"After he died, a letter was found on his laptop computer....."

One of those fallen heroes is a Marine corporal named Jeff Starr (ph) who was killed fighting the terrorists in Ramadi earlier this year. After he died, a letter was found on his laptop computer. Here's what he wrote.

He said, "If you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq. I don't regret going. Everybody dies but a few get to do it for something as important as freedom.

"It may seem confusing why we're in Iraq; it's not to me. I'm here helping these people so they can live the way we live, not to have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators. Others have died for my freedom; now this is my mark."
====

"If you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq." Gee, it's almost obscene to use this guy's "letter" but maybe that's just me.

utter BS

If it's real, it's an invasion of privacy to broadcast it like this.

If it's real.

But before Bush "took" the White House, I was a much more innocent person. I was nicer, too!

remember them buying their lies onto iraqi newspapers?

tell me why you would believe this then.

I don't know whether I believe it or not, but it is plausible that a soldier would write those kinds of words. Finding them on the lap top is, perhaps, a bit conveienent.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

I mean honestly. Kudos to the guy for serving, and I feel for his family, but who cares what he thinks? Since when did the justification for WAR come down to what the troops thought? If the majority of the members of the military think it's right to do something, does therefore it become right? If the majority of the members of the military say we're doing it for reason A, actually make it so?

This isn't a military dictatorship. It's up to the PEOPLE to determine how our military is used.

I rather doubt it did. I find it obscene as well. It's worse than waving the bloody shirt...they might as well have dug the kid up and paraded him about.

Enough of this fucking 'sacrifice.' If we are gonna burn bulls on the altar, let's burn a few of the BULLshitters who are so damn happy to send other people's kids off to die.

country, my first impression after reading that was, "this is bullshit".

On edit: apparently, I'm not alone.

would they put that on the airwaves?

No

It's propaganda, they even refuse to acknowledge the outrage expressed by the Tillman family.

He very private Tillmans have revealed a picture of Pat profoundly at odds with the GI Joe image created by Pentagon spinmeisters and their media stenographers. As the Chronicle put it, family and friends are now unveiling "a side of Pat Tillman not widely known--a fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty. He was an avid reader whose interests ranged from history books...to works of leftist Noam Chomsky, a favorite author." Tillman had very unembedded feelings about the Iraq War. His close friend Army Spec. Russell Baer remembered, "I can see it like a movie screen. We were outside of watching as bombs were dropping on the town.... We were talking. And Pat said, 'You know, this war is so f***ing illegal.' And we all said, 'Yeah.' That's who he was. He totally was against Bush." With these revelations, Pat Tillman the PR icon joins WMD and Al Qaeda connections on the heap of lies used to sell the Iraq War.


Tillman's transition from one-dimensional caricature to critically thinking human being is a long time coming. The fact is that in death he was far more useful to the armchair warriors than he had ever been in life. When the Pro Bowler joined the Army Rangers, the Pentagon brass needed a loofah to wipe their drool: He was white, handsome and played in the NFL. For a chicken-hawk Administration led by a President who loves the affectations of machismo but runs from protesting military moms, this testosterone cocktail was impossible to resist. The problem was that Tillman wouldn't play their game. To the Pentagon's chagrin, he turned down numerous offers to be its recruitment poster child.


"War hero and football star dies fighting terror." The Abu Ghraib scandal was about to hit the press, so the President found it especially useful to praise Tillman as "an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror." His funeral was nationally televised. Bush even went back to the bloody well during the presidential campaign, addressing his team's fans on the Arizona Cardinals' stadium Jumbotron.

We now know, of course, that this was all a brutal charade. Such callous manipulation is fueling the Tillman family's anger. As Mary Tillman said this past May, "They could have told us up front that they were suspicious that was a fratricide, but they didn't. They wanted to use him for their purposes.... They needed something that looked good, and it was appalling that they would use him like that." A growing number of military families, similarly angered, are criticizing the war in Iraq through organizations like Military Families Speak Out.


