Earlier today the president presented the Medal of Honor to the parents of Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor, a Navy SEAL who threw himself on a grenade in order to save his buddies during an intense firefight in Ramadi. You can read more about it here, but also worth checking out is this piece from THE WEEKLY STANDARD archive. Michael Fumento arrived in Ramadi just days after Monsoor had been killed in action. In his report for this magazine in November 2006, Fumento wrote:
Included in the piece is one of the emails from a SEAL in Monsoor’s unit. Monsoor was also featured on the cover of the magazine that week–he is one of the men in the photo at right. As sad is it is, I don’t think Monsoor’s death was for naught. A recent piece in Men’s Health, which was written by a reporter embedded with a team of SEALs, revealed what may have been the origin of the Anbar Awakening. It all started with a team of Navy SEALs operating in Ramadi that fall. It doesn’t take a big leap of faith to figure that this was Monsoor’s team–and that he likely played a pivotal role in starting a movement that would bring Western Iraq back from the edge of the abyss. Read the Fumento piece, and if you haven’t read the piece in Men’s Health, do yourself a favor.
