad news is that we are a little bit disconnected from the real cost and the real sacrifices. That’s going to have consequences for us during the next ten, twenty or thirty years. 

My concern is what it’s going to be within our electoral leadership, and in our communities. There are so many things that you know, Verne – consider the wonderful friendship that you shared with me through a dear friend of yours, a pillar of the community, high achiever and a man of strong faith, Mr. Ray McCauley of Wilmington, and by the way he had been a veteran in a foreign war. He chose to take his experiences and make the best of them and make them a force for good in his community, and this is played out in many towns and cities across America.

 But, following up on the percentage of Americans involved in wars we have fought – in the Second World War it was eleven percent, in Viet Nam it was nine percent, then in more recent history, as I said, it was less than half a percent only in this fight in the War on Terror. So if we then raise a warrior class that is populated by such a small percentage of our citizens, it becomes much easier to marginalize things like the promise we made to veterans about their benefits, for example. 

As citizens and taxpayers, we have some measure of obligation to try and help and assist when they need it and provide care when they’re down. But a veteran makes a promise to you and me and all Americans, and what that veteran says is he is willing to serve even to the extent of sacrifice of his life and these are the conditions under which he agrees to make the trade. 

Often what he is getting is next to nothing, it’s low pay, it’s uniform allowance, and a couple of hot meals. But sometimes folks make a decision that they’re going to go and stay in and retire and miss a lot of Christmases and a lot of birthdays and a lot of Thanksgiving turkeys and a lot of time while they’re out somewhere protecting our country. We made a promise to them that we were going to provide them medical benefits, provide them with a basic subsistence for retirement. So that’s the trade-off – some needed benefits after service, and in that service they vowed to risk their lives time and time and time again

The truth is that risk may have happened thousands of times within the course of a single combat tour. Multiply that times many tours, and you know what we’re asking them to do? They’re asking them to hear us and believe us when we say we love you, we honor you for service, now go fight for us and maybe die, or like 30,000 of your brothers, come back traumatically wounded so that they have an impaired ability to work for the rest of your life, or like thousands of others who will experience some sort of terrible psychological trauma, and, oh – sorry, but we’re going to renegotiate the terms of that deal now. You’ve already gone to war, but we are going to renegotiate our solemn contract. 

I’m not talking about pension for someone working in an auto factory that the taxpayer frankly has no business coming to bail out anyway. I’m talking about taking care of patriotic men and women who have been willing to die for you and for me, and we turn our backs on them and we marginalize their sacrifice and their efforts, and frankly it’s not acceptable to me, Verne. What we’re doing now is disgusting, and we should be embarrassed. We should be embarrassed. That’s candidly what I feel.