And will be going again on the 26th. Pictures and videos will be up as soon as I get home.

What is this.. be a jerk to Vinh day?            

Let's try and get into the thick of blogging.

Been busy with life. Definitely haven't been sitting on my hands lately.

• I'm into my second season of snowboarding
• I'm taking Salsa / Tango classes
• Will be sailing and windsurfing again in the summer
• Hip Hop classes and hip hop dance routine for the VSA com February through April
• Bought an investment property. Multi family that needs some renovating, paint
• Theupdown - fantasy stock exchange. If you join, you were referred by me - Vinhdang!
• Learning shimmer by fuel on the guitar

Things I still need to do...

• Fix my desktop
• replace my inspection sticker on my car
• Gym it up!

Hopefully this is the start that I can build off of.

Saturday night, there were a lot of bad drivers and I decided to be careful. I saw a car brake 3 cars ahead of me, and the car behind it was still going. I braked to make room and there was a crash. All 4 cars in front of me. Craziness! although it wasn't the silver SUV I dreamed of so I'm going to be careful still. 

I'm really into stupid things like this at times. A few times it has gotten right. For example, Google's stock hitting $734. I just had another.

I'm driving on a dark road. SUV perhaps? We are chatting about how to make Vietnam better. Someone pipes up that satellite internet is the best way to go since the power supply is shaky. I wonder if this is just a chat or part of my future plans... We'll see. 

    [Connie]: So it took us from 11pm to 1am to clean up Agganis Arena. A friend of mine told me that it took them only 1 and a half hours with 6 people to clean the place
    [Vinh]: Yeah, someone must have not been doing their part
    [Connie]: Yeah, those slackers.
    [Vinh:] Must've been that tall asian girl named Connie. Takes her forever just to stoop down and pick up some trash.

Haha. That was just part of our conversation as we drove to Stoneham to pick up the surprise snowboard present for Zon. I had set up a meeting with the guy to meet at 5:30. Now, I know that meeting someone from Craigslist is shady business so I wanted to be safe. So I asked the tall girl who does Tae Kwon Do to watch my back. Thanks Connie! So after half an hour of driving from Boston into Stoneham, fighting off traffic, we arrived at a very nice part of Stoneham. After all the jokes that I cracked on Connie, I probably wouldn't have been surprised if she drove off in the car after I left. The guy we met up was a really nice guy. As it turns out, he lives a very active outdoor life. He alluded to jumping off crevices so I'm guessing he does base jumping. He snowboards and the reason why the snowboard was so cheap was that he was moving to Costa Rica. He had bought "3 acres of jungle" and planned to surf there for the rest of his life. He was sick of America. That's a pretty badass way to live the rest of your life.

Now let's move onto another story. My dad... the badass cook. This is how crazy a good cook is. I chose his cooking over a tennis tournament. He called me up to tell me he was cooking and I agreed without thinking twice. I look back and I don't regret it at all. He watches a lot of cooking shows. When he first moved to America he was a cook for Red Lobster. When I was young, he would watch Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. Nowadays he watches Iron Cook and reads America's Test Kitchen. He creates new dishes all the time. I love it.

Sometimes it surprises me how competent my parents are in Business. I never paid attention before but as I become more and more interested, I see more and more of how my parents are using their money to start new businesses. For 14 years, we've simply owned a little asian grocery store until we got kicked out  by new building owners. Instead of folding up shop, they decided to buy a piece of land and build a new store complemented by a laundromat. 4 years later, they sold it and instead of just using that money to retire, they've invested it and are attending foreclosure auctions to buy a new house.

I am starting to lose focus at work. If I were working for myself, I'd definitely give myself a good talking. It isn't that I'm not doing my job. It's that I'm only doing MY job. I can expand, I can grow but I've just grown lethargic. Perhaps I need a change of scenes.

   

It went OK. I only met him once but he lives my dream!

Samarra, Iraq
THE
DAY OF AUGUST 26, 2007, began like any other for the soldiers of
Charlie Company, 2-505 Parachute Infantry Regiment (from the 82nd
Airborne Division) -- with a mission in the city. Over a year into its
deployment to Samarra, Iraq, and now working on the three-month
extension announced by Secretary of Defense Gates in the spring, the
company knew the city like the back of its collective hands and had its
operational routine down to a science, whatever the mission it might be tasked with.

On
this morning, that mission was to establish a defensive perimeter
around a block in central Samarra, so that Charlie Company's 3rd
("Blue") Platoon, led by Lieutenant Scott Young, could search a shop
where it had information that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were
being manufactured.

