He looks and sounds like the kind of young man that most any father would be proud to call his son.
Kevin Landeck was 26, but the fresh-faced Army captain looks much younger in a recent family photo. He looked after his men and wanted to bring them home alive. The incompetence of the Bush administration angered him, he wrote in emails to his family.
After Kevin Landeck was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, his father wrote President Bush a letter.
When Kevin’s father Richard Landeck did not get a response from the president, he sent the letter to a columnist with The Chicago Tribune:
I had many conversations with Kevin before he left to serve as well as during his deployment. The message he continued to send to me was that of incompetence. Incompetence by you, (Vice President Richard) Cheney and (former Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld. Incompetence by some of his commanders as well as the overall strategy of your decisions.
When I asked him about what he thought about your decision to “surge” more troops to Baghdad, he told me, “until the Iraqis pick up the ball, we are going to get cut to shreds. It doesn’t matter how many troops Bush sends, nothing has been addressed to solve the problem he started.”
Answer me this: How in the world can you justify invading Iraq when the problem began and continues to lie in Afghanistan? I don’t want your idiotic standard answer about keeping America safe. What did Sadaam Hussein have to do with 9/11? We all know it had to do with the first Iraq war where your father failed to take Sadaam down.
Snip
You or Cheney or Rumsfeld will never know the anguish, the worry, the sleepless nights, the waiting for the loved one who may never return. If the soldiers were able to do their jobs and the ego’s of politicians like you, your “cronies” and some commanders had their heads on straight, we would be out of this mess which we should not be involved with in the first place.
My family and I deserve and explanation directly from you……not some assistant who will likely read this and toss it. This war is wrong.
I want you to look me and my wife and daughter directly in the eye and tell me why my son died. We should not be there, but because of your ineptness and lack of correct information I have lost my son, my pride and joy, my hero!
I’ve said before, no torment in hell can probably match the suffering of losing a child. I certainly cannot imagine it and I’ll hold my children tighter tonight when I see them because of this.
Richard Landeck and his wife went to their first peace rally this past weekend.
They have already paid a price and the truth is that no matter how many of us protested before the war, we could not stop Bush from the war. He lied to the American people and many wanted to believe him. Good and decent people in the United States, Britain, and Iraq have suffered as a result.
For the Landecks, it is too late. How many more Kevins are going to die for Bush’s lies?
I read this earlier at the Big Orange and I gotta say that my heart is truly going out to these people. I am 4 months pregnant with my second son, and everytime I hear about Iraqis or our soldiers getting blown to bits to for a lie I just start bawling…I suppose one could contribute it to just hormones.
This needs to stop now.
Thanks for posting this here carnacki
It’s not the hormones, you’ll probably feel the same later on. When the invasion first started, our first thought was about our children, and then everyone else’s children. Our oldest is about to turn 17 now.
I am sending Warm Thoughts of Love and Healing to his family and friends. I know there are no words that can express the sorrow and loss these people and many others are feeling.
One wonders if the administration will attempt to marginalize these people as it has Cindy Sheehan.
I think we can pretty much count on it. 🙁
Mr Landeck is both eloquent and brutal in his honest assessment in this letter. I hope it is widely publicized. But as noted here, Bush is a master at marginalizing any opposition.
I don’t think it would be survivable. I live in fear of going through it again–I know that it would break me.
The thing is this–I’ve often thought that it was quick for my girl, that while violent it wasn’t drawn out. No one made a conscious decision to harm her or put her in harm’s way.
I’ve considered what it would be like if I had lost her in Iraq. I’ve been able to get through this without once being angry–even with those who could be considered “responsible” for the accident. I’ve been hurt beyond what I thought I could bear–but I haven’t had to deal with anger, with hatred. I don’t have any idea how I would live with it if she had died in Iraq. If my pain were coupled with hatred for those I blamed. I don’t know how you would heal from such a wound.
My heart goes out to all who have lost their loved ones in this war. May God help us find a way to end it soon.