Posted on 12/06/2004 1:37:46 AM PST by kattracks
A week before Thanksgiving, a group of United States Army soldiers in Mosul, Iraq, stormed and retook three police stations that had fallen into the hands of insurgents. As the soldiers guarded one bullet-pocked cop shop, a couple of shady characters from New York bebopped into the station. One guy with slicked-back black hair with silver wings shook his fist in one startled young soldier's face and said, "We got your back, pal!""Holy s---, it's Tony Soprano and Paulie Walnuts!" shouted the young soldier. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"We thought you guys could use a hand," said Tony Sirico, who plays Paulie Walnuts on "The Sopranos."
Sirico chuckles in recounting his pre-Thanksgiving USO visit with James (Tony Soprano) Gandolfini to Iraq.
"We visited seven camps in four days," says Sirico. "And I gotta tell ya, it was one of the proudest times of my life. We got some really ballsy, steel-faced dedicated young guys and broads over there who make you proud to be an American. Me and Jimmy Gandolfini are on two opposite sides of the political coin. He's liberal and I'm on the right. But politics never came up once. I speak for the both of us when I tell ya that we went there because we're so damned proud of our troops."
Sirico was back in New York last week, still swallowing malaria pills, and glowing about his trip to Iraq.
"On Monday we flew from New York to London and then wound up in Camp Victory in Kuwait on a Tuesday," says Sirico. "Tracy Thede from the USO had the trip planned perfect. The USO does some job for these troops! At Camp Victory, we met a lot of soldiers who were tickled pink that two mooks from 'The Sopranos' would drop by. Me and Jimmy broke chops with the troops, signed autographs, posed for pictures and ate chow with them. We had a ball!"
On Nov. 24, Gandolfini and Sirico took a C-130 military transport plane into Iraq. "We were supposed to land in Baghdad but the Fallujah liberation was underway, so things were hot in Baghdad," says Sirico. "So they flew us into Mosul, to Camp Freedom. I had to slick my pompadour back for the helmet and I shook all the guys' hands and hugged all the girls."
Sirico and Gandolfini jumped into a Striker Military Vehicle and visited all the liberated police stations.
"We had the guys and gals laughing," Sirico says. "Lemme tell ya something - and Jimmy would agree - there's no loss of morale amongst our troops. Forget what you see on TV. I never heard one soldier bitch or moan."
Sirico says he and Gandolfini were on an emotional high through the entire trip, getting little sleep, eating, cavorting and yakking with the troops. "I'd say the hardest part of the trip was using them Porta Potties," says Sirico, who is as fastidious and germ-conscious in real life as Paulie Walnuts in "The Sopranos."
The next day, they were whisked in a Blackhawk helicopter to Tikrit. "This was Saddam Hussein's hometown, beautiful from the air, peaceful-looking," says Sirico. "And there was Saddam's gorgeous palace right on the hill."
After meeting and greeting the troops, they choppered to Balard, in central Iraq, to visit soldiers in a hospital. "One girl was shot in the butt and I joked with her," said Sirico. "Listen, my hat is off to these young girl soldiers. I'm talking pretty, young girls who could be home getting chased by the guys. Instead, they're off fighting a war. I was also impressed with the Iraqis. I'll never forget all the Iraqi men and women smiling in one town where Jimmy Gandolfini was playing soccer with a little Iraqi kid. It was a lovely moment, a movie moment."
Sirico said that over the next two days, they visited four more camps, meeting with these young men and women who will be spending the holidays far away from family and loved ones. "It was a spiritual thing for me," Sirico says. "We play tough guys on TV. But me and Jimmy agreed, you don't know tough until you see our troops over there."
Originally published on December 6, 2004
Chuck Norris.
Things have changed since JFK was President. Back then a liberal could still be patriotic. But there is no more room in today's Democratic Party for "Scoop Jackson" Democrats. I suspect a lot of "JFK liberals" are now Republicans, because frankly, they've got nowhere else to go.
Great article! (Whether or not you're a Sopranos fan)
Check out photos in #3 and pics of FReeper smaagee in Iraq with James Gandolfini and Tony Sirico (thread link in #35).
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off my ‘miscellaneous’ ping list.
Great article! (Whether or not you're a Sopranos fan)
Check out photos in #3 and pics of FReeper smaagee in Iraq with James Gandolfini and Tony Sirico (thread link in #35).
"Well, it has to do with a notion that we can have sustained proggress toward a better society; I still believe that."
IMO, we turned off the right road and have been making a series of huge mistakes for several decades, now. Oh, medicine and other scientific fields have made progress, but in many areas we've really messed things up.
"While conservativism might allow for proggress, it places more emphasis on retaining/regaining some better era of the past."
Not just regaining. When you turn off onto the wrong road, you have to go back to where you turned off before you can get back on the right road and start making *true* progress.
"but I think overall things are getting better."
Then you must believe a lot of things I don't.