Due to the insurgents' penchant for placing
IEDs along the routes used by Charlie Company's vehicles in order to
ambush them on their way back, two separate rooftop observation points
(OPs) would be established, one to the north and one to the south of
the shop, to watch for enemy activity on the roads that were serving as
Blue Platoon's infiltration and exfiltration routes. The southern OP,
led by Staff Sergeant Jason Wheeler, was manned with paratroopers from
Charlie Company's 1st ("Red") Platoon. "Reaper Two," one of the sniper
teams from 2nd Battalion's scout platoon, would man the second OP,
almost a kilometer to the north. Reaper would be overwatching the area
from the roof of a large four-story apartment building, which was laid
out with the long axis facing north-south, and which was bordered --
across the surrounding streets and alleys -- by several other
buildings.

The three-man Reaper team, known as the best in the
unit, was led by Sergeant Josh Morley, a 22-year-old paratrooper from
North Carolina. Morley was regarded within Charlie Company as a
consummate professional, and the men in the unit knew, beyond a shadow
of a doubt, that they could always count on him and his team to come
through whenever they were needed. Morley was affected even more than
most of his fellow soldiers by the additional three months that had
been added on to his unit's combat tour, for he was a new father and
was counting the days until the end of the deployment, when he would
finally get to see his infant daughter for the first time -- something
he had already been waiting months to do.

The rest of Morley's
team was made up of Specialist Tracy Willis, a 21-year-old from Texas,
and Specialist Chris Corriveau, a 23-year-old from Maine. Willis was
well known within Charlie Company as a friendly, laid back, permanently
smiling young man who was always good for a laugh and for conversation,
regardless of the person and the situation. Corriveau was quieter, but
had earned the immense respect of his peers at Patrol Base Olson not
only for his talent as a sniper but also for his abilities as a natural
leader. The team had been together in Iraq for well over a year, and
the three young men were as close as soldiers could be. They knew
everything about each other, from their backgrounds, to information
about their families, to the punchlines of Willis's tiredest jokes.
Further, they had worked together so closely, and for so long, that
they could read each other's body language and tone of voice, and were
able to function as an extraordinarily effective unit.

For
this mission, the three-man Reaper Two sniper team was rounded out by a
fourth man (and a second Texan), 23-year-old Specialist Eric Moser. The
company armorer, Moser was not a member of the Battalion Scout Platoon
like Morley, Willis, and Corriveau, but was a competition-caliber
shooter, and had gone along on several OPs with Reaper in the past,
serving as a "designated marksman." His skill with firearms would end
up being critical that day.

EARLY IN THE MORNING, after
dropping off SSG Wheeler's team, Red Platoon's four Humvees rolled up
to the predetermined dismount point for the second OP and came to a
stop, allowing Morley, Willis, Corriveau, and Moser to get out. Upon
departing the area, the trucks would make their way to Patrol Base
Uvanni, an Iraqi National Police outpost in the center of the city
(about 1.5 kilometers southwest of Reaper's OP), where they would wait
until it was time to pick up the overwatch teams, while also serving as
a Quick Reaction Force in the unlikely event that anything should go
wrong at either of the overwatch sites.

The four-man sniper team
hustled to the northern gate of the apartment building, cut the lock,
and quietly moved into the courtyard. Morley instructed Moser and
Corriveau to remain behind to close the gate and remove other signs of
the team's presence, while he and Willis made their way into the
building and up the stairs. Moser pulled security while Corriveau
quietly closed the gate and replaced the lock, and then the two
followed the others inside, clearing the stairwell as they ascended,
but not going into the hallways of the apartment building, as they
didn't want to alert the inhabitants of their presence.

The
four-man team emerged onto the northern half of the roof and surveyed
their surroundings. The building was set up with two staircases, one on
the north side and one on the south side, both of which opened up onto
the top of the building facing west. Dividing the north and south
halves of the roof was a four-foot high, east-west running wall. The
entire perimeter of the building's top was lined with a wall of the
same height.

Once the area had been secured and the OP
established, there was little to do but watch the street around the
building. The team took turns keeping watch and sleeping; they had done
hundreds of these before, and, while things could get hairy at times,
their job involved far more boredom than excitement -- especially if
they were careful, as they always were, to keep their heads down and
not let anybody below know that they were there.

Unfortunately,
unbeknownst to the four men of Reaper Two, one of the building's
occupants had seen them enter and had passed the information along.

JUST
BEFORE 11 A.M., reaper received word that Blue Platoon had finished its
search of the shop (which had yielded no evidence of illegal activity)
and was heading back to Patrol Base Olson, three kilometers to the
west. With this, the men dispersed across the top of the building, with
two -- Moser and Corriveau -- watching the road from corners of the
roof, and the other two -- Morley and Willis -- taking up a position by
the northern stairwell, where the team's radio had been deposited.
Assigned to the southeast corner, Corriveau picked up an M4 rifle to
complement his sniper weapon and vaulted the dividing wall, moving onto
the southern half of the building and taking up his position, watching
the base of the buildings across the road but careful to remain below
the roof's perimeter wall and out of sight from the street below.
Taking a quick peek over the wall, he saw a white sedan nearing his
corner of the building but due to the obstructed view that came along
with his rooftop concealment, Corriveau never had a chance to see the
situation developing on the street directly below.

On the
northwest corner of the apartment complex, Moser was watching the road
in front of the building through a cut in the roof wall. As he looked
down, he saw a white car speed up to the corner of the building. Four
men holding AK-47 assault rifles (at least two of whom had long beards
-- a distinctly non-Iraqi trait) emerged from the vehicle and
sprinted toward the building's entrance. Seeing this, Moser immediately
yelled to the others that enemy fighters were below. Morley, who along
with Willis had been positioned next to the stairwell, raced to Moser's
corner of the building to assess the situation and if possible to
engage, but could not move quickly enough to prevent the men on the
ground from making it into the building.

Suddenly, machine gun fire erupted from both of the stairwells behind them.

AT
PATROL BASE UVANNI, a kilometer and a half away, the four armored
Humvees that made up Charlie Company's internal Quick Reaction Force
(QRF) were sitting just inside the gate, its soldiers in their vehicles
and ready to move at a moment's notice, when the sound of gunfire
echoed through the city streets. The sound of automatic weapons fire is
as common in Samarra as traffic noise is in the United States. To
Lieutenant Steve Smith, however, Red's Platoon Leader, these shots
seemed different for some reason -- like they were coming from the
north, instead of from the usual east-west direction. He immediately
ordered radio checks to be attempted with both OPs to make sure that
they were okay.

The first call went to the southern observation
point, where SSG Wheeler's team was positioned. "Do you hear gunfire?"
he was asked. He replied, "It sounds like the gunfire is coming from
north of me. It sounds like Reaper."

Sergeant First Class
Rodolfo Cisneros, Red's Platoon Sergeant (ranking noncommissioned
officer), ordered an immediate radio check with Reaper. He had a bad
feeling about the gunfire and explosions that sounded like they were
coming from the exact direction of the northern OP. The radio call
received no answer -- enough reason for Cisneros to call for the QRF to
move immediately, as the unit's standard procedure regarding overwatch
operations was that, in the event of a lack of communication with an
OP, the QRF should assume it had been compromised and move to its
location immediately.

Lieutenant Smith ordered another check --
again, nothing. Upon the second failed radio call, he ordered the
four-Humvee Quick Reaction Force to roll out of Uvanni and make for
Reaper's location as fast as possible. As the Humvees sped out of the
Iraqi Patrol Base, Smith continued trying to raise the sniper team on
the radio. He did not know that their radio had been destroyed by a
grenade, and could only hope that the sounds echoing down the alleyways
from the north -- which sounded like a full-blown battle at this point,
complete with automatic and single-shot gunfire, as well as frequent
explosions -- were not coming from Reaper's location.

ON
THE ROOF OF THE APARTMENT BUILDING, Morley and Moser were taking AK-47
and PKC (a 7.62mm Russian-made machine gun) fire from both stairwells.
As they spun around to return fire, they saw several small, dark
objects flying onto the roof from the stairwell -- hand grenades.
Morley recognized that the situation was rapidly deteriorating and knew
that, though his team currently occupied the high ground in the
emerging battle, they could not hold out for very long due to their
vast disadvantage in numbers. Seeing that Willis, who was next to the
team's radio, was busy firing into the stairwell through a window on
the enclave's north side, and not knowing that one of the first hand
grenades tossed onto the roof had disabled it, Morley made a dash
across the roof to call for the QRF.

He never made it there.

As
Moser fired into the door from his corner in an attempt to suppress the
enemy assault, he saw Morley appear to stumble and go down, his weapon
skidding across the rooftop toward the stairwell door. His first
thought was that the team leader had tripped and fallen; a moment
later, his brain registered the truth: Morley had been shot. A burst of
gunfire from the southern stairwell across the dividing wall had scored
a direct hit, with one round striking Morley directly in the forehead.
He was dead before hitting the ground.

