So if you have anything to say to me at the end of this reading, let it at least include "Good Luck."
\f7Daily touched down in Iraq on Nov. 19 and was sent to the northern city of Mosul. In calls and e-mails home, he began asking for presents for his new Iraqi friends: cigars for the soldiers, candy and soccer balls for the children. He vividly described his adventures with them: a Thanksgiving Day game of musical chairs, a rooftop cigar session; his first Kurdish meal, his first local haircut.
In one video he sent, Iraqi soldiers surround him with grins, crowning him with a turban as a gesture of friendship.
In typical fashion, he sought out new points of view. In one discussion, he wrote that he asked a Kurdish man whether the insurgents could be viewed as freedom fighters. The man cut him off. "The difference between insurgents and American soldiers," Daily said the man told him, "is that they get paid to take life -- to murder -- and you get paid to save lives."
"That Kurdish man's assessment of our presence means more to me than all of the naysayers and makeshift humanists that monopolize our interpretation of this war," Daily wrote in a Dec. 31 e-mail.
He was equally expansive with his troops. His wife, Janet, says he was constantly asking for tea bags so he could invite his soldiers to his room for tea and talk. They asked him for advice about careers, finances and family problems, discussed politics and philosophy. His troops jokingly posted a sign on his door: "Mark's Tea Hour."
In January, Daily was transferred from a support operation to a security one. He told his family that if he should die, he would never regret a thing.
In an e-mail to his brother, Eric, Daily wrote: "I know it is hard for you knowing that I am over here in danger, but never forget that I came here on behalf of the countless brothers who were torn apart by the savage exploits of this region's tyrants."
On Jan. 14, the family received another e-mail:
"All is well. More war stories then I can fit in this e-mail. Having the time of my life!"
It was his last e-mail.
The next day, Jan. 15, Daily was killed when a roadside bomb detonated beneath his vehicle in Mosul. Three of his comrades died with him.
But his words have become a living appeal for his most treasured Army value -- selfless service -- as it rips through the Internet and reaches unimagined audiences.
