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MAF Blogger Danny
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We had San Diego this morning. I can’t even believe that at 9:00 today we were in San Diego and now we’re on our way to Tucson. I can’t say enough how slowly time passes on these trips. Except during the rallies, those are always so fun and exhilarating. Time totally flies by when the crowd is there and Diana is singing or one of the Debs is giving a speech.

Something else that keeps bothering me is that I think fatigue is starting to set in. My arms and legs ache and you can hear everyone groaning between stops. I feel like we’re barely surviving out here…haha. It’s funny but I remember watching something called Survivorman on Discovery Channel. Basically this guy goes out to the woods and tries to see if he can go a whole week by inventing ways to get water, food, shelter and not dying from something. I remember him saying once that when you’re trying to survive all by yourself and you don’t have access to a sustained source of food and water, you have to eat every possible chance you get.

He emphasizes this by walking through the jungle wherever he is and eating a little bit of everything he can find, even if it’s just a little bug or plant or something that seems insignificant, but when you don’t have a dependable source of food, you don’t know if that one little meal you have the opportunity to eat could be your last piece of sustenance for the next 3 days. So you can’t ignore it or pass up the opportunity. Likewise for us, food, sleep and bathroom breaks are a commodity we take advantage of every minute whenever possible. The problem is that it seems sleep is the commodity in shortest supply.

Personally I have had about three hours of sleep per night for the past 3 nights. This is getting ridiculous. And I think everyone else is running on empty too. Our best friends are caffeine and sugar to try and stay awake. It would be nice if we could sleep between rallies but there is always another group or TV station that needs to be called or another radio interview that has to be dealt with. Not to mention we are trying to wrap up the planning stages of the last half of our tour and a lot of things are still up in the air.

Part of it might be that I am still trying to adjust to this schedule of living on the road. I know a lot of people do it but I think this is something that wasn’t really in my personality index. Oh my, I can’t believe I’ve been writing all this time and I haven’t even talked about San Diego; there is a lot to say here.

The rally was very good. We had Howard Kaloogian on hand he is the founder of Move America Forward and was on hand to speak to the crowd. I think we had about 50 people around San Diego. When we first pulled up I was a little worried but people kept coming and coming. Howard talked a lot about the history America has had with terrorism and how long it has taken America to wake up. Since the mid to late 70s there have been more and more terrorist attacks at different times in our nation’s history. Howard reminded us about the 1979 storming of the US Embassy in Iran by Islamic militants and the bungling of the situation by President Carter. He cited the 82 Pan Am bombing, the 93 World Trade Center bombing, the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the USS Cole bombing in Yemen in 2000. All of these are examples of America being under attack by the same breed of terrorists that perpetrated 9/11 and are now engineering and manipulating the insurgency in Iraq with help and financial support from Iran.

He said something else that I thought was VERY true, and people need to know it…especially those that say we are losing the war or that we are creating more terrorists than we can kill. Howard said that the terrorists KNOW they CANNOT ever beat our military toe to toe, that their only hope of beating America is to create a ‘sense of defeat’ among the people by creating chaos, targeting civilians, and taking advantage of the defeatist attitudes of the left which they KNOW demoralizes our troops and their will to win.

When Debbie Lee came up to tell her son’s story, she asked the crowd if there were any Blue or Gold Star families in attendance and if there were current or retired veterans in attendance. We had a Gold Star mom and a Blue Star mom in attendance.

Danielle Ibsen is a resident of Temecula, California and has two sons serving in the military. Their names are Tim and Dan Cord and they joined the Marine Corps shortly after September 11. They told their mom that they wanted to help America defend itself and ensure that another terrorist attack like that could never happen again. They did not want to stand by and do nothing while terrorists plot to kill innocents here. Tim and Dan enlisted and completed boot camp together, but went to different school for further training. Then they were reunited when they were both stationed in Fallujah, just not in the same units. Now they are back home safely and stationed at Camp Pendleton. Tim and Dan play in a band called American Hitmen. They both love music and their band includes other Marine Musicians. In fact, the whole band is Marines. They are brave men and I thank them for their service.