Moser didn't have time
to dwell on Morley's death. Knowing that what had just become a
three-man team could not long withstand the concerted effort by what
was clearly a large enemy force to move up the stairs to his location,
he took the same chance that Morley had, and crossed the roof to the
radio while Willis continued to fire his .240 machine gun into the
stairwell, killing at least two enemy fighters with well-placed bursts
as grenades continued to be tossed up the stairs and out onto the roof.
As he moved to the radio (which he found to have been disabled by a
grenade), Moser was able to get a look down into the northern
stairwell. Inside, he saw a number of armed men, both black and Arab
rushing up the steps toward the roof -- none of whom were the
individuals he had seen get out of the car moments before on the
street. Apparently there had been fighters stationed in the building
before the white car's arrival.

ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE
ROOF'S DIVIDING WALL, Corriveau had been watching the area to the
southwest when the gunfire began at his back. Spinning around at the
edge of the roof, he saw a man with a PKC machine gun emerging from the
southern stairwell, and immediately moved toward him, raising his M24
sniper rifle, only to find that it wasn't loaded. Continuing to advance
on the man at the top of the stairs, who was firing across the roof,
Corriveau quickly loaded a five-round magazine into his rifle and fired
a perfectly aimed shot into the assailant's head.

Continuing
to close on the man, who was now on the ground, Corriveau fired again
and again, re-charging the firing handle each time, until he had
emptied his remaining rounds into the body. Following up with a swift
kick to the fighter's head to make sure that he was dead, he then
tossed his empty sniper rifle aside, picked up the man's PKC, and
stepped into the stairwell, looking down over the railing. Seeing at
least one more armed man charging up from the landing below, Corriveau
held the PKC over the ledge and, firing blind, let go with a burst. A
scream from below let him know that at least one of his rounds had hit
home. He repeated this action three or four more times until he was
unable to see any more movement in the stairwell.

Having
neutralized the threat at his back (at least temporarily), Corriveau
took his newly acquired PKC and sprinted back to the western edge of
the roof to check the road again. As he peered over the edge, he saw
several men running toward the entrance to the building from the south.
Just to Corriveau's right, over the dividing wall, Willis, who had left
the northern stairwell to Moser, was looking at the same scene. Looking
to his left and catching Corriveau's eye, Willis, who had stepped up
and taken charge after Morley had gone down, pointed at the men, pulled
a grenade from his vest, and yelled, "We're going to frag them!"
Corriveau retrieved a grenade of his own, pulled the firing pin, and
let it fly, hitting the last man in the group running toward the
building. Seconds behind him Willis pulled the pin from his own
grenade, and prepared to throw it down into the street as well.

Suddenly,
the morning exploded into gunfire, and bullets began flying at the
rooftop from seemingly every direction. Enemy fighters had established
supporting machine gun positions in the buildings on three sides
(north, east, and west) of the apartment complex, and had begun firing
relentlessly at the building top that had become a battleground,
sending debris flying up all over the place from the walls and roof.
Over the loud chatter of the supporting fire, Corriveau, who was still
facing the street, heard a loud burst from his five o'clock. Looking to
his right, he saw Willis disappear behind the dividing wall, the
prepped grenade still in his hand.

AT THE NORTHERN STAIRWELL, Moser was holding the high ground, doing his
best to lock down the access route to his half of the rooftop -- and to
stay alive -- by alternately firing his M4 rifle around the northwest
corner of the stairwell and taking cover behind the structure's
northern wall. AK-47 and PKC fire, as well, now, as 9-millimeter pistol
fire, was being steadily spewed from the doorway, and grenades were
still bouncing out onto the roof and exploding around Moser at an
alarming rate. Pivoting around the corner to fire another burst with
his M4, he was able to see at least eight people in the stairwell, all
attempting to make it up to the roof. He did his best to suppress the
charge.

As
he took cover behind the wall yet again, Moser saw a single enemy
fighter reach out of the stairwell and grab the M4 that Morley had
dropped when he had been hit. Though he immediately leaped up and began
firing into the building again, Moser was too late to prevent the
weapon from being taken. He had larger problems to worry about than the
rifle, though. The charge up the stairs by close to a dozen men (both
black and Arab) was continuing, and grenades were rolling out of the
doorway one and two at a time and exploding with thunderous bangs.
Shortly after the weapon had been taken, the person at the top of the
staircase made a lunge for another prize on the roof -- Morley's body.

