One of the downsides of the Internet is the amount of pure bilge that gets handed around in the modern-day equivalent of the “Telephone” game. Fortunately, it’s not that hard to investigate the glurge that floods the inbox. And once in a while, the stories and pictures check out.

Like this one:

The text reads:

Air Force Chief Master Sgt. John Gebhardt, of the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group at Balad, Iraq, cradles a young girl as they both sleep in the hospital. The girl’s entire family was executed by insurgents; the killers shot her in the head as well. The girl received treatment at the U.S. military hospital in Balad, but cries and moans often. According to nurses at the facility, Gebhardt is the only one who can calm down the girl, so he has spent the last several nights holding her while they both sleep in a chair.

You can read an update of the touching story at the urban-legend reference site Snopes.com.

p.s.—You might already have received this in an e-mail with the message, “Why isn’t this all over the news? If he had done something wrong, it surely would be!“ That, sadly, is also all too true. Fewer than a half-dozen news sources carried the story about Gebhardt.

We should thank Heaven every day that the constant death and destruction is not over here. Caught in a fishbowl, where can the civilians go? What must it be like to constantly live in dread and fear, having to try to earn a living, not knowing when you will be blown up by a sucide bomber or go home to a dead family?

Well yes, if anything it does show that our soldiers aren’t totally wasting energy there. At least some of the soldiers aren’t wasting energy, I should say…

*This is my opinion. It is not court room testimony, nor is it part of an emergency kidney transplant. Therefore I unabashedly reserve the right to be wrong, recognizing that some might not agree with the opinions stated.

Love your creed, Larry, makes me less hesitant about offering my unabashed, unsupported ideas.

Agree with all you say, but would reitterate how darn proud of soldiers like this I am after some that have made the news. It takes a strong man to be that gentle.

Shot the baby in the head?! Something that barbaric can make anyone’s blood boil. And its miraculous that she lived.

Touching as this story is, I don’t think it justfies the entire mission we have going on there. (I would say “nice try”, but that would be making a mockery of what that poor child just went through). We got a lot of nice people, here, doing some really nice things but none of those can justify dubious and massively wasteful endeavors on the domestic front.

But yes, the press would not release that pic because obviously it doesn’t fit their message. No doubt about that.

*This is my opinion. It is not court room testimony, nor is it part of an emergency kidney transplant. Therefore I unabashedly reserve the right to be wrong, recognizing that some might not agree with the opinions stated.

Post Your Comments: