There was a prison uprising at Alcatraz, and I drove the Marines over there in a landing craft to quell the riot. I am the only serviceman I know with an American Theatre ribbon.

Honor and integrity are at the heart of everything Marines do. It's why I believe so strongly that Joe Biden is the president who can return honor and integrity to the Oval Office.

President Reagan was concerned - deeply concerned, emotionally concerned - with the loss of life of any American, but especially with the lives of military soldiers, Marines, navy.

The new Congress needs to move quickly to strengthen the Army and Marines - not to send more troops to Iraq - but to rebuild our capacity to meet national security threats globally.

If you ask me why I've succeeded, it's because I was in the Royal Marines. You have this unbelievable sense of achievement and of overcoming adversity. That's the confidence it breeds.

If the Marines today are doing exactly the same thing their dads did in Vietnam and their granddads did in Korea and World War II, then how in the hell can we say that they're not as good?

We are acknowledging the close personal nature of our 10 years at war and the strong bonds of fidelity that Marines have for one another, especially for those fellow Marines who we have lost.

But the Air Force was sort of a bastard child of the Army, much like the Marines with the Navy. Everything had to be done over by the Army after it had already been done by the Air Corps, a mess.

The American voter knows that we cannot protect the seas and our interests overseas unless we have ships that can fight and deliver Marines and carrier-based fighter jets to the world's hot spots.

I was a public affairs officer. I worked with the media, but I didn't just stay at my desk. I assisted in military duties, travelled around Anbar province, hung out with a wide variety of Marines.

From the Marines, from Ohio State, from Yale, from other places, people have really stepped in and ensured that they filled that social capital gap that it was pretty obvious, apparently, that I had.

I've always been a fan of those guys. My dad was in military school and I have a bunch of buddies that are Marines, and I just kind of want to give back to those guys that gave more than enough for us.

My family is heavily involved in the Marines and close-combat training, and I was raised doing Japanese sword training, so I've always been of the mentality that you have to be able to defend yourself.

The drummer in my first band was killed in Vietnam. He kind of signed up and joined the marines. Bart Hanes was his name. He was one of those guys that was jokin' all the time, always playin' the clown.

From the depths of the Pacific to the deserts of Iraq, more than a million American soldiers, Airmen, midshipmen, and Marines have laid down their lives for their friends, their families and our nation.

My father was an athlete, a great athlete, fought in the Marines in World War I. He was all sports and activity. My mother was all academics. I still have the complete works of Shakespeare that she had.

I got to travel around Anbar Province, had a great group of Marines who worked for me who traveled around Anbar Province. I got to hang out with a lot of different types of Marines and soldiers and sailors.

I knew early I wanted to follow my father into the military. He did a full 30-year career and retired as a full colonel in the Marines after graduating from Allentown H.S. and later from Cornell University.

The Marines in Korea never feared 'friendly fire' or artillery coming from the South Koreans - from their allies - like they did later in Vietnam, fighting with the South Vietnamese. The Koreans could be trusted.

Without the brave efforts of all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines and their families, this Nation, along with our allies around the world, would not stand so boldly, shine so brightly and live so freely.

A lot of the great pieces of journalism from Iraq showed how important command influence was in violent, aggressive environments, where Marines and soldiers had a constrained set of choices to make in sudden moments.

I am a retired United States Marine Corporal and I started out in 2nd Battalion Night Marines on my deployment and I finished my career in the Marine Corps at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as a patient.

When I first arrived here, after spending years as a competitive fighter and training U.S. Marines in hand-to-hand combat, Hollywood is the last place I would have expected to find such blatant bias and discrimination.

I've sort of been an anthropologist of modern America, in a non-academic way. Whether it's Marines or Tupperware salesladies, high end audiophiles or bike couriers, I'm fascinated by the hallmarks of the American tribe.

These guys that were standing up to fight, for the most part, had pride in their country, and they wanted to do the best, and they wanted to go out and fight, and I was as close to these Afghans as I was to the Marines.

Jimmy Carter used to walk off the airplane carrying his own luggage. Do you remember that? I don't want my president carrying - I want the freaking Marines to be carrying his luggage, and they want to carry his luggage.

But then my mother, who's a very selfless, stoic person from a family of Marines, would tell us that what was good for our father was good for us - he would make more money; therefore, we'd be able to get better educations.

I've had some 'riotous excursions of the human spirit' alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it's time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way - they earned their stripes in combat.

