People are forgetting us.. Don’t let them.. Please don’t let them.

When we started the war, right or wrong, I told my wife, "The American people will forget us if this goes longer then the administration planned.

True to my words, this administration has made sure that they downplay the war.

My job, our jobs are to remind folks that we still have loved ones over in Iraq, Afghanistan and through out the world fighting to defend us. We did not ask to go to war, but we fight when we are asked to, No questions asked.

What we don’t want are the folks back home forgetting us.

Military muffles Marine’s funeral at final tribute to slain
serviceman. Pentagon obstructs what the family
wanted you to see

By Dana Milbank

The Washington Post

12:24 AM CDT, April 27, 2008

WASHINGTON — Lt. Col. Billy Hall, one of the most senior officers to be killed in the Iraq war, was laid to rest last week at Arlington National Cemetery. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the Pentagon doesn’t want the public to know that.

The family of 38-year-old Hall, who leaves behind two young daughters and two stepsons, gave their permission for the media to cover his Arlington burial—a decision many grieving families make so that the nation will learn about their loved ones’ sacrifice. But the military had other ideas, and they arranged the Marine’s burial Wednesday so that no sound, and few images, would make it into the public domain.

Hall’s story is a moving reminder that the war in Iraq, forgotten by much of the nation, remains real and present for some. Among those unlikely to forget the war: 6-year-old Gladys and 3-year-old Tatianna. The rest of the nation, if it remembers Hall at all, will remember him as the 4,011th American service member to die in Iraq, give or take, and the 419th to be buried at Arlington. Gladys and Tatianna will remember him as Dad.

The two girls were there in Section 60 on Wednesday beside grave 8,672—or at least it appeared that they were from a distance. Journalists were held 50 yards from the service, separated from the mourning party by six or seven rows of graves and penned in by a yellow rope.

"We’re not going to be able to hear a thing," a reporter argued.

"Mm-hmm," an Arlington official answered.

The distance made it impossible to hear the words of Chaplain Ron Nordan, who, an official news release said, was leading the service. Whatever Nordan had to say about Hall’s valor and sacrifice was lost to the drone of airplanes leaving National Airport.

It had the feel of a throwback to Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, when the military cracked down on photographs of flag-draped caskets returning home from the war.

Meanwhile, five years in, the public often seems bored with the war. A Pew Research Center poll this month found that 14 percent of Americans considered Iraq the news story of most interest.

On March 29, William Hall was riding from his quarters to the place in Fallujah where he was training Iraqi troops, when his vehicle hit an improvised explosive device. He was taken into surgery but died from his injuries. The Marines awarded him a posthumous promotion from major to lieutenant colonel.

Newspapers in Seattle, where Hall had lived, printed an e-mail the fallen fighter had sent his family two days before his death.

"I am sure the first question in each of your minds is my safety, and I am happy to tell you that I’m safe and doing well," he wrote, giving his family a hopeful picture of events in Iraq. "I know most of what you hear on the news about Iraq is not usually good news and that so many are dying over here," the e-mail said. "That is true to an extent but it does not paint the total picture, and violence is not everywhere throughout the country. So please don’t associate what you see on the news with all of Iraq.

"Love you and miss you," he wrote. "I’ll write again soon."

Except that he didn’t. And on Wednesday, his family walked slowly behind the horse-drawn caisson to Section 60.