"The Kingdom" and its Remembrance

Now that the memorial to the "buggerer of boys" (Rob Roy) has passed (the one in L.A. I mean), I would like to bring to attention a real memorial to some real men of courage. Men who really cared for the well-being of mankind. I'm speaking of the United States Air Force personnel who died tragically in the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in June, 1996. This event which happened in a far-off--and many times--a hostile land should not be conveniently forgotten.

The reason I'm reminded of this event is from the movie called The Kingdom starring Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner, a movie I'd never heard about and was surprised to see that it had been out only about a couple of years ago. The movie portrays four FBI agents who go to Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist bombing at an American living complex administered by an oil company. They encounter and must hurdle many obstacles (obstacles such as the resentment of them even being there) in order to find the ones responsible for the bombings. They eventually find the perpetrator who planned the bombings and kill him.

I checked it out from the library (which I've been doing a lot lately), and even though it seemed like another one of those movies which want to make us feel guilty about our "addiction" to oil (sorry you can throw all the movies you want at me that try to make me feel guilty about that, but you have not, and you will not succeed.) a la Syriana (thus, the fomentation of more terrorists), I didn't mind giving it a try.



Well, as I always do, I watched with an open mind knowing there was always a chance that there would an overbearing communique' of the writer's, director's, or producer's biased viewpoint. It turned out all right (especially the final sequence, which reminded me of the Columbian shootout scene in Clear and Present Danger where Harrison Ford is the only survivor); and as I always favor movies based on actual events, this movie continually held or grabbed my attention. Safe to say I was impressed by its fair portrayal of all parties involved, and I did enjoy it

But the thing I was most impressed with was while the credits were running. Toward the end of the credits, the producers acknowledged the Khobar Towers bombing and listed all the men who had died.



So the following are the men who were killed:

Capt. Christopher J. Adams Capt. Leland T. Haun

MSgt. Michael G. Heiser MSgt. Kendall K. Kitson, Jr.

SSgt. Kevin J. Johnson SSgt. Ronald L. King

Sgt. Millard D. Campbell TSgt. Daniel B. Cafourek

TSgt. Patrick P. Fennig TSgt. Thanh Van Nguyen

Sr.A Earl F. Cartrette, Jr. Sr.A Jeremy A. Taylor

A1C Christopher Lester A1C Brent E. Marthaler

A1C Brian W. McVeigh A1C Peter J. Morgera

A1C Joseph E. Rimkus A1C Joshua E. Woody

A1C Justin R. Wood

To me, that was real classy on the part of the producers of The Kingdom. That was truly avant-garde.