I feel like my blog entries lately have been very brief, but when faced with eloquence like the following, what more can I really add but a quiet "Amen" and "I’m so sorry for your loss"?
For those of you who still trust the Bush administration — and your percentage diminishes every day — let me tell you that my nephew Chase Johnson Comley did not die to preserve your freedoms. He was not presented flowers by grateful Iraqis, welcoming him as their liberator.
More borrowed eloquence on the flip.
He died fighting a senseless war for oil and contracts, ensuring the increased wealth of President Bush and his administration’s friends.
He died long after Bush, in his testosterone-charged, theatrical, soldier-for-a-day role, announced on an aircraft carrier beneath a "Mission Accomplished" banner that major combat was over.
He died in a country erupting into civil war and turned into a hellhole by Bush, a place where democracy has no chance of prevailing, a country that will become a theocracy like Saudi Arabia.
Have we won the hearts and the minds of the Iraqi people? Apparently not.
Condolences to the Comleys, and the Sheehans, and the Zapalas, and the Mitchells and who knows how many grieving Iraqi families…
These are the stories the Chimperial Court has been trying to silence. Time for that to end.
Support the troops. Tell the truth. Bring them home.
Cross posted to We Are the Resistance.
Lovely because you wrote it so nicely. Very sad because it’s so — sad — and senseless.
Thanks. I hate having the occasion to write these.
I hate it a whole lot.
I would LOVE it if we could get Chase Comley’s grandmother to Crawford — she has said that there is nothing that she would like better.
Can we make it happen?
I have been looking at chase’s picture all day (I read this story this morning) and there is something in his eyes that reminds me of my sons…I don’t know, but I just can’t stop looking at his picture and thinking how much I’ve let him down and how much I would love to support his grandmother in her time of terrible grief.
I’ve no idea how to in touch with her.
I just saw the original story linked on a comment over at Dkos and had to respond somehow.
Seems like I’m doing a lot of that lately.
I’ll do some looking around — and, b, respnding is better than ignoring and denying any day of the week and twice on Sundays, be a little more easy on yourself.
Here’s what is grandmother had to say:
on Friday, Comley’s grandmother, 80-year-old Geraldine Comley of Versailles, described herself in an interview as a former Republican stalwart who is “on a rampage” against the president and the war.
She said she would like nothing better than to join Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a fallen soldier who has been holding a peace vigil outside President Bush’s ranch in Texas.
“When someone gets up and says ‘My son died for our freedom,’ or I get a sympathy card that says that, I can hardly bear it,” Geraldine Comley said.
She said her view, developed before her grandson’s death, is that Bush pushed for war because Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had tried to assassinate the first President Bush, and to get control of Mideast oil.
“And it irritates me no small amount that Dick Cheney, in the Vietnam War, said he had ‘other priorities,'” Geraldine Comley said. “He didn’t mind sending my grandson over there” to Iraq. […]
She said “it broke my heart” when Chase Comley joined the Marines, but he told her that recruiters said he probably would be stationed in Hawaii or Japan.
Heartfelt, straight to the point, and very well stated.
Thank you for sharing this information, as more need to do such to find just how many feel this way.
Congrats, my empathy is with you, peace be with you.
not to be patronizing here, but AMEN!!!!!