Marine Corps Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi has been locked up in a Mexican prison for 171 days. The 25-year-old decorated war veteran was arrested for weapons possession on March 31 at the San Ysidro checkpoint in California. A Florida native, Tahmooressi was in the process of relocating to San Diego for treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder when he was apprehended. He faces a sentence of six to 21 years in a Mexican prison for carrying his registered AR-15 rifle, .45-caliber pistol, and 12-gauge pump shotgun in his car across the border.
Tahmooressi’s plight has received attention from the likes of Montel Williams, Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA), and others. A WhiteHouse.gov petition requesting the White House demand Tahmooressi’s release garnered more than 100,000 signatures, but the Obama Administration has refused to take action. Frustrated with the status quo, two Marine Corp veterans are now trekking 300 miles on foot to Washington, D.C. to personally deliver President Obama a message.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Marine Corps veteran Terry Sharpe is 63 years old and began walking the 287 miles from his home in Summerfield, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., two weeks ago to raise awareness about Tahmooressi, who has been in a Mexican prison since March.
[…]
On the third day of his walk, he crossed through Danville, Virginia, and was stopped by a man named Allen Brown who wanted to know what he was doing.
Brown happened to be a Marine Corps veteran as well. By coincidence, they both were part of the 3rd Battalion 5th Marines during the Vietnam War, deployed in the same location. Sharpe was in Kilo company, and Brown was in Lima company. The men both turn 64 at the end of the year.
Sharpe told the Free Beacon he knows this situation could be “solved with a phone call.”
“I got aggravated because nothing is happening and I said I’m going to walk up to Washington, D.C., and tell President Obama to make the phone call,” he said. “All he has to do is call the president of Mexico and tell him to let the boy go.”
On radio this morning, Glenn praised the veterans for their action and offered Obama and his press secretary a bit of advice on how to handle the situation.
“Imagine you're the PR person of the president,” Glenn said. “You go in and say, ‘Mr. President there are two elderly men… Let's bring them in. Talk to them in the Oval Office, and we will take one picture. No recording of anything. Just hear them out… and then you walk them to the front door, shake their hands, and they're off on their way.’”
Given the current controversy surrounding the VA and American military intervention abroad, Glenn believes the simple act of Obama meeting with these men could make a “huge” impact.
“Why doesn't he do that? It's like he doesn't even care,” Glenn said. “All of the divisions of the VA and everything else – you could use that and say, ‘Look, I talked to them about Tahmooressi, and I also asked them about the healthcare of the VA’… It would be huge.”
“You could absolutely turn that to your advantage,” Pat agreed. “You’ve just done their work for them.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP
