. . . and it's not so we die hot and heavy, as the joke goes!

You may have heard about this story in the news recently. U.S. Army medic PFC Stephen Tschiderer of Mendon, NY, was on patrol in Baghdad when he was shot in the chest by an Iraqi sniper. Because he was wearing body armor, he was only knocked to the ground. The whole incident was caught on tape as the Iraqis were filming their attempt to kill him from the van they were hiding in 75 meters away.

Schneider later caught his attempted killer and, after subduing him, treated the sniper's wounds. You can read about the incident here and here. You can also read the official press release from the 256^th BCT here.

You can view the video taken by the insurgents here.

On a side note: you may notice that after shooting PFC Tschiderer you can hear one of the snipers chanting "Allah Akhbar" over and over, which means "God is great" or something to that effect. Meanwhile, PFC Tschiderer regains his wits, gets up, takes cover and later captures his would be killers.

This is why the U.S. invaded and occupied Iraq in three weeks. Iraqis are more interested in celebrating a minor success than in making sure they've accomplished their mission all the way. This is also the challenge we face in trying to reconstruct the country. The Iraqi people do things half way then stop and leave the rest for Allah. Luckily for PFC Tschiderer, Allah doesn't carry a rifle. Unfortunately for the rest of us working on the reconstruction effort, Allah doesn't rebuild roads or operate the commercial power grid either.