Sad News from Iraq: Vigils TOMORROW

[Jace]

got this from moveon in my email inbox

I am by far no hippie, and I usually don't forward this shit on, but this one for some reason struck a nerve.....and don't go on with the political bashing and whatever, lets just think of the kids who have died in this war, and what they died for....

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In the past four days, clashes with Iraqi insurgents have claimed the lives of 17 American soldiers. With these deaths, we mark a grim milestone: over 1,000 military men and women have now died in this misconceived war.

Their caskets have been hidden from view, and the President won't visit their graves. And this morning, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld diminished their deaths by calling the toll ?relatively small.? But it is now time for us to publicly recognize the sacrifice these soldiers have made, and to demand that our leaders serve those in harm's way better in the future.

Tomorrow night at 8pm, we're joining with the Win Without War coalition to hold hundreds of candlelight vigils. Gathered together silently in towns across the country, we'll reflect on this terrible moment and honor the fallen. And by focusing attention on the dead, we'll help pressure our national leaders to get us out of this mess.

Can you host a vigil? It's a small commitment of time -- you just need to identify a good location and pull together some candles and printed materials for attendees. To sign up to host a vigil, go to:

http://action.moveon.org/vigil/newmeeting.html

If you can't host, we welcome everyone to attend a candlelight vigil tomorrow night. You can search for one near you at:

http://action.moveon.org/vigil/

865 soldiers have died since President Bush declared, "Mission Accomplished." And yesterday, top Pentagon officials told the New York Times that "insurgents controlled important parts of central Iraq and that it was unclear when American and Iraqi forces would be able to secure those areas." The attacks are increasing, the death toll is rising, and there's no exit strategy to get us out.

In the moments before the war in Iraq began, Win Without War and MoveOn members gathered in thousands of vigils around the country and the world to make a plea for peace. As of this morning, 1,003 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq -- along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and hundreds of soldiers from other countries. It is time to come together again. We'll gather with candles, representing our mourning for those who have died and our hope for those who still live.

We all support our troops. We hope that they all return safely to the waiting arms of their families and loved ones. But hiding the caskets of the dead does not honor the men and women who are in harm's way. It is time to recognize them, and tomorrow night, we will.

Can you join us? To get involved, go to:

http://action.moveon.org/vigil/

--Carrie, Joan, Lee, Marika, Noah, Peter, and Wes
The MoveOn.org Team
September 8th, 2004

P.S. We've posted an excerpt, below, from one of the many articles which capture the stories of some of the men and women who have died. You can see the pictures, names, and stories of all of the men and women who died in Iraq at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/ira...es/casualties/

Iraq war claims 1,000th U.S.casualty
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/189908_iraq08.html

[Excerpts:]

Every name in the roster deserves a story:

Caleb Powers, 21, a Marine Corps lance corporal from Mansfield who donated his time to the children's society that had cared for him as a boy.

Army Spc. Jeremiah Schmunk, 20, a fun-loving man who wore a wig and dress to school to invite a girl to a Sadie Hawkins dance in his hometown of Warden.

Army Spc. Jake Herring, a 20-year-old 180-pounder from Kirkland who was the undersized but tenacious center and co-captain of his high school football team.

John "Sully" Sullivan, a 28-year-old heavy metal "shredder" who traded guitar for weapons as a member of the Army's 101st Airborne Division.

The youngest soldiers from Washington to die in Iraq were only 19. They were: Marine Pfc. Cody Calavan of Lake Stevens; Army Pfc. Duane Longstreth from Tacoma; and Army Spc. Nathan Nakis from Sedro-Woolley.

...

A thousand dead is a terrible toll. But even the number one is a harsh statistic for families who pick up the telephone and get the news no one wants to hear.

"It's just not the same here anymore," said David Scott, a father still grieving a year after his son's death. "There's an empty spot -- and it's felt all through our house."

[piker]

As expected from propaganda from move on, it isnt entirely true... While it is true over 1000 American soliders have died in this war.. It is not true that the coffins are hidden and the President won't visit.