As for Chomsky, Mary Tillman says a private meeting was planned between him and Pat after Pat's return--a meeting that never took place, of course. Chomsky confirms this scenario. This was the real Pat Tillman: someone who, like the majority of this country, was doubting the rationale for war, distrusting his Commander in Chief and looking for answers.


www.commondreams.org/views05/1007-22.htm

And, besides, there's your tagline.

Hear that, College Republican cowards?

"Everybody dies, but few get to do it for something as important as freedom"

So get off your asses and enlist.


By the way, I wish I could say that this soldier died protecting freedom. But he did not. He died because he was used like a pawn by the administration so they could tighten their grip on the nation, distract the public from their looting, and hide behind an American flag during elections.

That's why this soldier died.

the college rethugs, ComerPerro!

I will be perpetuating it, thanks.

And he died because the neocons thought they could get their grimey hands on Iraqi oil..how's that working out for them?

from the article:

"They offered him a $25,000 bonus to re-enlist. They liked him; he was a good Marine. But he said, 'No, send me back to Iraq because I don't want to reup,' " she recalled.

Apparently he wasn't so pro-Iraq War that he wanted to reenlist and go back to Iraq and fight for their freedom again and again and again and again... Some are on their 3rd deployment to that hell hole!

"His enlistment would have been up this August. "A year ago they said if he would re-enlist, he wouldn't have to redeploy with his unit (to Iraq in February 2005)," she said.
"They offered him a $25,000 bonus to re-enlist. They liked him; he was a good Marine. But he said, 'No, send me back to Iraq because I don't want to reup,' " she recalled.
"He wanted to start the next part of his life.""

http://www.pigstye.net/iraq/article.php/StarrJeff

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/238901_wardead01.html

Brit Hume---"Illustrious of something"

Wasn't Hume also the one who ghoulishly referred on air to some loss of life as "a great investment opportunity?"

and oil prices

but I remembered the odious comment....Thanks!

He actually said "time to buy" on the air. I don't remember what he was buying, but it doesn't really matter. He's a sick fuck. If he could have purchased the United Airlines "put options" after the WTC attacks, he probably would have done so.

And then blamed it on Clinton's penis. Like he did his kid's death. Twit Hume is a sick, bitter man.

How could anyone have fallen for that? CORPORAL Starr writes in a style strikingly similar to that of the White House speech writer, don't you think?

And how was this letter found? And how did it make it's way to Bush? ASK QUESTIONS! If we've learned nothing else over the last five years, it's that if BushCo portrays something as a heroic act by a soldier, it's virtually gauranteed to be a total sham created by his Special Deception Team.

I'd bet serious money on the fact that there is absolutely no such letter in existence from any Corporal Starr. Let's ask Private Lynch or Pat Tillman. Oops...can't ask Pat.

I wonder when this happened.

O8)

Of course, it's a tragedy this guy died. Many will see our cynicism as "not supporting the troops", but as another poster said, it's sad that this administration has led us to question things like this.

sure I read that recently. Since FR is the only RW site I visit it must have been there.

:argh:

Guess that is slightly better than just getting sent and catching an RPG for a cause you know in your heart is bullshit.

"But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behindthem, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection. "

bush propoganda to try and "stay the course"(that's not working).

The political (and economic) exploitation of the dead is a particularly Repugnant practice.

This criminals are masters in the "art of illusion."

to raygun with the "necrophilia" Extravaganza.

The first report of it in the NYT was none too positive; the family spoke up, and said that the NYT's snippet was negative, while the letter wasn't, *that* was obscene. Once the obscenity's out of the bag, it's out.

It bounced around in the media and the blogs a few weeks ago. Hence it caught the speechwriter's (speechwriters'?) attention.

Here's a hook: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9925624/

If my son died in Iraq, would they ship the laptop back to me? Would I then comb through every document only to discover this "letter"? It reads like a suicide note: "If you are reading this, I am dead"...what would trigger the file to cause its discovery? Was it named openifidie.doc?

