Families seek answers about soldiers’ deaths (Army Times)

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=0-ARMYPAPER-2152000.php

At least one family, and possibly two, want independent opinions on what caused the deaths of their loved ones after they became ill in Iraq.
In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Bellville, Texas, family of Army Spc. Zeferino Colunga requested medical records, personal effects and blood and tissue samples of the 20-year-old soldier.

Colunga, of the 4th Squadron, 2nd Armored Calvary Regiment, died Aug. 6 at Homburg Hospital in Germany, after he fell ill in Iraq. The family was told he had pneumonia and acute leukemia, his 19-year-old sister, Teresa Colunga, said.

“We gave the military my brother alive,” she said. “They gave him back to us dead. I want to find out what happened.”

--snip--

“We as a family are concerned that we are not being told the truth,” the letter states. The family wants “immediate access” to all personal effects and property, medical records, medical evacuation reports, staff journal reports, disease and nonbattle injury reports, pre-deployment screening reports, predeployment serum and blood, postmortem tissue and blood samples, postmortem medical reports, cause-of-death reports, epidemiological survey reports, endemic disease reports, vaccine injury reports and any other similar reports “that will assist us in understanding the cause of death.”

If they had been, these soldiers might still be alive today.

Don

I don't see the point of blaming the parents for their child's death when all they want is to determine what killed him. The evasiveness of the US government is making them realize the dishonesty they are up against. Sometimes it takes personal, and in this case traumatic, experience to bring reality into focus. At least they're not frightened off by the "big boys." Inaction in the face of obvious government coverup would only lead to more casualties and deaths.

Nobody wants to increase the burden of these parents, who are suffering horribly.

But we shouldn't sentimentalize this tragedy by ignoring that it has sprung from the habits of laziness--obedience to power and ignorance of world affairs--as well as from the vicious desire stoked by our media to make somebody, somewhere pay for 9/11. If America is going to recover from its post-9/11 intellectual and moral torpor, these habits must be broken. We can start by pointing them out.

They might have been poor, and considering they're from Texas, they probably are.

Jessica Lynch's family can't even speak standard English. They are your typical, lower middle class blue-collar American family working their asses off to stay afloat. Their life choices don't sprout from "laziness," but a series of other factors related to socioeconomic background and opportunity, family expectations, cultural mores, geography, and the like.

Folding our arms and saying "I told you so" isn't very productive, in my opinion. We need to work to improve economic conditions for the bulk of our population, a daunting task considering the recent Army Times piece that quoted Congressman Clyburn as saying that 1% of the richest folk in the US own 40% of its wealth. With those stats, the GOP is guaranteeing itself fresh young naive uneducated and poor enlistees by the droves, and more wars to use them in.

Former supporters of Bush are now criticizing him, as they should be. Criticizing them is like spitting on the Vietnam vet who comes back with a new attitude.

Shrub co. cannot send young able-bodied American soldiers to their deaths so that we as a nation can "dominate" a "region" and gain big profits for companies with non bid Re Building Contracts and oil interests.
.
To the CEO's of Halliburton, Kellog Brown and Root--I hope your newfound profits for your companies cause each of you individually as much misery and suffering as you have caused this world.
May your money be your ruin.

Light another candle for one more soldier who lost his life for no good reason.