...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Monday, November 17, 2003
      ( 1:32 PM )
 
"My Husband Died in Vain"

I'm full throttle on the Bush visit to London. I have been to London many times and have several very good friends there and I only wish I could be there to see the thing in person. Anyway, while he is there, Bush is tentatively planning to meet with some families of dead British soldiers. One wife doesn't plan on kissing his hand.

Lianne Seymour, whose husband, Commando
Ian Seymour, was killed in a helicopter crash
at the outbreak of the war, welcomed the
chance to meet Mr Bush. But she dismissed
his claim that the 53 Britons killed so far in
Iraq had died in a good cause. She said:
"Bush has been suggesting that he's going
to put our minds at rest. He suggests our
husbands' lives weren't lost in vain. However,
I'm going to challenge him on it.

This could turn out worse than the feared heckling from Parliament that is now being avoided. But what really gets me about this story is not that these families are prepared to give Bush a piece of their minds and a dose of the truth, what gets me is that he actually put on his schedule the plan to meet with families of the dead.

Has he done this on any sort of regular or public basis here in his own country, where his own constituents are being killed and injured in record numbers? Has he even once attended the solemn ceremony of the return of the coffins? Has he attended even one funeral or memorial service or even had a high-ranking administration official attend? Nope. The policy is to ignore the fact that dead soldiers in coffins and horrifically maimed soldiers in wheelchairs and on stretchers are pouring in every day from the war in Iraq. So while some families of killed British soldiers may get the opportunity to speak their minds to Bush this week, all the families of killed US soldiers are left to fend for themselves and pick up the pieces of their broken lives- without a word from the man who broke them.

thanks to Maru for the link.

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