Religions > Atheism > Dead Soldiers' Mothers Feel Betrayed (GOP, The Party of Treason)
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Yang, AthD h.c, Kicking AWOLs Cocaine Snorting Ass" |
| Date: |
28 Nov 2005 03:30:20 AM |
| Object: |
Dead Soldiers' Mothers Feel Betrayed (GOP, The Party of Treason) |
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/249531_fisk24.html
ROBERT FISK
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST
NEW YORK -- I sit in one of the dives on 44th Street, uncertain how to
approach Sue Niederer and Celeste Zappala, afraid that their stories
can be too easily turned into tears, their message lost after the
Veterans Day march. They were put at the back of the New York parade,
humiliated, with their little crowd of anti-war veterans and their
memories of boys who left young wives for Iraq and came back in
coffins.
Later, I sit between the two women and remember the blood splashed
across the road at Khan Dari and the 82nd Airborne washing away the
brains from the highway in central Fallujah and the body lying beneath
a tarp in north Baghdad. I've seen the American corpses. Now here are
the American mothers.
Sue lost her son Seth on Feb. 3 last year. He was looking for
"improvised explosive devices" near Iskanderiya, south of Baghdad --
the infamous IEDs, roadside bombs that have taken hundreds of American
lives -- when a booby trap blew up next to him.
Dates are important to Sue. She goes back over them repeatedly, as if
this will somehow straighten things out, make sense of the immorality
of her son's death, perhaps -- I sense this powerfully, though I am
not certain -- bring him, however briefly, back to life. Seth married
on Aug. 26, 2003, just five days before he was first deployed to Iraq;
his young wife, Kelly, scarcely had time to know her husband. He came
home on leave on Jan. 1, 2004, left on Jan. 17 and was killed just
three weeks later.
Sue's voice rises in indignation above the noise of the New York
diner, angry and brave and drowning out the joshing of two vets at the
other end of the table. "I remember very clearly my son's last words
before he went back after his two weeks' vacation. "I don't know who
my enemy is,' he said. "It's a worthless, senseless war, a war of
religion. We'll never win it.' He wasn't killed. He was murdered. He
was murdered by the U.S. administration. He was out looking for IEDs.
He found one, stopped his convoy and was blown up. I regard it as a
suicide mission."
I know Iskandariya, the place where Seth died. It's a Sunni Muslim
town south of Baghdad, throat-cutting country where insurgents man
their own checkpoints beside the palm groves and canals. Vietnam comes
to mind. The other voices round the table are lowered now. The waiter
turns up with pizzas and Pepsis and red wine. There's an American flag
in the center of the table. These mothers and ex-soldiers all talk of
their patriotism, although these days they might agree with Nurse
Edith Cavell: that patriotism is not enough.
Celeste's son Sherwood was killed on April 26 last year, his end as
tragic as it was unnecessary. He was protecting a group of military
inspectors hunting for President Bush's mythical weapons of mass
destruction when a perfume factory they were searching in Baghdad
suddenly exploded.
"He was getting out of the cab of his truck to help the wounded when
some debris came crashing out of the sky and hit him," Celeste says.
"When they left on their mission, they were supposed to have a lorry
with them with equipment that would explode bombs by radio before they
reached the scene. But that day, the lorry broke down and a British
officer told them to set off on the mission without it. I will always
remember that my son died just a month after George W. Bush made that
videotape in front of the press -- the one where he made a joke about
looking for weapons of mass destruction and pretended to search under
his desk for the weapons. He was making fun of the fact he hadn't
found them but my son died looking for them and they didn't exist."
Sherwood and his 28-year-old wife, Deborah, had a young son. "We
always tell him that his father was a hero," Celeste says. "We think
of him that way. He was a noble man." Sherwood had joined the National
Guard in 1997, believing, like thousands of other American servicemen
in Iraq, that he could use the money to pay off his college loans.
"He'd told us he would go and do the job and that he would bring all
his men home safely. There were 15 of them, all from Pennsylvania, and
he kept his word. They all came home safely -- except for Sherwood."
At the other end of our table, Alex Ryabov, who served in R Battery,
5th Battalion, 10th Marines, in the original 2003 invasion force, says
he was against the war from the start, refusing to believe there were
any WMD.
"When I got into Iraq, I saw what our artillery rounds did to people.
I had to go up front to see where the rounds were falling and I saw
whole Iraqi cities engulfed in flames. There were Iraqi dead on the
sides of the roads -- I couldn't tell if they were men or women."
Is it so surprising that this little group of mothers and ex-soldiers
should have trailed along behind the Veterans' Parade in New York or
that they should now represent Military Families Speak Out and Iraq
Veterans Against the War, and should have joined older men who
belonged to Vietnam Veterans Against the War? These are not the men
and women whom Bush wants to have at hand when he denounces members of
Congress for claiming he fiddled the intelligence files before the
war, when he tells yet more enthusiastic young soldiers that the
United States will "prevail" in its "war on terror" and I can see why.
"My husband, Greg, was an absolute Republican, even after my son was
killed," Sue says. "But then we went to see Michael Moore's film,
'Fahrenheit 9/11.' And as we walked out, my husband apologized to me.
And he said: "I'm sorry -- everything you've said about the war is
correct. I'll back you 100 percent in everything you say and
everything you do."
I say goodbye to this little group of brave American men and women --
the ex-soldiers have no jobs, no future save their enthusiasm for
their own campaign against the Iraq war -- and leave their table with
its sad, gold-fringed U.S. flag and head off into the fumes and noise
of Times Square. Up on a giant television screen, Vice-President *****
Cheney -- he who went on lying about the non-existent links between
Saddam and 9/11 long after the invasion -- is solemnly bowing his head
in the Arlington cemetery.
Ah yes, he is honoring the fallen. And I wonder if he will ever
understand his betrayal of the men and women back on 44th Street.
-----
Yang
a.a. #28
AthD (h.c.) conferred by the regents of the LCL
a.a. pastor #-273.15, the most frigid church of Celcius nee Kelvin
EAC Econometric Forecast and Sorcery Division
Proudly plonked by Lani Girl and Crazyalec (aka aka Yang's little poltregeist *****)
The Bush 'balanced' budget: 1.6 trillion and worsening
The Bush 'economic' policy: 12.5 million FEWER jobs than Clinton and counting
The Bush Iraq lie: -2107 GIs, one friend's co-worker's son and mounting
Having Bush ***** up my country: Worthless
-----
"Now, did I want to go? Hell no."
-duke (duckgumbo32@cox.net), aka PedophilEarl J Weber, 63
year old mateless, heirless biological failure
of Afton Oaks Apartment, Baton Rouge, on why
a Neocon chickenhawk like him pussied out of
the Vietnam War.
.
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