Spurred
into renewed action, Moser flew around the corner of the stairwell and
let loose with a relentless series of bursts at the advancing enemy. He
was still in shock at Morley's sudden death, and there was no way that
he was going to allow these animals to take his team leader's -- and
friend's -- body. Risking his own life to remain within reach of the
stairwell -- and thus to be able to impose himself and his M4 as a
barrier between the attackers and Morley's body -- Moser fired again
and again into the doorway, hitting insurgents inside while
miraculously avoiding injury himself. The number of targets never
seemed to diminish. As soon as he shot one person attempting to fight
his way out of the stairwell to seize Morley's body, another would
appear.

As Moser was exchanging fire with the topmost fighters
in the northern stairwell, and attempting to remain behind sufficient
cover to avoid the repeated grenade detonations on the roof, he heard
from across the building top Willis's call to Corriveau to prepare
their grenades. Just then, the enemy support-by-fire positions
surrounding the building opened fire on the rooftop, sending Moser
scrambling for cover again. As he retreated behind the northern wall of
the stairwell (crouched down to avoid the withering fire coming from
the north, east, and west), he looked out toward Willis just in time to
see a PKC burst from the northern stairwell catch him in the back.

Almost
in slow motion, Moser saw Willis's body contort, saw him collapse onto
the roof, and saw him land on his own grenade, which he had prepped for
use but hadn't yet been able to throw.

A split second later
Willis's body was rocked by the explosion, and Moser knew instantly
that he was dead. The battle had only been raging for five minutes, but
it already seemed like a lifetime to Moser -- and it had cost the lives
of at least two of his fellow paratroopers. With the machine gun fire
pouring in from three sides, the concerted efforts on the part of the
fighters in the stairwell to reach the rooftop and Morley's body (and
do who knew what from there), and the grenades exploding around him,
Moser could do nothing but hold what little ground he had, and keep
trying to suppress the fighters in the stairwell. From his position by
the stairs, the situation seemed utterly hopeless. He could see Morley
and Willis lying on the roof, unmoving, knowing that they would never
move again. Further, as he couldn't see or hear a thing from the south
side of the building top, due to the dividing wall and the withering
gunfire coming from all sides, he had no choice but to assume that
Corriveau was gone as well.

He had never felt more alone.

ON
THE SOUTHERN HALF OF THE ROOFTOP, across the dividing wall, Corriveau
was still very much alive. He absolutely knew this to be the case
because, as he sprinted back to the southern stairwell to prevent any
more enemy fighters from making it to the rooftop, he was beside
himself with emotions the likes of which he had never felt before. If
he were dead, there was no way that he would feel the hurt, the loss,
the sheer rage that was bottled up within him now, that drove
him as he fired his PKC over and over into the stairwell, cutting down
armed insurgent after armed insurgent as they ran up the stairs toward
him. He had seen Willis go down from the gunfire, had heard the
explosion of his friend's own grenade, and knew there was no way that
he could have survived such a blast. Further, he had not seen Morley or
Moser since the initial shooting had begun over five minutes (that
seemed like hours) before and knew -- though his mind could not accept
it -- that they, the last of his team, the last of his support, the
last of those who were closer to them than his own family, must be dead
as well.

Fighting like a man who had nothing to lose,
Corriveau moved to the southern end of the roof, staying low to avoid
the continuous fire from the surrounding buildings, and, keeping an eye
on his own stairwell, began to fire bursts from his PKC across the
dividing wall into the northern doorway as he bounded back and forth
across the end of the roof, ducking for cover between bursts. As he
popped out to fire again and again, he saw one insurgent after another
in the northern stairwell, trying to make it out onto the roof, many of
whom, it appeared from their long beards and the color of their skin,
had come all this way from some foreign land just to kill him,
and to kill his friends. His insides contorted with emotion, Corriveau
did the only thing that he could do in that situation: keep moving,
keep taking cover, and keep fighting off his assailants as long as he
had the strength and the ammunition to do so. As the last man standing,
there was nobody else to turn to for help -- either he would fight, or
he would die, with the two not being mutually exclusive.

But, if
he was going to die, he was going to go down fighting -- and he was
going to take as many of these animals with him as he could.

AROUND
THE FAR SIDE of the northern stairwell, Moser was engaged in a battle
with a hand holding a 9mm pistol. Grenades were still being tossed up
the stairs onto the roof, and every few seconds a black hand would
reach around the wall of the structure and squeeze off a few rounds in
his direction. Ducking behind cover when it appeared, then swinging his
weapon around the wall and firing a burst when it went back inside,
Moser could see no progress being made in his battle to keep his
assailants from taking the rooftop -- and no escape in the event that
they finally did. Due to the dividing wall and the fact that, entirely
by chance, he and Corriveau were both suppressing the same stairwell,
from opposite sides of the roof, in an exactly alternating pattern,
Moser never saw that he was not alone, that there was another member of
his team alive on the rooftop (and neither, on the other side, did
Corriveau). However, despite his creeping sense of hopelessness, Moser
continued to do all that he was able -- which, at this point, was to
protect Morley's body the best that he could, and to keep exchanging
rounds with the insurgents behind the door.

