[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 14 (Wednesday, January 24, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Page S1049]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       HONORING OUR ARMED FORCES


                         Captain Brian Freeman

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, a month ago, I traveled to Iraq to meet 
there with our men and women in uniform. One soldier in particular 
stood out to me, a bright young West Point graduate, CPT Brian Freeman. 
Our conversation lasted for no more than 5 minutes, and yet I was 
immediately struck by his outspoken intelligence. ``Senator, it is nuts 
over here. Soldiers are being asked to do work we're not trained to 
do,'' he told me. ``I'm doing work that State Department people are far 
more prepared to do in fostering democracy, but they're not allowed to 
come off the bases because it's too dangerous here. It doesn't make any 
sense.''
  Now those words have taken on a tragic resonance. Four days ago, 
according to media accounts, 30 gunmen disguised as U.S. officials 
penetrated an Iraqi checkpoint in Karbala. Once inside the Army 
compound, the reports say, they opened fire and mortally wounded five 
American soldiers.
  On Sunday, Charlotte Freeman was visiting her family in Utah when she 
found a message on her cell phone. Army chaplains had been to her house 
in California. The daily e-mails from her husband Brian had stopped. I 
imagine that few things have more anguish in them than waiting, in 
suspended fear, for the news of a loved one's death. Late that 
afternoon, the news came.
  So I rise to honor Captain Freeman and to add my voice to his 
family's prayers. His giving spirit and his self-sacrifice embodied all 
the best of our Armed Forces, whether he was working to take the son of 
a Karbala policeman to America for heart surgery or fighting to secure 
death benefits for the family of his murdered interpreter or organizing 
a charity to fund medical care for Iraqi children. In his duty as a 
liaison between the Army and the Government of Karbala Province, he 
proved every day his dedication to the Iraqi people; the Governor of 
Karbala praised him as ``a soldier and a statesman.''
  But the virtues we saw in Brian shone through even clearer to those 
who loved him: Charlotte, his wife; his 3-year-old son Gunnar and his 
14-month-old daughter Ingrid; his father Randy and his stepmother 
Kathy; his mother and his stepfather, Kathleen and Albert Snyder. 
``Brian is a beautiful man,'' his mother-in-law, Ginny Mills, wrote to 
me shortly after his death.
  ``He is loving, funny, and intelligent. He had a spirit in him that 
saw the good in life. A man who put his life on the line to help those 
less fortunate than himself. A man who was a loving husband and a 
devoted father. A man whose daughter will never know him first-hand.''
  In the place of a husband and father who will never see his children 
grow up, Brian Freeman's young family will have to live on with the 
warm memories of the man who loved them and who risked his life in the 
service of his country. Memories and words of comfort are so 
insufficient, so small, next to the flesh and blood. But there is 
nothing else to put in their place.
  I have nothing else to add--except to note that the scenes of grief 
and comfort in the home of Charlotte Freeman have played themselves 
out, in some form or another, 3,000 times, in 3,000 families, for 3,000 
lives. ``Each story is the same,'' wrote Ginny Mills. ``A wonderful, 
beautiful soul sacrificed.''
  ``I cannot understand that this war goes on and on,'' she wrote. ``It 
has to stop. It has to stop now and I need to know how to do that.''
  May God send comfort to her and to all of Captain Freeman's family 
and to every family that is bereaved. And may we remember, in every 
hour of our deliberations, the young lives that bear the burden of the 
choices we make in this Chamber.

                          ____________________