Staff Sgt. Michael Helmick seriously hurt by explosion in Mosul

[Nambe]

The Dominion Post

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12849520&BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=68561&rfi=6">CasaGrandeDispatch: Pfc. Jared Kauffroath - Wounded In Iraq

http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20040904/localnews/1177490.html">Greatfallstribune: Lance Cpl. Lenard Watson Jr. - Wounded in Iraq

While vacationing in Eastport, Maine, Bob and Cindy Graham returned to their hotel room and saw a red light flashing on the telephone.

Unfortunately, the news was not good.

The Morgantown residents learned Sunday that their son, U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Michael Helmick, had been seriously injured that day by an explosion while on patrol in Mosul, Iraq.

Helmick, 28, grew up in Morgantown and is a graduate of West Preston High School. He has been in the Air Force for 10 years and had been in Iraq for only two months. ..


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[grasswire]

1. thank you...

...for putting the name of the soldier in the headline. We ought to do that for all our news about our soldiers, to honor them.

[TacticalPeek]

2. I wonder why AF guys are patrolling Mosul???

Two others were involved. Airman 1st Class Carl Anderson was killed, and Airman 1st Class Jacob Sutton had minor injuries and returned to duty, she said.

Bummer.

[rfkrocks]

3. there are no army troops

af is doing ground patrols-the forces are stretched to limits-also thanks for main post-we need to know what is going on in Iraq since the mainstream doesn't cover it anymore

[Kimber Scott]

4. My daughter-in-law is in the Air Force in Mosul

She is a meteorologist.

[wrang_wrang]

5. If the desert wind blows the sand too hard

Our glorious warriors in their helicopter gunships can't go on air patrol to kill Iraqis and protect America from evil terrorists.

[Kimber Scott]

8. Whatever.

[candy331]

6. Does this mean he want be eligible for a purple heart since he has only

been in a combat zone 2 months?

[DuaneBidoux]

7. My prayers are with him

We must remember these honorable men and women who have done nothing but their duty. Why is the press suddenly not talking about how many people are being lost and seriously injured anymore?

The one thing progressives MUST NEVER do again is to come down on Americans who answered their call, even if the war is total bullshit. The other day in an airport I saw a man in uniform. I asked him where he was off to and he said Iraq. I bit my tongue, and then simply wished him God's speed and protection and said thank-you.

This is hard for progressives but important. These people are a victim of a system being misused and abused. They must never be made to pay in any way worse than they will already pay.

[LauraK]

9. The supression of the news in Iraq by our media is unbelievable.

What we think we know about Iraq and what we are told about it keeps changing. (Never mind Afghanistan; reality television coverage of that country seems to have been canceled.) The media's version is in its own way as obscure and mutable as that of the Bush administration itself. Bush at least can be understood to have a campaign to win with wartime spin. What's the media's excuse?

There was an important story that wasn't getting told while the focus was on Sadr and the shrine. But that story wasn't (or wasn't only) the good news we had not been hearing. As soon as the truce came to Najaf, The New York Times began reporting that a significant chunk of the country was no longer under the control of the U.S.-backed government or the forces we have in place to support it.

This seems like pretty important stuff, the news that the cities of Falluja and Ramadi, along with much of the surrounding province, "are now controlled by fundamentalist militias," as the Times reported. It didn't happen overnight. But the deteriorating situation in these Sunni cities got almost no coverage as it occurred.

Iraq is basically out of control and our troops deserve to the voters know their situation as they and the Iraqi people die. Our government shows no real signs of wanting a peaceful settlement.