And then his weapon jammed.

As
if more adversity were needed in a situation that was already an
against-all-odds struggle to protect the body of a fallen comrade while
also trying to stay alive, against the combined opposition of an
assault from foreign fighters in the stairwell and a constant stream of
grenades being tossed onto the roof near him -- which prevented his
crossing the mere feet separating him from Morley's load carrying vest,
which was in the northwestern corner and held a walkie-talkie ("ICOM"),
the last undamaged piece of communications equipment on the roof -- as
well as nonstop machine gun fire from the buildings on every side, now
Moser's M4 was threatening to fail him. In this time of greatest need,
Moser's training and experience kicked in. He remained calm, cleared
his weapon, and, undeterred by the fact that now, due to a malfunction
in his most precious piece of equipment, he had to charge the rifle's
firing handle after every single shot, resumed the battle.

For
nearly five minutes, he traded shots with the faceless pistolier on the
other side of the stairwell door, all the while knowing that, in the
end, he would not have enough time or ammunition to hold the rooftop
himself. As the minutes crept by like hours, a renewed sense of
hopelessness began to take hold. "Please God, help me," he pled time
and again, as he alternated firing into the stairwell, ducking for
cover from the returning fire, and searching frantically for some way
out of what appeared to be a certain-death situation. Looking to the
west, he saw the unmistakable form of the 52-meter tall Spiral Minaret,
which stood in the northwestern corner of the city, a scant thousand
meters from Patrol Base Olson -- and safety. Measuring its distance
from the rooftop, Moser wondered for the briefest of moments if he
could survive a jump off the building intact enough to be able to run
the three kilometers back to Olson.

The situation was desperate, and Moser needed a miracle.

THOUGH
HE WAS IN A SIMILARLY desperate situation on the south side of the
roof, the idea of leaping off a four-story building never occurred to
Corriveau. Instead, as he bounded back and forth across the building's
edge, alternately firing into the northern stairwell door and taking
cover from whatever return fire came his way, his mass of conflicting
emotions was overridden by only one thought: Get to the radio on the
other side of the roof.

Finally, running low on ammunition and
facing only sporadic harassing fire from the southern stairwell,
Corriveau decided it was time to make a break for it. He fired a final
suppressive burst into his own doorway, as well as into the one to the
north, and made a run for it, dashing across the open rooftop, vaulting
the dividing wall, and racing for the semi-protected far side of the
northern stairwell.

ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE ROOF, Moser's
situation was looking bleaker by the second. He had gone through five
30-round magazines with his M4 and was still defending the roof from an
attempted assault up his own stairwell, while frantically searching --
and hoping -- for a miraculous escape from his present situation.

Suddenly, that miracle arrived.

Through
a hail of bullets from the surrounding buildings, Corriveau bounded
over the dividing wall and came sprinting across the north side of the
roof and around the stairwell, almost knocking Moser over as he flew
around the corner. Upon seeing each other alive, an unspeakable joy
flooded the manic Corriveau, and an equal amount of relief flowed
through Moser at the suddenly gained knowledge that each was not the
only man left alive on this godforsaken rooftop in Samarra.

After
the joyous yet indescribably brief reunion, the two Americans resumed
the fight together. As Moser suppressed the enemy activity in the
stairwell, Corriveau reached down and picked up the team's radio to
call for the QRF. But like Moser before him, he found that it had been
destroyed by one of the first grenades thrown onto the rooftop.
Flinging the useless object across the roof out of frustration,
Corriveau next set his sights on the survivors' last hope of a means to
call for help: the ICOM on Morley's vest.

As Moser locked down
the stairwell with his M4, Corriveau crossed the open rooftop to the
northwest corner, where Morley's vest lay, and retrieved the small
hand-held radio. Picking it up, he made calls on channel after channel,
desperate to get hold of anybody that he could. Finally, as he turned
the knob to Channel 13, he made contact with SSG Wheeler on the
southern OP.

"Reaper Two is in contact!" Corriveau yelled into the radio. "We have two casualties, need immediate QRF and air support!"

Having
made his transmission, Corriveau threw the ICOM aside and moved back to
the northeastern corner of the roof, where he and Moser took turns
firing at the enemy machine gun position to the east and suppressing
the northern stairwell, continuing to protect Morley's body. Sporadic
harassing fire was still coming from the southern doorway, but it was
not enough to be a concern.

