Good job! Below I'm pasting his response to me. I think I got to him just a little :)
and you, sir, speak mighty rudely to someone you don't know and have never met. i could be 6 foot 7 280 lbs and ready to stomp a hole in your sorry rightwing ass.
good for you that i am not, and will not. but i am tempted at times by the ravings of idiots.
just try keeping a civil tongue in your head.l
if you don't like what i write please feel free not to read it. all the time.
best wishes
joe galloway
Below is Mr. Galloway's response to my first email. Please note his writing style:
From: Jlgalloway2@cs.com
Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 16:34:02 -0400
Subject: Re: A change in Iraq war plans
To: richardpinnell57@hotmail.com
mr pinnell:
are you an expert on counter-insurgency warfare? neither am i, but i have listened to a lot of smart military guys talk about it and have read their writings. they all pretty much agree that they way we are doing it right now, and have been doing it for the last three and a half years, is NOT the right way.
what we are doing is playing the patsy in what they call asymetric warfare. we ride along in our Abrams tanks and Bradleys and Humvees with armor and they blow up our soldiers and Marines with homemade artillery shell bombs triggered by cellphones or garage door openers. and tomorrow we do it all over again. and the next day. and they win and we lose our precious soldiers, day after day.
maybe we are past the point where proper tactics and stragegy would make a difference in iraq. right now we are succeeding so well that your average iraqi is storming the Passport Office buying and begging for a document that will let him leave the slaughter house. If they all leave can we declare victory then, and bring our troops home? If no one is left but us and the bad guys??
you are quick to label me and you don't know one damn thing about me. i have spent 41 years covering Americans at war, from April of 1965 in the first of my four tours in Vietnam, to January of 2006 in Iraq. i am the only civilian the u.s. army ever decorated with the Bronze Star with V for valorous action in combat--to wit, rescuing wounded soldiers under heavy enemy fire.
so please don't presume to read my heart from having read one of the 173 columns i have written since april of 2003. i am not a liberal. never voted for a democrat in my life---except 2004 when i wrote in harry truman because even dead he was a better president than either of the choices i was offered on the ballot.
i wish only the very best for our troops in harm's way. i know from firsthand that they are the only glue holding this misbegotten mission together. my anger is reserved for those chickenhawk civilians at the top in DC who got us into this pickle.
i hope your son comes home safe and well. i wish you the very best.
Here is my reply back:
First, let me respond with my name. It is Mr. Pinnell, not mr. pinnell. For a journalist, you seem to have forgotten that appropriate punctuation is necessary, and respectful, in correspondence. Second, as you point out, you are not an expert on counter-insurgency warfare. Neither are you a part of the decision making process in what happens in Iraq on a minute-by-minute or day-by-day basis. You and I do not know how decisions are made based on intelligence neither of us are privy to. For you to write on your assumptions of what is happening and then make the lame suggestion of placing this problem in the hands of "cops" is totally ridicules, regardless of how much experience you have in covering wars. You are not a War expert, sir. I also noticed that you completely ignored the point of my letter to you, and focused on just how much of an expert you are (are not) to make your silly comments. You have also left out of your hit piece all of the positive gains that have been made in Iraq. This has been typical of the liberal media in this country. Most of American are not getting the whole story of what our troops and the brave contractors are accomplishing over there because good news does not help the Ill-Liberals trying to regain their petty political power at the expense of our soldiers lives. Whether you have voted for a "liberal in your life" or not, you are now helping their cause in pulling down this President for nothing more than their hatred against him. Is President Bush a perfect human being? Of course not. Have mistakes been made during this war? Look at the history of war, sir. It is replete with mistakes from time immemorial. Judging the final chapter of a war (of which has not yet been written) by complaining about mistakes just makes no sense to me whatsoever.
If you truly wish the very best for my son and the other troops fighting for what they know is right, then you should also cover in your articles the good that they are doing over there on a daily basis. You should write about how much progress the contractors have made throughout much of the country. You have NOT provided a BALANCED view to your readership. In that you have played into the hands of the Ill-Liberals at the very least. Oh, and I don't consider stopping Saddam and his evil sons, and that dictatorial regime from continuing to kill innocent Iraqi civilians (400,000+ over 12 years) a misbegotten mission. What, the 12,000 deaths in Bosnia deserved our attention, but the Iraqi's do not? You should check your morals. And don't use the lame argument that there are other countries committing atrocities against civilians too. Iraq had lost a war in 1991 and was bound by the tenants of the agreements made at the close of the military action at that time. They did not comply with any of the 17 U.N. resolutions, and continued to harass Coalition jets in the no-fly-zone over that 12 year period. Those are acts of war against our military, of which went unanswered by Clinton and the U. N. for eight years.
Finally, your comment regarding your write in candidate for President in 2004 belies who you really are. Stop trying to lie about your political ideology. Either take a stand for what you believe in or shut up. But don't pretend to be something you are not.
Sincerely,
Richard Pinnell
Proud Father of an
American Hero
Hey. I've been carrying on an email dialogue with this idiot for some time now. He has responded with six emails so far, and he is becoming more and more insultive with each one. I have not sunk to his level, but just presented a case for an alternative point of view. I think I'm getting to him and he is starting to crack. I plan to keep up the emails until he goes away. I have the patients of Job. I can keep this up for the entire tour my son is serving in Iraq.