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The legacy of "Johnny K"
Fallen Philly soldier revealed the ugly truth about Iraq
By Attytood
08/19/05 "Daily News" -- -- Last week, we wrote
about the
unspeakably sad story of Gennaro Pellegrini Jr. -- Philly cop,
welterweight boxer, and National Guardsman. The 31-year-old's life
was hitting full stride when he received a fateful phone call
ordering him to serve in Iraq, just two weeks before his hitch was
supposed to end. Pellegrini was quite unhappy, but he went -- and
he paid with his life, along with three of his Pennsylvania
National Guard colleagues who were killed in a ruthless ambush
near the Iraqi town of Beiji.
Also slain in that Aug. 9 attack was one of Pellegrini's
brothers-in-arms, a Whitpain Township firefighter named John
Kulick. Kulick -- a 35-year-old from the suburbs, an avid
fisherman who loved too much mustard on bologna sandwiches and was
called "Johnny K" -- had become had become fast friends
with Pellegrini, the tough, tatooed city cop from a rowhouse block
of Port Richmond. But the road that these two salt-of-the-earth
guys had taken to Beiji could not have been more different.
As a professional firefighter, Kulick was devastated by the
loss of so many colleagues at the World Trade Center in the terror
attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That sense of duty is what prompted him
to joined the Pennsylvania National Guard, even though he was
already on the far side of 30 and the devoted and involved
divorced dad to his daughter, Amanda, who is in grade school. And
when his Guard unit from Northeast Philly was called up last
December, he told his worried family that he wanted to go, to
fight terrorists "over there."
In fact, Kulick's brother Jim -- in a radio interview this
morning -- said they watched the movie "Blackhawk Down"
just days before his departure for Iraq. After the end of the
movie (which depicts the 1993 Somali insurgent attack that killed
18 U.S. troops), John Kulick declared, echoing his
commander-in-chief and without irony, "Bring 'em on."
We heard Jim Kulick this morning on the
Michael Smerconish show on WPHT-1210. The reason Smerconish
invited him on was to talk about the emails that John Kulick had
sent home from northern Iraq in the months before he was killed.
Over the eight months that the Philly-area firefighter served in
Iraq, his opinion of the mission changed radically.
As described by his brother, John Kulick's emails tell the
story of a patriotic American who was betrayed -- by his own
government. Because it was John Kulick's government that -- after
spending more than $100 billion on Iraq -- sent him into hostile
territory without the proper armor. And it was John Kulick's
government that sent him into a war that lacked a strategy, and
that, as a result, not only eliminated the enemy but was waged in
a way that created new enemies every day.
Jim Kulick said his brother's emails showed a man who was
becoming more and more worried. John Kulick said the insurgents
were using increasingly sophisticated IEDs -- improvised explosive
devices -- and were firing rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs,
into their camp. "They had to hide under their cots -- there
was nothing they could do," Kulick's brother said. "The
Humvees weren't armored, or lightly armored -- they were basically
useless. At first they were sending them out in pickup trucks.
They weren't really equipped to fight this war."
Kulick told his family that troops were taking police vests
that had been donated to them and putting them on the floor of the
Humvees instead of wearing them. Jim Kulick noted that at the same
time his brother was reporting this, two of his friends who are
area police officers serving in Iraq told him they had needed to
bring their own sidearms. In his emails, John Kulick had begun to
describe the war as "a quagmire."
As disturbing as those reports were, what Kulick had to say
about the conduct of the war was even more troubling. He told his
family that the Iraqi police "were corrupt and inept and
there was no way they could ever train them to the degree where
they could keep order." And when his unit went out after
insurgents, far too many innocent iraqis were killed in the
crossfire. And, Kulick reported home, "the more hate that
created." When the Americans left an area, the insurgents
came back the next day.
Eventually, when Kulick saw Iraqi citizens kneeling in the
street in prayer, his interpreter would tell him they were praying
for the Americans to leave. "They would rather live with evil
they knew rather than live with us," Kulick said in his
emails. "We were killing them as much as the insurgents
were."
Kulick and his fellow Guardsmen were riding in a Humvee,
reportedly armored, on night patrol on Aug. 9 when a large bomb --
containing as much as 25 to 30 pounds of explosives -- that was
hidden in a drainage culvert under the roadway exploded
and killed them. Just hours earlier, Kulick had called his
father to tell him where his will was located and that he would
want a full military funeral.
It's too early to say whether the tumultuous events of the last
few weeks -- the deaths of so many Guardsmen from Pennsylvania and
Ohio, the groundswell of support for grieving anti-war mom Cindy
Sheehan -- will be remember as a turning point. Jim Kulick
said this morning that the U.S. needs to set a timetable for
getting out, and host Smerconish -- a political conservative who
supported the war from early on -- was surprisingly sympathetic.
Said Smerconish: "We're adrift."
Yesterday,
John Kulick received the type of funeral he had asked for. His
flag-draped funeral procession along York Road in Montgomery
County drew firefighters from 61 local departments, and featured
all the pomp and circumstance that is appropriate for a true hero
like John Kulick.
But today, the cameras are gone, and flags are folded up -- and
Kulick's family will continue to live with the loss. Jim Kulick
said his family is "devastated" by what happened in
Iraq.
None worse than his 9-year-old daughter. "Amanda is in
denial," Jim Kulick said. "She said her father promised
her he would come back from the war, and she still believes
that."
Amanda Kulick doesn't understand what happened to her father.
Neither do we.
All contents ©2005
by The Daily News
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