Daily Archives: May 18, 2010

How come the New York Times isn’t blaming Obama for the casualties in Afghanistan like they blamed GW Bush? Where are all the anti-war protest stories that used to run almost daily while Bush was president? Come to think of it, what happened to the homeless people and poverty? Why do all these ever so important issues seem to disappear when the democrats control Washington?

He was an irreverent teenager with a pregnant girlfriend when the idea first crossed his mind: Join the Army, raise a family. She had an abortion, but the idea remained. Patrick S. Fitzgibbon, Saint Paddy to his friends, became Private Fitzgibbon. Three months out of basic training, he went to war.

From his outpost in the Kandahar province of Afghanistan, he complained to his father about shortages of cigarettes, Skittles and Mountain Dew. But he took pride in his work and volunteered for patrols. On Aug. 1, 2009, while on one of those missions, Private Fitzgibbon stepped on a metal plate wired to a bomb buried in the sun-baked earth. The blue sky turned brown with dust.

The explosion instantly killed Private Fitzgibbon, 19, of Knoxville, Tenn., and Cpl. Jonathan M. Walls, a 27-year-old father from Colorado Springs. An hour later, a third soldier who was helping secure the area, Pfc. Richard K. Jones, 21, of Roxboro, N.C., died from another hidden bomb. The two blasts wounded at least 10 other soldiers.

On Tuesday, the toll of American dead in Afghanistan passed 1,000, after a suicide bomb in Kabul killed at least five United States service members. Having taken nearly seven years to reach the first 500 dead, the war killed the second 500 in fewer than two. A resurgent Taliban active in almost every province, a weak central government incapable of protecting its people and a larger number of American troops in harms way all contributed to the accelerating pace of death.

The mayhem of last August, coming as Afghans were holding national elections, provided a wake-up call to many Americans about the deteriorating conditions in the country. Forty-seven American G.I.’s died that month, more than double the previous August, making it the deadliest month in the deadliest year of the war.

In many ways, Private Fitzgibbon typified the new wave of combat deaths. American troops are dying younger, often fresh out of boot camp, military records show. From 2002 to 2008, the average age of service members killed in action in Afghanistan was about 28; last year, it dropped to 26. This year, the more than 125 troops killed in combat were on average 25 years old.

In the last two years, the number of troops killed by homemade bombs, which the military calls improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, increased significantly. Earlier in the war, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire took the largest number of American lives. But in 2008, for the first time, more than half of American combat deaths were the result of I.E.D.’s, which — just as they did in Iraq — have become both more powerful and more plentiful in Afghanistan.

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Okay, this has to be the dumbest man on earth. Exactly how does a person like this get a job teaching children? Can you imagine asking your kid what he or she learned in school today and they respond “how to calculate angles to shoot someone.” Geez, you have to hand it to the people of Alabama. Clearly not the brightest bulbs in the batch. JD

A Jefferson County teacher picked the wrong example when he used as­sassinating President Bar­ack Obama as a way to teach angles to his geome­try students.


Someone alerted autho­rities and the Corner High School math teacher was questioned by the Secret Service, but was not taken into custody or charged with any crime.



“We did not find a credible threat,” said Roy Sex­ton, special agent in charge of Birmingham’s Secret Service office. “As far as the Secret Service is concerned, we looked into it, we talked to the gentleman and we have closed our investigation.”

A Corner High geometry teacher picked the wrong example, President Barack Obama, to use in a lesson on angles. The lesson resulted in a Secret Service investigation. Sexton said he generally doesn’t discuss threat cases, but confirmed his of­fice investigated the inci­dent. No federal charges followed the probe.



The teacher was appar­ently teaching his geometry students about parallel lines and angles, officials said. He used the example of where to stand and aim if shooting Obama.



“He was talking about angles and said, ‘If you’re in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,’ ” said Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry class.



Efforts to reach the teacher for comment Mon­day were unsuccessful.

 Superintendent Phil Hammonds said the teacher remains at work, and there are no plans for termination.



”We are going to have a long conversation with him about what’s appropriate,” Hammonds said. “It was extremely poor judgment on his part, and a poor choice of words.”



Caroline Polk, the parent of a ninth-grader at the school, said she doesn’t be­lieve the teacher ought to be fired.



“We all make mistakes, and we should be able to learn from our mistakes,” she said. “What he said was just wrong and inappropri­ate. Everyone’s got their own opinions, but we have to be aware of our sur­roundings. At this point, it just needs to be handled in a way that it won’t be re­peated.”