An American National Guardsman serving in Iraq was castigated for writing a letter supporting President Bush, with one critic suggesting that he did not exist but was a fictional character dreamed up by the administration.
Spc. Joshua Madsen, 26, of Indian Harbor Beach, Fla., is serving as a rifleman with Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry. He is stationed at a base called The Combat Outpost in the eastern section of Ar-Ramadi, one of the toughest parts of the Sunni Triangle of Iraq, and has dodged explosions and bullets on patrol, according to the St. Augustine Record.
Madsen, in civilian life a Brevard County firefighter, set off a minor firestorm when he wrote to his wife, Rachel, expressing his support of President Bush and his Iraq policy and asking her to share its contents with his veteran friends back home.
"I know a bunch of veterans back home and wrote down everything we were doing in a letter, asking them to continue to support the president," Madsen told St. Augustine Record Assignment Editor Peter Guinta, who was covering the Florida National Guard in Iraq. "I believe he [President Bush] is doing what it takes to secure the country and not looking at what is politically correct at the time," Madsen added
"I'm wondering what happened to all the support for our president. All the headlines I see are bashing him," he wrote. "Don't blame him for sending me away. I knew it was a possibility - we all did. We knew what would happen and the price we had to pay, as did many others before our time."
His wife sent his letter on to Florida Today, a newspaper in Melbourne that covers their hometown, and which published it on its Web site. It was also published on the Florida National Guard's Web site in its "Letters from the Front" section and Madsen said other Web sites around the country picked it up.
And then the Bush haters got into the act.
Someone named Mark Crispin Miller, who orates on things political on his own Web site, quoted "a solid source in Washington" who wrote that Madsen's letter was "an obvious example of military propaganda" that's "pure and simple partisan Republican campaign pitch for votes."
In the wake of that slander Moby (Richard Melville Hall), the activist techno "musician" who is working to defeat President Bush in 2004, also posted Madsen's letter on his Web site.
Moby, 39, told his fans: "In an earlier e-mail, I mentioned fake letters that the Bush administration sent to local newspapers around the U.S. These letters supposedly came from soldiers in Iraq, but the truth is they were generated by the Bush administration. I think you'll agree with me that Bush and his cronies have reached a new low in distasteful and despicable behavior. This letter has made me despise the Bush administration more than I ever thought possible. It is utterly disgusting."
Madsen heard of this and fired back at Moby: "At first, I couldn't believe it," he said. "I was appalled. What was he saying, that a soldier couldn't write a letter like that? I responded with a letter to my wife to forward to him."
Of course Moby has not responded, nor has he posted the letter, nor has he recanted his ridiculous statement regarding a patriotic soldier.
In a second letter to Moby and all others who "have nothing better to do but slander the citizen-soldiers who are out here in the arena, putting their lives on the line" to protect freedom, Madsen recalled that Iraqis have told him that 3 million to 5 million of their people, and a couple of hundred thousand Kurds as well, had been killed by the Saddam regime.
"Those numbers are catastrophic. There are things that have to be done here," he said. "This is our responsibility. We're a great nation, but to just take care of ourselves would be selfish and irresponsible. Evil grows and builds and eventually hits America. Every soldier here knows that war costs lives. They know what they signed up for and do it because they want a safe future."
According to Lt. Col. Ron Tittle, spokesman for the Florida National Guard, the public affairs section had asked troops in Iraq to send in letters from the front.
"We try to report on what the troops are saying," Tittle told the Record. "We have to be neutral and non-partisan, and didn't think the letter was a political statement. It was one of our soldiers proud of the president."
Moby Dick, it should be recalled, was Herman Melville's fictional giant white whale. The current Moby, safe at home and out of the line of fire while attacking brave Americans serving in harm's way, appears to be of a different color - yellow, perhaps.
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Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Saddam Hussein/Iraq
War on Terrorism
George W. Bush
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