Amputee-Disabled veteran changed tire...for Gen. Colin Powell

Veteran who lost leg in Afghanistan helps his "idol" Colin Powell change tire on side of road

CBS News
BY CAITLIN O'KANE
JANUARY 24, 2019

A military veteran on his way to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Wednesday saw someone having car trouble on the side of the road. Being the good Samaritan that he is, the veteran stopped to help — only to realize the man was his idol, Colin Powell.

"I'm not really starstruck that much. It was just a situation like, here's somebody on the side of the road who needs help, why not get out?" Anthony Maggert told CBS News. Since they were only about 5 miles away from Walter Reed, he knew the man likely didn't just look like Colin Powell — he was Colin Powell.

"The closer I got to the vehicle, I saw the face and I said, 'That has to be Colin Powell,'" Maggert said. When Powell got out of the car, Maggert realized he was face-to-face with the renowned general.
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Colin Powell wept at Obama victory

Powell wept at Obama victory 5:39
CNN's Hugh Riminton interviews former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is asking all Americans to get behind Obama.

Economy Issues Leading Veterans Away From McCain

Kevin E. Creed, a retired Army officer and Bronze Star recipient, is co-chairman of Connecticut Veterans for Obama. "John McCain is not going to get the majority of the veterans' vote, not in Connecticut and not nationwide," the Litchfield lawyer and former Connecticut state trooper says. (PATRICK RAYCRAFT / HARTFORD COURANT / October 23, 2008)

Economy Issues Leading Veterans Away From McCain
By RINKER BUCK The Hartford Courant
October 29, 2008

Even though he once voted for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Kevin E. Creed is co-chairman of Connecticut Veterans for Obama, an affiliate of Barack Obama's campaign that is dispatching volunteers to swing states and manning phone banks for Obama.

The strategists plotting war hero John McCain's electoral route to the White House have always been confident that they could count on the likes of Kevin E. Creed.

Creed, a Litchfield lawyer and former Connecticut state trooper, spent 17 years as an Army helicopter pilot before retiring from the military in 1996. After Sept. 11, 2001, Creed was one of 33 retired Army aviators who agreed to be recalled to meet the Pentagon's need for specialized officers during a national emergency.

At the age of 51, Creed left his prosperous Connecticut law practice, lost 40 pounds, dug his old logbooks and flight suits out of his attic and returned to duty as an Army major, traveling between Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait as the Army's theater aviation maintenance officer. In April 2003, Creed was shot down south of Baghdad and spent the night camping in the desert until he and his crew were rescued.

He retains one particularly strong memory from his service in Iraq.

The Powell endorsement has reverberated throughout the military establishment. For many undecided military voters, Powell's October surprise could legitimize a vote for Obama.

"It's a complete mistake to think that the Republicans will get the military vote," said Kim Brown, 48, of West Haven, an Air Force veteran who said she is planning to vote for Obama.

"Right now, the VA is either overloaded or cutting back on benefits like prescription drugs or physical therapy, and I have seen people coming back from Iraq paralyzed from their injuries, and they can't even get the wheelchair they need. A lot of us blame that on Bush policies — and McCain is very close to Bush."click link for more

This is one of the biggest reasons I am very angry with some of my Republican "friends" who cannot put politics aside when it comes to the way veterans have been treated by their own party. I don't make this stuff up and it's time they all paid attention to what is real and has been a nightmare for the troops and the veterans. kc

Commentary: Candidates should seek votes of Muslim-Americans
Story Highlights
Nafees Syed: Candidates are courting voters like Joe the Plumber

Syed: They should reach out to Muslim-Americans, who feel shunned

Obama may not be Muslim, but he should campaign for their votes, she says

Syed: I applaud Gen. Colin Powell for recognizing we are Americans, too

By Nafees A. Syed
Special to CNN


Editor's note: Nafees A. Syed, a junior at Harvard University majoring in government, is an editorial editor at The Harvard Crimson as well as a senior editor and columnist for the Harvard-MIT journal on Islam and society, Ascent. She is chairwoman of the Harvard Institute of Politics Policy Group on Racial Profiling. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.


Harvard University student Nafees Syed says both candidates should reach out to Muslims in the U.S.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- During this election, we have seen the spectacle of two presidential candidates fighting over one voter while snubbing an entire segment of the American population worthy of their attention.

We in the Muslim-American community look wistfully at people like Joe the Plumber, wishing that we too could be courted for our vote by the presidential candidates.

At the same time, we look gratefully at figures like former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who reassure us that there is hope for greater acceptance of Muslim-Americans.

Over time, we grew to expect standoffish treatment from the Republican Party. Almost a decade ago, many Muslims, my parents included, supported President Bush for his humble foreign policy stances, strong family values and reaching out to the Muslim-American community.

