More evidence that Bush simply doesn’t give a crap about the gold-star families
[quote]After Neil Santorello heard the news that his son, a tank commander, had been killed in Iraq, from the officer in his living room, he walked out his front door and removed the American flag from its pole. Then, in tears, he tore down the yellow ribbons from his tree.
Rather than see it as the act of a man unmoored by the death of his 24-year-old son, the officer, an Army major, confronted Mr. Santorello, saying,
“Don’t be disrespectful,” Mr. Santorello recalled. Then, the officer, whose job it is to inform families of their loss, quickly disappeared without offering any comfort.[/quote]
A distraught man tears down the yellow ribbons because there ain’t going to be a homecoming, and this guy’s gotta lecture him? WTF?!?
[quote]Later, the Santorellos heard a piece of crushing but inaccurate news: They would not be allowed to look inside their son’s coffin. First Lt. Neil Santorello, of Verona, Pa., had been killed by an improvised bomb. His body, the family was told, was unviewable.
“The government doesn’t want you to see servicemen in a casket, but this is my son. He is not a serviceman. You have to let his mother and I say goodbye to him.”[/quote]
Of course the military doesn’t want people to open any coffins – the Bush administration only wants people to think that the thousands of our war dead are just numbers, not people.
[quote]Soldiers, in their coffins, usually arrive from Dover Air Force Base in the belly of a commercial flight. But honor guards have not always been present as the coffins come off the plane.
The Eisenhauers had hoped to take comfort in the military rituals. Instead, the airline placed Private Eisenhauer’s coffin in a cargo warehouse with crates and boxes stacked high around it. There was no ceremony, no flag over the coffin.
“I just wanted to scream,” Mrs. Eisenhauer said. “My son was owed that. He was owed that.”
When Joan Neal of Gurnee, Ill., went to the airport for the body of her son, Specialist Wesley Wells, 21, she was aghast. “To glance over and see your child’s casket on a forklift is not really the kind of thing you want to see,” Ms. Neal said.[/quote]
Of course, given the GOP leadership’s attitude toward our troops, these parents were lucky that they didn’t see the 21-loogie salute that the Bushies would otherwise be giving them. Disgusting!
Clearly the GOP is not the party that respects the men and women serving in the military. They strip the benefits, gouge the VA hospitals, and now don’t bother when the bodies of our troops come home.
