A message from the webmaster

Hello my name is Marco Conti and I am the Webmaster and technical adviser for SupportOurTroops.org. I want to join with Martin Boire, the Support Our Troops Chairman of the Board, in thanking you for your patronage of SupportOurTroops.org.

I also want to introduce myself so that you can put a name to our website. I am the guy you curse when a page doesn't load or the browser crashes... :)

Jokes aside, let me tell you a bit about me and why I am working with SupportOurTroops.org...

As you may have guessed from my name, I was originally born in Italy, Rome to be precise. I moved to the US a bit over 20 years ago right after being discharged by the Italian military where I was a Section Missile Commander with the rank of First Lieutenant.

Since Italy is a loyal ally of the US, I had the privilege to serve in a US Army base in northern Italy where I specialized in the Lance Missile system.

I still treasure my experience in the military and the many memories and friends I still carry with me so long after.
Living and working so close to my US Army counterparts inspired me to move to the US shortly after my compulsory service was over and a few years later I become a US citizen.

I got married and my wife and I are the proud parents of a beautiful, smart and precious daughter, Giuliana, who is currently studying music at the University of California at Berkeley.

I have been working with Internet technologies since before the WWW was invented and initially I choose this career because of the great potential I saw in the Internet to better our lives and bring people and knowledge together as never before.

While some may disagree with me, I still think I was right. The world is a better place because of the Internet and the World Wide Web in particular. I know so many families that are able to cross time and space and talk to each other as if they were in the same room. We no longer have to fear getting lost while driving our cars and the knowledge of the world is seemingly at our fingertips 24/7.

Naturally, like in everything else, there are minorities that wish to ruin the experience for everyone else: spammers, predators, swindlers and so on, but by and large the grand promise of the Internet has been fulfilled. We are shrinking the size of our planet and we are learning to understand our neighbors like never before.

Sadly, we have yet to learn not to hate each other and to resolve our differences without the use of weapons, and that's why it is so important to support our proud armed forces overseas and in country alike. They help keep us safe, they help keep us free.

I joined the staff of SupportOurTroops because I wanted to give back to this Country, to the troops, but in particular to their families. To those parents that have daughters and sons the same age as mine and that , somehow, find the strength to see their babies go into harm way.

These heroes, parents and children alike, are above and beyond the politics and the controversy surrounding any war. Their sacrifice is pure and as painful as anything I can imagine, as is their pride boundless.

I want to honor and thank them and you, our SupportOurTroops membership, that are giving us a chance to do something for them.

Sincerely

Marco Conti 

Webmaster - SupportOurTroops.org

PS: Please read my website announcement about our new user forum and the new community features that are coming up soon o this site. I would love to meet some of you online and get to know all of you better.

SupportOurTroops Webmaster