හරි විදියට ගෝඨා හමුදාවෙන් ඇමරිකාවට පැනල ගියපු එක්කෙනෙක්. නිත්යානුකුලව හමුදාවෙන් අයින් වෙලා නෑ. කතා කරනවානම් ඕනේ තරන් වැරදි තියනවා මෙයාලා ගාව.
Military career
Rajapaksa joined the Sri Lanka Army as a Cadet Officer on April 26, 1971 , when Sri Lanka was still a dominion of the British Commonwealth. He was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant on May 25, 1972 and given his first command as an officer in the Ceylon Signals Corps. Thereafter he served with in the Sri Lanka Sinha Regiment and the Rajarata Rifles before being transferred to the Gajaba Regiment upon its formation in 1983 with the amalgamation of the Rajarata Rifles and Vijayabahu Infantry Regiment.[4]
He rose up the ranks in the military, serving as the second in command of the 1st Gajaba Regiment and latter commanding the 1GR from 1983 - 1990. He served in the battlefronts of Jaffna, participating in Operation Liberation, the offensive mounted to liberate Vadamarachi from LTTE in 1987. He also commanded the same battalion in Operation "Strike Hard" and Operation "Thrivida Balaya" in 1990. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, and served as the Commandant of the Kotelawala Defence Academy at the time of his retirement in 1992.
During his 20 years of military service, Rajapaksa has received awards for gallantry from three Presidents of Sri Lanka, J.R. Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa and D.B. Wijetunga.[5] He had followed signal young officers course in school of signals at Rawalpindi Pakistan, Infantry company commanders course in Queta Pakistan, Jungle warfare and counter insurgency course in Assam, India, Command and Staff course at Defence Services Staff College in Welington, India and Advanced Infantry Officers course in , forte benign , Gorgia, USA.
[edit] Life after retirement
Upon his retirement from the Army after a serving for 20 years, Rajapaksa obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Technology from the University of Colombo and was employed in the IT field of the local corporate sector. He later migrated to the United States of America, where he worked at Loyola Law School, 919, s. Albany street. Los Angeles, CA, information technology department , as the UNIX Systems Administrator for more than eight years. Prior to join Loyola he was at DTR Business Systems, Inc. Walnut, CA as unix systems integrator.r.[6] In order to assist his brother's Presidential election campaign, Rajapaksa returned to Sri Lanka in 2005.[
citation needed] He has a US Green card.