Obama’s legacy. Al Queda only had a JV team in Iraq.
Via The State
On the night of Oct. 8, 2004, U.S. Army Sgt. Ramon Guitard, a Brooklyn native raised in Georgetown County and serving his second tour in Iraq, was a 21-year-old generator mechanic working as a guard in a supply convoy.
En route from Baghdad to Tikrit, Guitard’s unarmored vehicle took a direct hit from a remotely detonated roadside bomb believed to be made of four artillery shells linked together. The impact of the blast shredded Guitard’s legs, collapsed his lung, buried a rock in his right eye and ruptured his internal organs so badly he had to be cut open from chest to naval to allow them room to swell up and out.
Today, Guitard wears two gyroscopic, carbon fiber prosthetic legs that allow him to walk, drive a car, climb stairs and even ride his motorcycle. And on this Fourth of July – a decade after the blast – he watches new developments in Iraq with deep sadness.
“It hurts,” said Guitard, who lives with his wife and four children in Northeast Richland. “But my take on it is that I don’t want to lose any more American lives because of this. We’ve sacrificed too much already.”
Nearly four years after U.S. combat troops left Iraq, the war has rekindled with a new vigor. Sunni insurgents, angry over the failure of the Shiite-led government to address tensions in their communities, have seized most of northern and western Iraq.
The front line in this new fight is the road between Tikrit and Baghdad, where Guitard was riding when he lost his legs 10 years ago.
Last week, President Barack Obama sent 300 U.S. combat troops back into Iraq to protect American interests and advise the Iraqi Army. Some leaders – chief among them U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. – are calling for more involvement to stop the Sunni advance on Baghdad.
“Put American air power into the game,” Graham told CNN last weekend. The Sunni insurgents “are not 10 feet tall. Stop the advance on Baghdad, get people on the ground that the Iraqis trust.”