[Jace]

Originally posted by piker
As expected from propaganda from move on, it isnt entirely true... While it is true over 1000 American soliders have died in this war.. It is not true that the coffins are hidden and the President won't visit.

wow, thanks for turning this into a nice debate (not yet, but it will be with that remark)...instead of just recognizing they are doing a good thing and respecting that

[GatorB]

I predicted this LAST November and I was tild by Bush loving idiots that I was stupid and moron if I though 1000 would die. Now the same morons say the liberal media is making up the #'s. So I point them to the DoD site. Then they come up with non comabt deaths "don't count" WTF is that attitude? Someone's loved one's death doesn't count because he/she didn't die the right way? What kind of sick fucks are these people?

[GatorB]

Originally posted by piker
As expected from propaganda from move on, it isnt entirely true... While it is true over 1000 American soliders have died in this war.. It is not true that the coffins are hidden and the President won't visit.

So when can I expect to see these coffins on TV or a pic in my local paper?

[Jace]

Originally posted by piker
As expected from propaganda from move on, it isnt entirely true... While it is true over 1000 American soliders have died in this war.. It is not true that the coffins are hidden and the President won't visit.

this was an article written on various news sources, i just grabbed it from one

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/20...?oneclick=true

War is now televised as never before, but one ritual has disappeared from the screens of America - by order of the Pentagon.

The fighting in Iraq is real. But one aspect of war Americans now see only in the movies: the solemn homecoming for the dead.

There was a time when this nation paused as TV cameras panned over rows of coffins flown home from battle; when it was impossible not to share the sorrow of the families there to receive them; and when there was a genuine sense of shared pain when the president or senior members of his team attended memorial services.

But George Bush has fenced himself and his team off from the cemetery, and there is a ban on cameramen entering the central military morgue at Dover, in Delaware, where those killed in Iraq are received. It is difficult for photographers to get past security at the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre, in Washington, DC, where thousands of the wounded have been treated.

So the American dead and injured from Iraq pass through a politically imposed void, until their coffin, stretcher or wheelchair arrives in the back blocks of Idaho or Texas, by which time they have long ceased to be a prime-time or national story. Usually it is only their family and friends who witness the handing over of the triangulated Stars and Stripes to grieving spouses or parents.


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It wasn't like this during the Vietnam War. Even during the Afghanistan war, flag-draped coffins were filmed, and during the Kosovo conflict president Bill Clinton was on the tarmac to receive US dead.

The repatriation of the bodies of American servicemen who died in the bombing of the USS Cole was a national story - with images - and presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, respectively, attended services for the 241 US Marines killed in Beirut and the troops killed in the failed hostage rescue in Tehran.

But it was during the Panama conflict, in 1989, that the first president George Bush dropped his media guard.

At the precise moment that servicemen's caskets were being offloaded at Dover, Mr Bush did a goof-walk for the cameras of the White House press corps, to demonstrate the effect of pain he suffered in his neck.

At least three of the national networks split their screens, showing viewers an apparently thoughtless commander-in-chief acting the fool as the bodies of the men he had sent to war were borne from a military transport.

Retribution was swift. The media was banned from Dover and the traditional repatriation ceremonies were ended. Over time the ban came to be ignored, but in the days before this year's Iraq war the Pentagon ordered that it was to be observed in full.

The Bush team's media manipulation borders on the paranoid. It goes to great lengths to set the scene - carting specially produced backdrops around the country for his public appearances and even floodlighting the Statue of Liberty for one of his night-time New York speeches.

The words get the same care and attention - death in Iraq is bad news, so he doesn't talk about it. He has met some of the families of the dead in private and they all get a letter of condolence, but he is happier talking about the grand scheme of the war on terror, or better still the economy.

Some Republican commentators are beginning to question the president's aloofness. But the spin from the White House, as told by one of his aides to The New York Times, is that Mr Bush would seem insensitive if he publicly acknowledged some but not all of the deaths.

Asked about the remarkable presidential silence that greeted the death of 15 servicemen in the downing of a Chinook helicopter in Iraq early this month, Dan Bartlett, his communications director, dissembled: "If a helicopter were hit an hour later, after he came out and spoke, should he come out again?

