[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 70 (Friday, May 23, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S5149]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MEMORIAL DAY REMEMBRANCE

 Mr. BOND. Mr. President, it is easy to take for granted the 
freedom we have here, in the United States, and too often we lose sight 
of that and resort to complaining about one thing or another, but the 
fact is, we live in the most blessed Nation in the world, we enjoy the 
greatest freedom of choice, we enjoy so much, but those freedoms were 
purchased and protected at a very high cost.
  As we prepare to celebrate Memorial Day this year, I call upon my 
fellow Missourians and all Americans to pause and remember the 
sacrifice of our soldiers, sailors, Marines, and air men and women 
stationed around the world today protecting us with a blanket weaved 
with the battle flags from places with names like Lexington, Concord, 
Gettysburg, Belleau Wood, Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, Iwo Jima, Saint Lo, 
Bastogne, Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sahn, Beirut, Wadi Al-Batin, and Medina 
Ridge in Iraq and most recently, those taken from us in Somalia and by 
the brutal and cowardly bombing of Kobart Towers.
  We must remember the sacrifices of those who came before us, and 
those whom we most recently lost--the fathers, mothers, sons, and 
daughters who gave their most precious of gifts, their lives, that we 
might continue to enjoy the freedoms we hold so dear.
  We must remember them so we will focus our determination, as a 
nation, that we never, ever, waste a life because it is too hard or too 
expensive to do the right thing. We must take this opportunity to re-
dedicate ourselves to make that effort and to ensure that our military 
personnel are the best trained, equipped and prepared in the world, 
because we ask so much of them.

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