Nearly 4,100 US service people dead
25,000 seriously wounded
2,000,000 refugee Iraqis
God only knows how many Iraqi dead
Trillions and trillions of US dollars squandered
For what????
Lies, lies, and more lies told to us by our government.
I continue to weep for my country.
Vote Democrat this fall.

Don't forget the American soldier suicides.

GOD BLESS AMERICA....OUR MEN AND WOMEN

That is heart breaking.

Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

With all the despicable moves of the Bush administration, it's hard to pick out the low point. Many would say lying a nation into a war has to be it. You could claim that part of the bargain we make with these soldiers is to use them to defend the United States and that clearly didn't happen here. But I think the low point is a little bit of spin the White House put out - just another drop in an ocean of BS. Bush administration officials were asked why pictures such as this one of caskets returning from Iraq were not allowed. Clearly, the reason is that the White House was hoping to keep the American People from thinking about the true cost of the war. These officials such as Dick Cheney had gone to a lot of trouble marketing this disaster and they didn't want the PR campaign damaged by the reality of what was going on. But they didn't say that. No, the White House reason - dutifully reported by the fawning press - was that showing these pictures was an invasion of the dead soldiers' privacy. Ignore the obvious illogical part, of how a group shot of flag-draped coffins could hurt the individuals inside. This was just another White House lie. I thought it was the low point of the entire Bush administration that even after these soldiers had given the full measure of devotion, Bush and his team were still spinning them. Even in death.

I'm reminded of a bumpersticker that read:

___I SUPPORT our troops;___
___I FEAR our administration.___

...ora et labora...

-ob-

Am I only one who thinks the pic looks photo-shopped? The people in windows look slightly out of perspective...too much detail for what you would really see from outside a plane.
Something seems contrived and fake about the pic.

"Something seems contrived and fake about the pic." Unfortunately it's not contrived or fake. It was probably taken with a high powered telephoto lens by a professional photographer, so the resulting photo wouldn't necessarily correspond with what you would see with the naked eye. In otherwords the Earth isn't flat just because it looks that way.

"...when a chaplain once tried to silence a mother who cursed the president, Major Beck corrected the clergyman. “The best way to handle that situation,” he says, “is not to tell someone what they can or cannot do in their own home.”

Priceless. Couldn't have said it better myself.

Thank you for posting that. I wish I had the strength to read that book, but I don't think I could bear it.

dm: I think you're overthinking it.

You don't realy get the full sense of the absurd beauty of these funerals until you attend several of them. I recommend it. Dam the people that have done this to our country and my family. Why can't we learn?

The picture of the plane is as I remember things looking. Travis was schedule to arrive at PDX around 3:30 on a sunny afternoon. I got a call not to head to the airport that early because he was put on another plane that would't arrive before dark...go figure.

I attended 3 funerals for soldiers killed in this: Brandon Scott Tobler,
Travis John Bradach-Nall, and Bob William Roberts. My thought after the first one was if we could have done anything else to avoid just this one scene, we should have.
It was also very disturbing that the pictures and video presentations invariably focused on these young men in high school or back to being little kids. They were so young, there weren't many adult pictures to draw from.

I don't know if the photo is photo-enhanced. But I feel for the soldier and the family.

Jack, I wish I could write as well as you. I don't have a photo of this event, but my best friend's son served four tours in the middle east and three in Iraq with the Marines as a snipper in the front lines. He held the dying body of his best friend after a shot in the head. He went to the ranch of the family in Wyoming and told the story of how their son died. The family and my friend's son still believe in the mission they were serving.

There are other stories besides the one you may convey, or others can imagine, in the attached photo. Dying soldiers images give other emotions beyond what I think you express.

My friend's son, who is like a god son to me, is now preparing to go back to Iraq again. He can barely express his reasons, but I can imagine. And I don't want to judge.

That picture is completely photo-shopped.

When Bush said that maybe these families don't want to see pictures of him golfing, that it would send the wrong message, I think he was right.