Questions :)

A Marine's Last Words

Herald Net | September 19, 2005

SNOHOMISH - Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Starr's last letter arrived home more than two months after his flag-draped casket.

It came unexpectedly, weeks after his parents had placed his dusty, worn combat boots on the fireplace ledge.

It arrived weeks after two U.S. Marines stood in uniform on his parents' porch, bringing the worst possible news.

Brian Starr discovered the letter on his 22-year-old son's computer, which had been stored with his other belongings near Camp Pendleton, Calif., awaiting the soldier's return from Iraq.

Brian Starr had to fiddle with the computer to get it to work. When the screen finally flickered on, he saw an icon labeled "LetterHome." Jeffrey Starr had written the letter in November 2004 to his girlfriend, Emmylyn Anonical, 22. It read:
>snip<
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,77279,00.html?ESRC=marine.nl

I recently had a health crisis with some concern I might not survive. I thought about what would happen after I die. My dad or siblings or anyone nosing through my 'puter was not a scenario that came to mind. I doubt people do such things. And if they do, would they send such a letter to the Prez, or just keep it as a remembrance?

Just doesn't ring true.

I'm sorry, but this whole scenerio just strikes me as total bullshit. How do they have "trouble getting the dusty computer to start?" Did they have to jump-start it? Was the battery dead -- if so, how did it suddenly flicker to life?

All of this sounds like contrived bullshit written by some dickweed "information officer" who thought "Sure, this sounds reasonable enough," without thinking through any of it.

in an article that portrayed it in none too 'patriotic' a light. It wasn't first sent to the prez, it was apparently read to a reporter doing a "so, how does it feel to have lost your son in Iraq?" story. It raised no doubts as long as the only quotes expressed foreboding. And when the parents said that's *not* how the quote sounded in context, the author of the original article had no complaint, but just said, Yes, we selectively quoted. There it sat for a few weeks, a bit of trivia in Lexis-Nexus.

I think going through my wife's laptop is precisely what I'd do if she were away for months and died, esp. if we weren't in close communication. Any letters she wrote or e-mails she queued would be on the computer, with any fiction she was working on, schedules, papers. It's hard to let go. It's different than going through all her stuff, but similar in a way: you don't want to throw away anything that might be important.

I imagine that if I were still single and croaked my parents or executor would just find my will, bury my corpse, and chuck everything else that's not valuable and not covered by my will. Then again, I left home 25 years ago.

and believe that he is incapable of speaking truthfully. This sure reads like it was prepped by a staffer. Of course its ok to read his laptop, but we can't see his flag draped coffin arrive home.

..appear in a Military recruiting brochure, doesn't it?

that trumps all else?

that letter trumps lies told to the american people for going to war?

that letter trumps any reason to bring the troops home?

that letter trumps abu ghraib?

that letter trumps not finding osama?

that letter trumps human rights abuses at guatanamo?

that letter trumps the now growing and future power that moqtada al'sadr is going to hold?

Please.

IF it's real (which I doubt--but who knows, it's possible), I'm glad he didn't feel that if he died it would be in vain.

And frankly, IF it's real, he probably wouldn't have objected to its being used as propaganda, just like I would guess that soldiers who have spoken out against the war and later died probably wouldn't object to their anti-war sentiments being publicized after their deaths.

If it's fake, making up something like this is beyond obscene. If it's real, I don't actually have any problems with it. The guy was prepared to lay down his life for something he believed in--that's a lot more than the chickenhawks are prepared to do. If it's real, he was noble but lied to and misled.... :cry: ; that's extra sad.

delete

Yes, the * government has been claiming that they have seized a "laptop" which details Iran's nuclear ambitions, and that this is "evidence" which supports our plans to go to war with Iran. I'm not kidding!

He said, "If you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq. I don't regret going. Everybody dies but a few get to do it for something as important as freedom... I wasn't one of those few... I wish I had died for such a noble thing, but actually I died so that rich men could make more money."