Things have obviously changed since September 11, 2001, and we have grown used to anti-Muslim rhetoric from Republican candidates. We have run like refugees to the Democratic Party, only to find reluctant tolerance and hope that we will go somewhere else.
go here for more
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/23/syed.muslim/index.html

Muslim soldier fought for America, and his faith

Muslim people are a part of "real America" just as much as Christians and Jews and atheists. What faith, or lack of it, they claim, has nothing to do with being American, loving this nation or being willing to die for the sake of this nation. Faith does not make you a better American but it does often make you appreciate it more when it works the way the Founding Fathers had envisioned it to work. All faiths were supposed to be equal in this nation because the Founding Fathers knew people will not agree on the faith they choose anymore than they will agree on the politicians they support. Even Christians cannot agree with each other. How many branches of Christianity are there today because people could not agree in the first centuries of Christianity? What Americans all agree on is they love this country or they wouldn't live here anymore.

When people disagree with what the government is doing, that does not make them un-American. They expect more out of the abilities of this nation and the rights we have under the Constitution not only allow us to voice our disagreement, it demands it of us. Jefferson knew the importance of being able to be well informed and use our free speech rights as well as he knew the importance of being able to freely choose the faith we have. Some in this country have used their free speech rights to attack people who do not agree with them and call them un-American. They fail to see that what makes the people of America strong is what they have in common as well as what they do not because we are all able to live together in this one nation. This nation made up of the people from many nations coming together as one. They fail to see that as they attack people of other faiths as part of some kind of political game, they are also attacking the men and women who serve this nation in the armed forces. This is just one of their stories.

Muslim soldier fought for America, and his faithBy NANCY A. YOUSSEF
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON -- "Joe the Plumber" was only one of two Americans injected into the presidential election this past week. The other was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, whom former Secretary of State Colin Powell invoked in his endorsement Sunday of Barack Obama.

Khan was a 20-year-old soldier from Manahawkin, N.J., who wanted to enlist in the Army from the time he was 10. He was an all-American boy who visited Disney World after he completed his training at Fort Benning, Ga., and made his comrades in Iraq watch "Saving Private Ryan" every week.

He was also a Muslim who joined the military, his father said, in part to show his countrymen that not all Muslims are terrorists.

"He was an American soldier first," said his father, Feroze Khan. "But he also looked at fighting in this war as fighting for his faith. He was fighting radicalism."

Khan was killed by an improvised explosive device in August 2007 along with four other soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter while searching a house in Baqouba, Iraq. He's one of four Muslims who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and are buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where 512 troops from those wars now rest.

About 3,700 of the U.S. military's 1.4 million troops are Muslims, according to Defense Department estimates.

Khan, a child of immigrant parents from Trinidad, was 14 when the Sept. 11 attacks happened. Feroze Khan said he remembered his son watching in stunned silence: "I could tell that inside a lot of things were going through his head."

Three years later, Feroze honored his son's request and allowed him to enlist him in the Army.

"I told him: 'You are going to the Army.' I never said there is a war going on in a Muslim country. I didn't want him to get any ideas that he was fighting (against) his religion."

Feroze kept his fears for his son's safety to himself.

His son was assigned to the Stryker Brigade Combat Team out of Fort Lewis, Wash., deployed to Iraq in 2006 and fought on Baghdad's Haifa Street, a Sunni insurgent stronghold.

go here for more

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/AP/story/735677.html

McCain would hurt seniors and veterans among many others

Colin Powell endorses Obama: Video


Why would Powell endorse Obama? He explained it very clearly this morning the same way many other people across the country have. While McCain believes that we owe him our vote because he was a Vietnam POW and served the country, he seems to have forgotten that many across the nation have been left out of receiving any benefit from his years of service in the senate. His voting record proves it.

McCain plans on privatizing social security, which means great harm can come to the lives of seniors across this nation. He wants the younger people to "invest" in the stock market, which as we've all seen, is a dangerous thing to do. This alone would harm seniors without the privatization of the system that has worked all these years.

McCain plans on causing division among veterans by "offering" to allow veterans without combat wounds to seek medical care elsewhere instead of from the VA which they were promised would be there in repayment of their own years of service. McCain's record on veterans funding has been deplorable while he expects they will simply support him no matter what harm he has caused them by voting against what they need and delaying changes needed to address the needs of the wounded as well as the elderly population.

McCain lacks the ability to remove himself from the same policies that caused most of the messes this nation has faced at the same time he expects us to simply trust his word that he has not supported Bush and his failed policies even though McCain took pride in declaring "I voted with the President 90% of the time" when he was in the GOP primary. While McCain expects the job of leading this nation he did not expect that he would have had to earn that right.

While we deserved to have our issues addressed, McCain decided to pull stunts, from selected someone like Sarah Palin, to using every opportunity and dirty trick to cause further division in this nation. Obama on the other hand has sought to restore the unity of the American people. This, the American people have been longing for since the attacks of 9-11 when we were reminded that no matter what our differences were, we are one nation and come together to help each other. We need that unity again. We need to get past the greed is good mentality that has caused so much harm and reward generosity as well as loyalty and true patriotism.

Eyes are opening up in this nation. The majority can see that no matter what color a person's skin is, it in no way something to judge them by. As Martin Luther King Jr. declared, content of their character does matter more than the color of their skin. What matters most to the voters is what matters in our own lives and this is a wonderful thing. kc