"(The public) wants the Commander-in-Chief to have a proper perspective and to keep his eye on the big picture and on the ball.

"At the same time, they want their President to understand the hardship and sacrifice that many Americans are enduring at a time of war. And we believe he is striking that balance."

It is all part of the Administration's continuing war with the media - when it is not denying them access to Dover, it is attacking them for not reporting the "good news" out of Iraq; denying reports of its own cavalier pre-war predictions of finding Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and of a warm welcome in Iraq; and rejecting allegations from within the intelligence community that, after Iraq, it is now deliberately exaggerating the WMD threat posed by Syria, Libya and Cuba.

But there is a question of how long this media management can be sustained. Increasingly, the disquiet is not just about the President's refusal to acknowledge the dead or to attend their funerals, but about the things he does find time to do instead.

While families and whole communities grieve over losses in Iraq, Mr Bush circuits the country with his hand out for tens of millions of dollars in donations for his forthcoming re-election campaign.

While he talks about the war dead in only the most general terms, he goes on and on about signs of economic recovery.

He avoids the photo-op with the mothers of the dead from Iraq, but had time in his busy schedule on Thursday to wheel three judicial nominees into the Oval Office as a backdrop for his gripes about the Democrats blocking their appointments to the bench. The pragmatism - some might call it cynicism - is understandable in terms of pure strategy because, despite all the talk about patriotism and the defence of freedom, Americans are getting sick of this war.

For the first time since the opening attack on Baghdad on March 20, a majority of Americans - 51 per cent - disapprove of the President's handling of the war.

In a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken before the Chinook helicopter was downed, 87 per cent of respondents feared the US would be bogged down in Iraq, and 62 per cent rated the death toll as unacceptable.

And with the passing of each week, the war touches thousands more American families in the most direct way. The Pentagon talks of a 20 per cent reduction in total US troops in Iraq by next northern spring, but in the past two weeks 85,000 men and women of the army and marines were told they would be going to Iraq so others could be rotated home.

That's 85,000 new pools of worry and anxiety to feed into the next batch of opinion polls.

[GatorB]

Originally posted by JaceXXX
this was an article written on various news sources, i just grabbed it from one

Peole that love the taste of Bush's cock will find any excuse to not hear the truth. Bush could smash kittens heads on TV with a hammer and these Bush fags would justify it.

[dready]

Originally posted by piker
As expected from propaganda from move on, it isnt entirely true... While it is true over 1000 American soliders have died in this war.. It is not true that the coffins are hidden and the President won't visit.

Nice one troll.

[mardigras]

Yes it is true that the pentagon ordered restriction of filming incoming coffins, but that is only to respect the families of the deceased, they said so.

Maybe during the tributing of the 1000 US dead tomorrow, they'll take a second to remember the 10,000+ Iraqi citizens who got in the way.

[mardigras]

Originally posted by GatorB
So when can I expect to see these coffins on TV or a pic in my local paper?

Perhaps when this http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp...nguage=printer is reversed.

[tony286]

Originally posted by GatorB
Peole that love the taste of Bush's cock will find any excuse to not hear the truth. Bush could smash kittens heads on TV with a hammer and these Bush fags would justify it.

You are so right

[Peaches]

Originally posted by mardigras
Yes it is true that the pentagon ordered restriction of filming incoming coffins, but that is only to respect the families of the deceased, they said so.

I know if my son was killed there I wouldn't want views of his casket as a media event. That's a private thing for most families and those who wish to make it public can choose to invite the media to the funeral and show the casket(s) as much as they want.

[mardigras]

Originally posted by Peaches
I know if my son was killed there I wouldn't want views of his casket as a media event. That's a private thing for most families and those who wish to make it public can choose to invite the media to the funeral and show the casket(s) as much as they want.

The coffins are all identical. There are no name tags showing and they are all draped with identical flags. There is no way to tell any individual coffin from another in photographs. But photographs of so many flag-draped coffins reduce support for war. They learned that lesson from Viet Nam.