A gung ho Marine recruiter featured in Michael Moore’s antiwar film, Fahrenheit 9/11, has died from wounds suffered in the Iraq War.
Reports Editor & Publisher:
One of the most memorable scene in Michael Moore’s controversial documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” featured two Marine recruiters desperately trying to enlist recruits outside a shopping mall. Now one of them has died in Iraq.
Marine Staff Sgt. Raymond J. Plouhar, 30, died Monday of wounds suffered while conducting combat operations in Anbar province, the Pentagon has announced.
The Oakland Press in the Marine’s native Michigan reports that Plouhar “joined the Marine Corps in 1995 and was the recipient of several awards of distinction, including the Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, the Sea Service Deployment Ribbon and the Marine Corps Recruiting Ribbon.”
Plouhar’s father said Tuesday that his son only had 38 days left in Iraq. “I’m devastated, sad and proud,” he told the Press. “This just makes me devoted even more to his belief that people need help in Iraq, and he felt that he was helping.”
The Marine took four years off from active duty to serve as a recruiter in Flint, Mich. after donating one of his kidneys to his uncle, his father said. “We need to resolve the war,” he said. “If we walk out now, my son died for nothing and that will make me mad.”
Plouhar, according to his parents, appeared willingly in the Moore film but hated the results, as he felt it was against the war in Iraq.
At one point in the film, according to the transcript, Plouhar explains how he approaches the possible recruits: “It’s better to get them when they’re ones and twos. And work on them that way.†He also says: “Right now there is somebody out there who wants to be a Marine but has no idea how to do it.”