This is Sandra Aceves. She had three loving son’s until her youngest was tragically cut down in Iraq, heroically defending his brothers in arms. Sandra’s eldest son Rodrigo Mendes-Aceves is a photographer and lives in San Diego where Sandra also resides. Her second son Enrique is an Officer in the US Air Force, serving proudly in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her youngest boy Petty Officer 3rd Class Fernando A. Mendes-Aceves, a Navy Corpsman, 2nd Battalion attached to the 4th Marine Regiment in the First Marine Expeditionary Force. Basically that means that Sandra’s son was a Navy man who served in a combat role as a medic for the Marine Corps which has no ‘medics’ of its own.

This is one of the most dangerous jobs in the military, reserved for the bravest. This is especially true in Iraq because of the tactics the insurgents use. Like the Japanese defenders of Iwo Jima, the terrorist insurgents in Iraq often do not shoot to kill their targets, they attempt to simply would them. They know that Americans never leave a fellow soldier behind, and that our soldiers will always help and look out for one another. So when a terrorist takes aim and wounds one of our men, it takes at least two Americans out of the battle because at least one or often several of his fellow soldiers will always stop and try to get that wounded man to safety.

On April 6th 2004 Fernando went out with a quick response team to aid a team of Marines that were pinned down in an ambush out in Ramadi Al-Anbar. They successfully helped that force to overcome the enemy and continue their mission but on the way back home Fernando’s unit was ambushed by another force of insurgents. Their driver was shot by a sniper and a firefight broke out. When one of Fernando’s good friends Alan Walker was shot and injured, Fernando leapt right into the line of fire to help. Tragically the whole fire team was cut down and Fernando’s body was found together with his friend whom he risked and gave his life trying to save.

Sandra pays tribute to her son every day, and finds some comfort and support in the families of other brave soldiers, all friends of Fernando’s, who also lost their lives that day. Moms from Palmdale and Fremont, CA and Minnesota all stay in contact to remember their boys and emulate the same bonds of love and friendship that held all these men together tightly, even in the face of danger in Iraq.

Sandra remembers that the men of that battalion were all good friends of her son’s and affectionately nicknamed him “Doc Mendes.” Before making the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms Doc Mendes was famous in his battalion for encouraging the rest of the guys to lift weights on their off-time, which he himself loved, and also taught his fellow soldiers several old Mexican songs which he would make them sing. He was a very patriotic young man who loved America. He believed in bringing liberty and democracy to the people of Iraq and loved the Iraqi people. Even though he was born in Mexico, just like his older brothers, he decided to immigrate to America and his love of America and the freedoms that this nation gave him and family were what made him so patriotic and what motivated him to serve.

I am sitting here in this little motor home now, and it’s about 10pm. We’re trying to get to Tucson. And I find myself reading and re-reading this story over and over again. First of all, because I want to make sure I get the facts right about this brave young man. Writing about Fernando, and thinking about his mother…I keep wondering what she would think of this, of what I am saying. I feel like anything I write, it can’t possibly tell the story the way it deserves to be told. There is no possible way that I could give Fernando or his mother, or any of the soldiers and families who have sacrificed for my freedoms, the thanks that they deserve for what hey have given up and given to me. I owe everything I have, my whole life, to this country. And because they fight to keep it safe, I owe everything I have to these brave men and women.

I just hope what we are doing with this tour is enough to convey the thanks and gratitude that we all feel. I see it on the faces of vets and families when we go to the rallies. They are so thankful to our troops, and it just makes me so angry to think that there are some people out there who don’t mind letting our troops down. They’re out there fighting a war we sent them to, to protect our freedoms by giving up their own, and yet some people in this country are trying to undermine their mission, to defeat the cause that our soldiers are out there fighting and dying for.

It is hard for me to stop typing. I feel like I just have to keep talking about the sacrifice and commitment of men like Fernando, and Tim and Daniel Cord because their sense of duty and commitment was endless and as such, it cannot be emphasized enough. Ultimately I must recognize that there is no way to adequately share what they sacrificed and there’s no way to adequately communicate the importance of that sacrifice…regardless of how much I type and how long I try. So all I can do is give up and hope that our readers can somehow understand.

If you can imagine trying to measure courage, dedication and love in units like we do money, heat, or volume, it would still be too infinite to understand or comprehend. I feel like I have to keep writing and writing until what I have said equals the extent of what they displayed, but that is impossible. I could keep writing and writing forever and it would never be enough.