PHOTOS IN THE NEWS - Left, Marine Lance Cpl. Marcco Ware, 20, carries an injured Iraqi soldier who was shot during an ambush of a 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment convoy in central Iraq. At right, an American held as a prisoner of war in images from Arab television. Associated Press

Division Street

Two examples of the way POWs get treated

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

In the first case, we have Army Spcs. Showshawna Johnson and Edgar Hernandez. They are shown on television by their Iraqi captors, terrified, the tormentors inflicting humiliation, their comrades a few yards away, bodies exhibited in an Iraqi morgue. These American dead, in all probability, were executed after capture.

That's the standard, and that is the mindset of the henchmen of Saddam Hussein.

Consider another POW, this one an Iraqi soldier. No doubt he is also terrified, defeated and in anguish over separation from home and family. He is also on global display.

What is the difference in these two pictures? The difference is that in the case of the Iraqi soldier taken prisoner, he is being carried on the broad shoulders of U.S. Marine Marcco Ware, 20, of Los Angeles and Lancaster.

In this case, Lance Corporal Ware, whose mother lives in the Valley, is carrying the wounded Iraqi captive soldier to a place where he will get medical treatment, comfort and a measure of decency.

In the case of the other POWs, our American brothers and sisters of the 507th Maintenance Battalion, their happenstance turn down the wrong road led them directly into the jaws of Saddam's cruelty.

We have many debates in the pages of this newspaper. We publish letters and the columns of the earnest people who think that somehow the United States is in the wrong in this matter. They believe, in their empty-headed and childish way, that somehow the progress of American arms is intended as an exercise in bullying the world.

Please, please look at the pictures, the pictures worth a thousand words, the pictures that do not lie.

Consider the behavior and decency of Lance Cpl. Marcco Ware of Los Angeles and Lancaster.

Consider the words of Ware's mother, Janette Worsham, one of your neighbors: "Marcco went into the Marines with his head held high. He is proud to serve his country. I told him, 'Stay strong, do what you have to do, and do what you're taught. Mom loves you and will pray for you every day.' "

The aid and comfort Lance Cpl. Marcco Ware delivered to a frightened and injured man, no doubt, fell among the large-topic issues that Ware was taught at home, and in the proud branch of the Marines that he serves with such distinction.

The protesters say, "Stop the war."

Why? So that this evil man can keep throwing his victims into acid-bath showers?

"Stop the war." Why? Susan Sarandon, an actress, asks, "What has Saddam done to us?"

Here's a question: In 1936, what had Adolf Hitler done to France? He waited until 1940 to decide that issue.

Stop the war. There is a way to stop it. The way to stop it is when this dreadful foe crumbles like Ozymandias.

Eighteen months ago, the desolate landscape of Afghanistan lay under the grip of the Taliban, who beheaded petty thieves, stoned women in public and grew a nest of snakes that sired the massacre of Sept. 11. There was reason to go to war, and there was reason to win.

The United States has an embassy in Kabul now, guarded by the likes of Marcco Ware, who are a home-grown product of vigorous American democracy.

Sometime this year, the United States will re-open an embassy in Bagdhad. Opening an embassy means that even if you do not agree with all policies of another country, you are cordial enough to engage in discussion.

As it became impossible to have acceptable relations with the monstrous tyranny of the Saddam thugocracy, it became necessary to create conditions where an embassy might be opened again.

This will invite the prospect of a world where even on the field of battle, humans, in their common humanity, will be accorded the treatment that Lance Corporal Ware provided his wounded foe.

What contrast to the treatment meted out to specialists Johnson, Hernandez and their likely murdered comrades.

In recent weeks, the California National Guard afforded this reporter the honor and privilege of training with it as Antelope Valley troops prepare to join in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Your neighbors, James Nichols and Walter Brady, Aaron Hargrove, Dean Frame and Ron Buckles, Mary Klady and others from the Valley are headed on a mission of mercy, to provide humanitarian relief, to feed the children, succor the widows and help bind up the wounds of a war insisted upon by the most ruthless and despicable of so-called "national leaders."

In their perversity, the protesters believe the cause of this war to be our president, President George W. Bush. But Saddam Hussein insisted on this war from the moment he decided to extend his rule as an armorer of the wicked, and torturer of the innocent, living for a decade in defiance of U.N. calls for his regime to enter the community of nations.

I attribute a letter from Reg Perkins to The Tribune of San Luis Obispo. Mr. Perkins, of Cambria, quotes from a letter written by Albert Einstein to a pacifist in 1941 as the United States faced war with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan.

From Einstein: "If all the young people in America were to act as you intend to act, the country would be defenseless and easily delivered into slavery.

"One wonders what really motivates a pacifist. Is it political or sincere moral convictions? If it's political, then it's hypocrisy. If it's sincere moral conviction, then they exist on the sacrifices of others. Either way, contemptible."

We can thank the Almighty our soldiers learn their lessons from mothers like Janette Worsham rather than fathers like Saddam Hussein.