As they held down their quadrant of
the apartment building's rooftop, one final grenade came rolling out of
the stairwell, exploding harmlessly several feet away from them. Then,
the fire from the doorway began to die down. For some unknown reason,
the terrorists inside the building, who had been pushing so
determinedly up the stairs during the ten-minute gun battle, had
abandoned their pursuit, and were quickly evacuating their dead as they
left the building. The rooftop battle zone had become much calmer.

RACING NORTH UP THE STREET toward the apartment building, Red Platoon's
four Humvees were heading into the unknown, but were preparing for the
worst-case scenario. Wheeler had relayed Corriveau's ICOM message to
them, stating that there were friendly casualties and that the OP was
in contact. As the column neared the building, Lieutenant Smith could
see thick, black smoke rising from the rooftop, while SFC Cisneros saw
fire being directed at the OP from several buildings around them.

The
streets were completely deserted as the QRF pulled up to the apartment
complex, passing on the southwest corner the body of a black fighter
holding an AK-47. The four Humvees pulled up to the east, north, west,
and southwest sides of the building to establish a security cordon; as
his vehicle reached the front, Lieutenant Smith jumped out of his
Humvee and sprinted into the building alone, leaving his remaining
dismounted soldiers racing to catch up. All he knew was that the young
men he had dropped off here only hours ago were in danger, and had
already taken casualties. SFC Cisneros, who leaped from his truck the
moment he saw Smith take off, caught up to his Platoon Leader at the
base of the stairwell, pulling him back so that he could assume the
risk of mounting the staircase into the unknown first.

As the
dismounted paratroopers -- Smith and Cisneros, as well as Sergeant Tim
Curry, Private First Class Tim Durfee, and Specialist Brady Thayer, the
platoon's medic -- raced up the stairs, weapons at the ready and
hollering "Friendlies coming up!" at the top of their lungs, the sound
of gunfire from below came echoing up the stairs. One of Red Platoon's
turret gunners had positively identified a gunman in an alley to the
southeast, and was engaging him.

The stairwell itself was
covered in blood, from top to bottom. Looking around as he climbed
toward the roof, Cisneros saw marks in the slick coating that indicated
that several bodies had been dragged down from above. Finally, as he
reached the last flight of stairs, he encountered a dead body, oriented
as though it had been moving up the stairs when it had been killed.

Finally
reaching daylight at the top of the staircase, Cisneros made an
immediate turn to the right, around the northern wall, and almost ran
into Corriveau. Wanting to avoid being shot by the shell-shocked
paratrooper, Cisneros grabbed Corriveau by the upper arms and yelled to
him, "Hey! It's us! It's us!" Punch-drunk and mentally exhausted,
Corriveau went limp for the briefest of moments in Cisneros's arms;
behind him, Moser simply stared, wide-eyed.

Staying low to avoid
the machine gun fire from the surrounding buildings, and wary of the
prospect of walking into another ambush, Cisneros turned and surveyed
the scene on the rooftop. What he saw was sickening. The entire roof of
the building was covered with well over a dozen blast marks from
grenades, with some patches still burning, and shell casings from
expended rounds seemed to cover every remaining inch of ground. From
the northeastern corner, he could clearly see Willis's body diagonally
across the roof, lying on its side directly over a large blast marking;
he could also see Morley, lying face down near the stairwell door that
he had just charged out of.

Lieutenant Smith, who had followed
Cisneros out the door and onto the rooftop, moved to Morley's body to
check for a pulse, though knowing it was a futile exercise. He called
down to the medic, SPC Thayer, to take his time coming up, as the two
casualties were clearly dead. As he knelt over the sniper team leader,
he wondered over and over again how in the world this could have
happened when he and his men had been so close to the OP the
entire time. Lost in thought, he didn't realize that Thayer had come up
behind him until Thayer placed a gentle but firm hand on his shoulder
and said, "I've got it."

Machine gun fire picked up again from
the building to the east, but this time Moser and Corriveau were not
alone in facing it. SFC Cisneros and Sgt. Curry joined in returning
fire, and the .50 caliber turret guns on the Humvees below engaged the
shooters, as well.