Flamethrowers have been used by many armies in many wars, including by American Marines in Korea and Vietnam. They cause horrific deaths and are thus a serious public-relations liability. The U.S. military apparently phased them out in 1978.

There were a lot of hard times, and having to have a team of people help me out of the bed, having to use a bedpan is a really tough thing to swallow. But looking back, I'm proud of my scars and what myself and my Marines went through in Marjah.

I had medevacked so many women off the battlefield that I knew that it was a misnomer to say that women weren't in combat. I had friends that were Marines that were taken to fight the enemy. They weren't just firing in defense of their position.

But it's been a great, humbling - and I've been very honored to have the opportunity to serve and to lead and to be the representative of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are in Washington. And it's been the greatest honor of my life.

Our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen volunteer to protect and defend this country and all its citizens, and do so with honor, integrity and excellence. Our nation continually asks them to do more and more, with less and less.

So long as our Corps fields such Marines, America has nothing to fear from tyrants, be they Fascists, Communists or Tyrants with Medieval Ideology. For we serve in a Corps with no institutional confusion about our purpose: To fight! To fight well!

I knew many Marines had done brave deeds that no one saw and for which they got no medals at all. I was having a very hard time carrying those medals and didn't have the insight or maturity to know what to do with my combination of guilt and pride.

When you're leading Marines, you don't screw around, so the comedy is limited in uniform. And when you're a comedian, you can't be heavy handed and come across with tales of gore or material that people won't understand, so I try to keep them separate.

My dad lived a good life. He was a simple guy. His family had been poor, and he joined the Marines to be able to send money home to his mom and dad and brothers and sisters. He genuinely had the intention to live a good life and to respect other people.

I did plays in high school, but I was convinced you couldn't make a living doing it. You don't have a lot of options in Indiana anyway, though, so I didn't want to stay there. I graduated early and worked a bunch of really odd jobs, and then I joined the Marines.

As a company dedicated to creating fun and affordable toys for children, everyone at Ty is proud to play a small part in helping children in need have a happy holiday. We are proud to be associated with Toys for Tots and congratulate our Marines for a job well done.

Big successful corporations have established their own culture by the time you come along, so you have as high of a chance of changing their overall culture as you have of convincing the U.S. Marines to adopt the 'long-haired look' as their standard military haircut.

The American people should not wonder where their military leaders draw the line between military advice and political preference. And our nation's soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines should not wonder about the political leanings and motivations of their leaders.

Those who served, and those who continue to serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, and we can never forget the importance of their commitment to our Nation.

If you're coming from America to Iraq, then how are you supposed to be objective? I mean, you could pay lip service to being objective, but how are you going to objective when you're embedded with the Marines? The Marines are saving your life every day and they're protecting you.

As I recovered at Walter Reed, I worried about the soldiers who pulled me out of my helicopter that Friday afternoon. Would they make it back okay? And what about all the other soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen who were also putting their lives on the line every day?

My father served 26 years in the Air Force as a pilot and a pioneer in our missile programs. I learned early about the sacrifices a family makes when a member is repeatedly deployed, and also the fulfillment that comes from serving our country. My brother, my son and I all became Marines.

We've been at war for 10 years with this generation of Marines. We've seen women do a whole lot of things between the war in Iraq and the current war in Afghanistan. The fact that I'm sitting here making sure that we continue to put out the best young Marines is just a matter of it being 2011.

It was my duty to shoot the enemy, and I don't regret it. My regrets are for the people I couldn't save: Marines, soldiers, buddies. I'm not naive, and I don't romanticize war. The worst moments of my life have come as a SEAL. But I can stand before God with a clear conscience about doing my job.

'Battle: Los Angeles' - I've got to say this was easily one of the most physically trying things that I've ever done in my life because I play a Marine in the film, and they had us training with real live Marines for, like, three weeks. It gave me a whole new respect for just the armed forces, period.

My brother-in-law, Chuck, whom I have known since we were teenagers, is a disabled veteran who was wounded while fighting with the marines in Vietnam. I've been around to observe how the war affected his life and the problems that veterans have, and I knew for a long time that I wanted to write a song about Vietnam.

What they really do during boot camp above all else is they create conditions of extreme stress - whether through sleep deprivation or the cold and muddy weather or just noise or whatever it is - and you have to make decisions, not just for yourself, but for the Marines you're supposed to be leading at any given moment.

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