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Banned
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The "thug in chief" is again setting records for the amount of vacation time that he has been so.....busy racking up....before....and since.....9/11....while he orders other people's children....to their deaths.....
Quote:
http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/ind...070.xml&coll=2
We die along with these kids'
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Connie Schultz
Plain Dealer Columnist
As Jeanette Schroeder rounded the corner
of her front yard with the lawn mower, she spotted two Marines standing at her brother Paul Schroeder's front door Wednesday.
Immediately, she knew............
http://www.cleveland.com/schultz/ind...l=2&thispage=2
We die along with these kids'
Page 2 of 5
It was the same battalion that lost five Marines on Monday.
It was the same battalion in which her nephew, Augie, served.
Jeanette just knew.
She nodded when they asked if she knew the family next door in her Cleveland neighborhood.
"He's my brother," she said. "They probably didn't hear the doorbell."
She was sure her brother and his wife, Rosemary Palmer, were upstairs, hovering over their computer as they frantically searched the Internet for any news about the latest group of Marines who had been killed in Iraq.
Earlier that morning, Rosemary had given Jeanette a printout quoting skeletal news reports about the attack on Marines in Haditha. After reading it, Jeanette had a bad feeling. She prayed all the way to her doctor's appointment. She prayed on her drive to the grocery store, too, and all the way home.
Please, God, not Augie.
Now, about 10:30 a.m., two Marines were standing in her yard, asking to speak to Augie's parents.
Aunt Nettie - that's what Augie always called her - offered to run into her house to call his parents
"No," one of the Marines said gently. "We have to talk to them in person."
Jeanette ran through Paul's back door and started to scream.
"Paul! Paul! Get down here. Just get down here now!"
Paul and Rosemary saw the grim faces on the men at their door and they knew, too. They stood motionless as one of the Marines began to speak.
"We regret to inform you that Edward August Schroeder II . . ."
And they knew.
Two weeks ago, Augie had called home from Iraq after spending 26 days in the field. They had not heard from him for five weeks, and their son's voice seemed to reflect a change in his convictions about this war.
"When he first arrived in Iraq in March, he was full of optimism about what his good intentions could accomplish," Paul said.
But Augie's enthusiasm eroded over time, and his father said he will never forget what his son told him.
"The closer we are to departure, the less 'worth it' this has become," Augie said.
We die along with these kids'
Page 5 of 5
"I hope people forgive me for what I have to say," he began. "I just don't care anymore."
He listed who he blamed for Augie's death.
"I hold the Bush administration responsible, from the president through the secretaries of state and defense and all those who have had a hand in starting this war.
"I also hold every Democrat in Congress who voted to authorize this misadventure as accomplices."
His son, he wrote, "died doing his duty. So have some 1,800 other Americans.
"Augie did his duty at every turn, from being an emergency medical technician while still in high school, a lifeguard, a Boy Scout, an active church member, and, of course, as a Marine. For all this, we consider him a hero.
"To honor him, I no longer can sit still, just keeping quiet and being politically correct."
In her own way, Augie's mother also issued a statement. She made the call at 8:18 Wednesday morning, about two hours before she learned that Augie was dead.
Rosemary had sobbed the day Augie enlisted. She had begged him not to go to Iraq. On Wednesday, hers was the desperate plea of a mother trying to find out if her son was still alive.
She left this phone message for Plain Dealer reporter Brian Albrecht, who has steadfastly chronicled the war's impact here:
"This is Rosemary Palmer," she said. "I'm the mother of one of the many Marines who are deployed right now. My son is currently in Haditha and we just heard the news story this morning that 14 Marines in Haditha were killed.
"We are all obviously going nuts . . . I know you can't give out the names of people who haven't been notified, but if you have those names of the ones who have died, if you could let us know as soon as possible, I would really appreciate it - because we die along with these kids . . ."
Her voice broke.
She recited her number.
Then she hung up the phone.
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The war president is on vacation.....again.....while other Americans pay the ultimate price....on his orders....and his lieutenants strive mightily to "stay on message"....while their "commander" twists the facts...and other people's kids.....1800 of them now......continue to die. Will 58,000 Americans again have to die to convince enough of us to end the madness....the lies....this time ?
Quote:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/08/04/news/bush.php
GRAPEVINE, Texas President George W. Bush has publicly overruled some of his top advisers in a debate about what to call the conflict with Islamic extremists, saying, "Make no mistake about it, we are at war."
In a speech on Wednesday, Bush used the phrase "war on terror" no less than five times......
............"We're at war with an enemy that attacked us on September the 11th, 2001," Bush said in his address, to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group of state legislators. "We're at war against an enemy that, since that day, has continued to kill."
Bush made a nod to the criticism that "war on terror" is a misleading phrase in the sense that the enemy is not terror but those who use terrorism to achieve their goals. But in doing so, he used the word "war," as he did at least 13 other times in his 47-minute speech.
"Make no mistake about it, this is a war against people who profess an ideology, and they use terror as a means to achieve their objectives," he said.
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an address to the National Press Club on July 18 that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution."
Myers said then that the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use."
After Bush's speech, the White House tried to hammer home the point that the "war" phraseology was still administration policy. It sent reporters excerpts from an address delivered Tuesday by Rumsfeld in which he backed away from the new language.
"Some ask, are we still engaged in a war on terror?" Rumsfeld said. "Let there be no mistake about it. It's a war. The president properly termed it that after Sept. 11. The only way to defend against terrorism is to go on the attack."
Bush is spending the rest of August at his vacation home in Texas.
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