It wouldn't matter if it was photo-shopped. The picture conveys nicely the spectacle of your average American encountering a flagged draped coffin.
The people coming off the plane when my nephew came home did not know that there was a dead Marine among their baggage.
We weren't allowed on the tarmac because of the increased security after 9/11 so a huge crowd formed at the windows behind our family at the gate.
A middle aged woman push in between me and my nephew Danny and asked what was going on out there? Danny deadpaned that "the circus plane had just crashed and the animals were all loose and running around on the runways".
You know what? stranger than fiction that woman's stepson was killed in Iraq about four months later...that's all I got to say about that.

Vote Democrat this fall.

Do you honestly think that will make a difference?

They're all liars.

dm and stew: I find the paranoia over photo-shopping bizarre in the extreme. It sounds unhinged and strikes me as a bit disrespectful.

James Bradach and Jerry: thanks for sharing.

Jon, and you somehow think voting Republican will make things all better? Just curious.

My dad came home the same way in June of 1967. Other than the color of the uniforms of the men accompanying the casket, it looked the same back then.

deeds: good grief, did I even comment on content of article, good or bad?
All I said was the photo looked staged and 'off'. As in surreal. Not natural. The people in windows look pasted in. Perhaps in this day and age of technology journalists maybe, might, would be inclined to 'enhanced' pics that are supposed to be depicting real life. Not a good thing.
Gee, sorry for getting everyone riled up.
What is this...Willamette Week comments where everyone piles on?
Geez.

No. It's the Village Voice.

U.S. Soldiers' Deaths: Don't Look, Don't Tell, posted: May 4, 2005, by Harkavy -- The coverup of Pat Tillman's death was even worse than we thought
[ censored photo in this position at the link ]
And as more and more facts and photos emerge, the lies and bullsh!t of the Pentagon come into sharper focus.

The Washington Post, ... about Tillman's unnecessary death, is now reporting that the Pentagon hid the truth from his family until weeks after the Bush regime had milked the tragedy for all the p.r. it could get.

Or, read all about Oregon's dead at Oregonlive, (except the part where the heroism of Donald Walters, KIA, was deliberately falsely ascribed to Jessica Lynch for the exploitative PR of female blondeness). After Long Wait, Salem Family Told Soldier Died, Published Apr. 6 2003
Norm and Arlene Walters spent 13 days searching war coverage for news of their son's fate, repressing a sickening fear that Army Sgt. Donald Walters had died in the Iraqi desert.

The Salem couple felt a brief jolt of elation when soldiers rescued Donald Walters' comrade, Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, from an Iraqi hospital. They clutched at the possibility those same special operations forces would return their boy, too, and tried not to think about the nine bodies discovered with Lynch.

Army Sgt. Matthew Rose, who also is from Salem, said three trucks made it across the bridge. But soldiers in the rest of the group fought their attackers for an hour, he told his wife, until Marines staged a rescue. Authorities reported early on that two soldiers from the 507th died in the ambush, and five were captured, but that eight were missing. When Lynch was rescued, the bodies of nine U.S. soldiers were found. Rose told his wife, Debbie Rose, he did not see what happened to Donald Walters.

"On the one hand it will bring closure for the families and unit to know what is going on and not have to wonder what they're going through," [Debbie] Rose said. "It's just heartbreaking to know that now, there are little children growing up without their fathers and mother."

Yet.
Oregonlive.COM/special/oregonian/iraq/index.ssf?/special/oregonian/iraq/or040528.html

May 28, 2004
U.S. Army Sgt. Donald Walters, a former Salem man thought to have been killed in combat, actually was captured ... the military announced Thursday.

For months, actions now thought to have been Walters' were attributed to Lynch. The media inflated Lynch's myth by repeating distorted battlefield reports of a blond soldier returning enemy fire before being overwhelmed. The reality was that Lynch was gravely injured in a vehicle crash and never fired her weapon.

The revelation comes as the Pentagon and Bush administration are under enormous pressure for the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Rep. Darlene Hooley, D-Ore., who has pressed the Army for more than a year for clearer answers about how Donald Walters died, said she didn't know whether Thursday's announcement was timed to relieve that pressure. Although military officials briefed Hooley's staff earlier this week, along with Walters' parents, Hooley said her office was not given any documentation of the Army's findings.