SwiftVets.com

[olympian2004]

From freerepublic.com and goto link for some great pictures:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1295269/posts

A week before Thanksgiving, a group of United States Army soldiers in Mosul, Iraq, stormed and retook three police stations that had fallen into the hands of insurgents. As the soldiers guarded one bullet-pocked cop shop, a couple of shady characters from New York bebopped into the station. One guy with slicked-back black hair with silver wings shook his fist in one startled young soldier's face and said, "We got your back, pal!" "Holy s---, it's Tony Soprano and Paulie Walnuts!" shouted the young soldier. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"We thought you guys could use a hand," said Tony Sirico, who plays Paulie Walnuts on "The Sopranos."

Sirico chuckles in recounting his pre-Thanksgiving USO visit with James (Tony Soprano) Gandolfini to Iraq.

"We visited seven camps in four days," says Sirico. "And I gotta tell ya, it was one of the proudest times of my life. We got some really ballsy, steel-faced dedicated young guys and broads over there who make you proud to be an American. Me and Jimmy Gandolfini are on two opposite sides of the political coin. He's liberal and I'm on the right. But politics never came up once. I speak for the both of us when I tell ya that we went there because we're so damned proud of our troops."

Sirico was back in New York last week, still swallowing malaria pills, and glowing about his trip to Iraq.

"On Monday we flew from New York to London and then wound up in Camp Victory in Kuwait on a Tuesday," says Sirico. "Tracy Thede from the USO had the trip planned perfect. The USO does some job for these troops! At Camp Victory, we met a lot of soldiers who were tickled pink that two mooks from 'The Sopranos' would drop by. Me and Jimmy broke chops with the troops, signed autographs, posed for pictures and ate chow with them. We had a ball!"

On Nov. 24, Gandolfini and Sirico took a C-130 military transport plane into Iraq. "We were supposed to land in Baghdad but the Fallujah liberation was underway, so things were hot in Baghdad," says Sirico. "So they flew us into Mosul, to Camp Freedom. I had to slick my pompadour back for the helmet and I shook all the guys' hands and hugged all the girls."

Sirico and Gandolfini jumped into a Striker Military Vehicle and visited all the liberated police stations.

"We had the guys and gals laughing," Sirico says. "Lemme tell ya something - and Jimmy would agree - there's no loss of morale amongst our troops. Forget what you see on TV. I never heard one soldier ***** or moan."

Sirico says he and Gandolfini were on an emotional high through the entire trip, getting little sleep, eating, cavorting and yakking with the troops. "I'd say the hardest part of the trip was using them Porta Potties," says Sirico, who is as fastidious and germ-conscious in real life as Paulie Walnuts in "The Sopranos."

The next day, they were whisked in a Blackhawk helicopter to Tikrit. "This was Saddam Hussein's hometown, beautiful from the air, peaceful-looking," says Sirico. "And there was Saddam's gorgeous palace right on the hill."

After meeting and greeting the troops, they choppered to Balard, in central Iraq, to visit soldiers in a hospital. "One girl was shot in the butt and I joked with her," said Sirico. "Listen, my hat is off to these young girl soldiers. I'm talking pretty, young girls who could be home getting chased by the guys. Instead, they're off fighting a war. I was also impressed with the Iraqis. I'll never forget all the Iraqi men and women smiling in one town where Jimmy Gandolfini was playing soccer with a little Iraqi kid. It was a lovely moment, a movie moment."

Sirico said that over the next two days, they visited four more camps, meeting with these young men and women who will be spending the holidays far away from family and loved ones. "It was a spiritual thing for me," Sirico says. "We play tough guys on TV. But me and Jimmy agreed, you don't know tough until you see our troops over there."
_________________
Tony in Boulder, Colorado