Smith, Thayer, and Durfee carried Willis
down the stairs to the waiting Humvees, where they gently placed him in
a body bag and sat him in the back seat of one of the trucks. A second
bag was carried back up to the roof, where Morley was gently wrapped,
his head cushioned by Cisneros, and was brought back down to the
vehicles, where Moser and Corriveau, alive and physically unharmed but
mentally exhausted and emotionally drained, climbed in and sat down.
There was no room in the cabs of Red's trucks, so Morley was laid out
in the trunk of the rear Humvee, with a gear bag arranged so that it
propped up his head like a pillow. Morley and Willis's fellow
paratroopers wanted their friends to be comfortable on their last ride
back to Patrol Base Olson.

BY THIS TIME, Charlie Company's
2nd ("White") and 3rd Platoons had arrived from Patrol Base Olson, with
Captain Buddy Ferris, the Company Commander, riding along. There was
work still to be done at the site, from checking the roof for sensitive
items to pursuing those involved in the assault, and Blue and White
Platoons would spend the next several hours doing just those things. In
the ensuing gun battles, several al Qaeda -- both Iraqi and foreign --
would be killed or captured, among them the informant who had initially
alerted the foreign fighters to Reaper's presence on the roof of his
apartment building. Following a large number of the fighters from the
apartment building and the surrounding machine gun positions using
surveillance aircraft, Captain Ferris was able to identify the house to
which over 20 of the surviving terrorists went after leaving the
building. Minutes later, a GPS-guided bomb was dropped on the house.

Within
the next hours and days, more information would come to light, both
through the interrogation of captured insurgents and through the
development of more human intelligence on the situation. According to
the available evidence, nearly 40 al Qaeda were directly involved in
the assault on Reaper's position (they believed the team on the roof
comprised nearly a dozen American soldiers). During the firefight,
which lasted less than ten total minutes, Corriveau and Moser had
killed at least ten enemy fighters -- possibly as many as fifteen --
and had not only kept themselves alive, but, against all odds, had
prevented al Qaeda from succeeding in their real goal: to kidnap the
soldiers on the rooftop, and to make a public spectacle of their
imprisonment and murder, just two weeks before General Petraeus's
internationally viewed testimony on Iraq before the U.S. Congress. The
suspicion that kidnapping was the fighters' intent was confirmed by a
final piece of intelligence that Charlie Company received just after
the incident: an announcement, crafted by the Islamic State of Iraq (al
Qaeda's Iraqi front), stating that nine U.S. soldiers had been
kidnapped in Samarra, and had been beheaded and had their bodies thrown
into Thar-Thar lake (to the southwest of the city).

Thanks to
the strength, courage, discipline, and unwillingness to give up in the
face of seemingly impossible odds of Chris Corriveau and Eric Moser,
the ISI had spoken too soon. There would be no trophy, no public
relations victory to thrust in the face of those in America and around
the world whose attention would in the next few weeks be focused again
on Iraq. Instead, there would only be death or capture, as the ISI
members responsible were hunted down, one by one, by Captain Ferris and
his company of very motivated, and exceptionally lethal, paratroopers
who, as Corriveau and Moser had demonstrated during the fight of their
lives on the rooftop that fateful morning, would never, ever give up,
whatever the odds.

Jeff Emanuel, a special operations veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a columnist and a director of the conservative weblog , RedState.com. He was most recently embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq this past August, September, and part of October.

This article appears as the cover story of the November 2007 issue of The American Spectator.

I was considering selling some of the stock but I didn't even have time to think it through as work poured in this morning. By the time I checked it, I was already in the negative all over the place.  Teaches me to just guess my way to profit.

Walmart has been dropping in price. I have set the price to buy as
44.08 for Visionblu. I believe the stock prices will climb up within
the next three months. (November - December - January) I have nothing
to base it on other than Walmarts rate of success in the past.

I've heard alternating views on consumer spending. I had thought it
was a +0.3 percent raise but I'm also hearing that consumer spending
has dropped in general compared to last year. I would like to read more
about this. Will consumer spending affect a company like Walmart that
greatly? The Holiday season is coming up and I would like to see a good
profit estimate for next quarter to temporarily boost the stock,
allowing me to unload it at its peak.

Foot Locker I plan on keeping and hoping that it will rise in the next few months as well. It's dropped to such a low price and I consider it as a strong company. Hopefully I'm not stupid to assume so. Maybe if it dies off I'll learn to do more research than basing it on assumption haha.

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most
of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to
focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS uses logic detail oriented facts rule words and language present and past math and science can comprehend knowing acknowledges order/pattern perception knows object name reality based forms strategies practical safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS uses feeling "big picture" oriented imagination rules symbols and images present and future philosophy & religion can "get it" (i.e. meaning) believes appreciates spatial perception knows object function fantasy based presents possibilities impetuous risk taking

So what are you, left or right-brained?

A look at my portfolio on theupdown.com