[nicko]

I was a little upset myself...the gunship/close air support would have helped...but Les was just taking orders from the tower; the buck stopped with the President...there are always a lot of "ifs" associated with hindsight...perhaps if Garrison would have pushed harder for the heavy junk, or if the Oct. 3rd raid (timing aside) had not been conducted during the day, which negated our night capability advantage; if the second supersix hadn't gone down (Mike Durant's)...you get the point...I think we brought back from Mogadishu some incredibly valuable lessons, albiet written with blood- politics notwithstanding, I learned the true definition of honor, and duty, and I discovered, the hard way, that you can't always count on country...

[hchutch]

The other side - the side that employs terrorists - declares people who walk into a supermarket or bus stop with a Semtex jacket to be "martyrs" and proceeds to make heroes out of them.

We honor those who try to rescue their fallen comrades, like Gary Gordon and Randy Shughart. I'll match our heroes up against any "heroes" that these Islamic fundamentalists anytime. I only hope we don't have to lose too many of them.