"The USA is the best country on the face of this Earth"
Even today, yes. But how much better we'd have been if the inmates hadn't taken over the asylum. If we're the best country, it's only because the inmates haven't been able to completely destroy what they took over.
"and that has mostly to do with its people having confidence that God will bless our lives if we continue to have faith."
Gotta do more than just having faith. Got to walk the walk. Got to stop killing babies, for starters. Then there's a whole list of stuff to start doing or stop doing.
You know, you are absolutely right on this one. I have gotten a lot more hate thrown at me from the left once I made the leap to conservative thinking, than I ever did from the right when I was a liberal. That certainly tells me a lot about the pathology of the left. Glad to see you here.
I think faith is reviving in our country compared to say thirtyyears ago. Materialism and existentialism have run their course and are fading away now as Christianity surges ahead. Soon we will see abortion rolled back in a process that rebuilds the law prior to Roe. I am thinking this will take a social rejection of abortion first and then follows through into political will and then law.
We have some economic bumps ahead when the dollar drops in value, but we will get through it because our economy is more free than it was forty years ago. The Reagan revolution really undid alot of socialism, but remains to be repaired. Still, we cannot lose sight of our communal obligations to one another.
During the Great Depression, most could stay with families in rural areas to work for room and board till things got better. Americas social fabric simply is not able to do that today and we need some safety net to keep the work force from radicalizing or falling into homelessness and decripitude.
Our military is not as arrogant as it seems to ahave been in Vietnam, and we have learned our lessons well. We are doing much better in Iraq today than we did then in Nam.
This an example of what I meant, dsc.
And, btw, thank you for serving our nation. More and more people are becoming aware of the sacrifices you and so many others have made for our nation.
Yeah, the ideological left is more neoMarxist today than liberal in the old sense of proggressive/democratic/christian.
And the neoMarxists are not in to forgiving, not much at all really.
:/
Sadly, gone are the days of the FDR democratic party. Even if you didn't like FDR, you have to give him credit for responding to the attack on America. How would today's democrats' respond? And JFK hated communism. All of that is history now, and the democratic party is falling apart because its lack of patriotic values and leadership, not to mention the creeping socialism amongst the rank and file. I am against a one party system, dissent is good for a democratic republic--but we need a new second party. The democrats are no longer just laughable--they have become dangerous.
In addition, Ben Affleck has gone over at least once that I know of.
And the fact that he KEEPS it that way is how it should be. I enjoy seeing people speaking other people's words and making it believable. This doesn't always mean that I enjoy seeing these same people speaking their OWN words as if they are the second coming.
One interesting note to this article: Didn't Gandolfini have anything to say about the visit? Or did he (or the author) let his politics get in the way???
Let's not forget that "W" Himself made a suprise morale visit last year to Baghdad on Thanksgiving. I was still in Kuwait, all we got was the reining Ms. America.
"Eh, maybe dissapointing toyou, but alot of us liberals are still patriots, support our troops and the war."
JFK_Lib - so does that mean you think we should send Iraqi police on a dangerous mission and then withdraw air support?
that is SOOOOO cool!
"Well, it has to do with a notion that we can have sustained proggress toward a better society; I still believe that. While conservativism might allow for proggress, it places more emphasis on retaining/regaining some better era of the past. Certainly there were some things that have been lost and can be restored, but I think overall things are getting better."
Funny, most of us think it has to do with pointy-headed technocrats who think they can outplan a free market through forced wealth redistribution. Silly us.
"JFK_Lib - so does that mean you think we should send Iraqi police on a dangerous mission and then withdraw air support?"
Everyone makes mistakes and that was one.
But JFK was almost as conservative as Reagan and he was about as charismatic. But he still had a sense of trying to build a better world for the next generation, and I think he was genuine in regard to that message.
Maybe that made him a bit of a romantic idealist but I like that.
"Funny, most of us think it has to do with pointy-headed technocrats who think they can outplan a free market through forced wealth redistribution. Silly us."
Well, if you want to let the radical left define your terms go ahead.
I guess I am more conservative than to hand the left control of our language.
"But JFK was almost as conservative as Reagan and he was about as charismatic. But he still had a sense of trying to build a better world for the next generation, and I think he was genuine in regard to that message.
Maybe that made him a bit of a romantic idealist but I like that."
Have you ever listened to the Nixon-Kennedy debates
I saw a replay on CSPAN recently.
Kennedy was all about class warfare rhethoric.
Nixon sounded like a less charismatic Reagan.
"But JFK was almost as conservative as Reagan and he was about as charismatic. But he still had a sense of trying to build a better world for the next generation, and I think he was genuine in regard to that message.
Maybe that made him a bit of a romantic idealist but I like that."
Have you ever listened to the Nixon-Kennedy debates
I saw a replay on CSPAN recently.
Kennedy was all about class warfare rhethoric.
Nixon sounded like a less charismatic Reagan.
"Well, if you want to let the radical left define your terms go ahead."
What exactly are you "liberal" about?
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