Medals
Posted: 07 Oct 2003, 07:18
"Recently in Iraq, an Army two-star general put himself in for the Silver Star, a gallantry award, for just being there, and for the Combat Infantryman Badge, an award designed for infantry grunts far below the rank of this division commander. During the war, members of an Air Force bomber crew were all awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for lobbing a smart bomb from 30,000 feet onto a house where Saddam was rumored to be breaking bread - even though Saddam's still out there somewhere sucking desert air. In 1944, the only way a bomber crew might have gotten the DFC would have been if it had wobbled back from Berlin on one wing and a prayer after a dozen-plus missions of wall-to-wall flak. ... The U.S. Air Force has approved more than 50,000 medals for operations in the Middle East. The U.S. Army, trying to catch up with the folks in blue who flew through all that imaginary Iraqi flak, has issued medals as though they were Cracker Jack prizes. So far they've pinned on tens of thousands of awards, from the coveted Distinguished Service Cross to the CIB. More than 5,000 Bronze Stars alone have been awarded." --Col. David Hackworth