For Some Americans The Fall Of Ramadi Is Very Personal

Handout, courtesy of the Lee family

Michael Daly, Daily Beast: My Son Died for Ramadi. Now ISIS Has It.

Debbie Lee says she’s sickened that the city her son sacrificed his life defending has fallen—and furious at the Joint Chiefs chairman’s insistence Ramadi is ‘not symbolic in any way.’

Nine years after Marc Alan Lee became the first Navy SEAL killed in the Iraq War, his mother sat watching TV images of the black flag of ISIS flying over the city where her son died.

“Gut wrenching,” Debbie Lee said on Monday. “The sacrifices that were made, the blood that's been shed.”

The city is Ramadi, and the mother had gone there herself in the year after her son was cut down in a ferocious firefight where he showed such courage that he was awarded a Silver Star.

His comrades had further honored him by naming their Ramadi base Camp Marc Alan Lee. His mother returned from her visit to the city in 2007 with some of its powdery soil in a clear plastic bag. The bag and its contents sat in her Arizona home as the news came that Ramadi had fallen to ISIS.

“That place where my son’s blood was shed,” she said.

WNU Editor: The U.S. soldiers who fought and died in Ramadi understood why the city was important .... and those who survived understand why its fall to the Islamic State is important today. Unfortunately .... many Iraqi and American leaders do not.