Ted Poe: “Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will…”

“Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. "In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point. Always there are echoes and reechoes: Duty, honor, country." Mr. Speaker, General Douglas MacArthur spoke these words to West Point graduates of what the American soldier should be. Captain David Fraser, West Pointer, personified these words. For the last year, Captain David Fraser patrolled the vast desert battlefields of war-torn Iraq in search of the enemies of freedom. This December, his tour of duty was over and he would be coming back to Fort Hood, Texas, to spend Christmas with those he cared about. But on November 26, 2006, 25-year-old Captain Fraser and three other soldiers were killed in Baghdad by a cowardly enemy using an improvised explosive device called an IED.”