MARY LYON FROM THE LEFT: Can't We Do It For Kristian and Thomas?

by Mary Lyon -- World News Trust

I saw their faces and I cried, and I didn't even know them. I read their names and I cried, and previously I had never even heard of them. Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker. The latest victims of the increasingly nauseating nightmare in Iraq. Horribly mutilated, butchered, in fact. By now, the Senate in its infinite republi-CON "wisdom" has decided to torpedo two efforts by Democrats to get our loved ones pointed in the correct direction in Iraq -- heading OUT OF THERE. They, who sit on their fat behinds in the nice, comfortable air conditioning, as John Murtha would say, are anxious to keep on feeding the meatgrinder. And why not? They certainly won’t feel any pain. No-muss no-fuss warfare that lets them strut around like tough guys and they don’t even have to get their hands dirty. There was only one good thing about the proposal put forth by John Kerry -- it provided him with a way to reframe the debate against the Warmonger Party: "Lie and Die." This war's gone on for three years and cost us more than 25-hundred American lives, who knows how many American arms and legs, and billions of American dollars, and only now is anybody starting to use the "L" word -- LIE. What took 'em so long?

As this is written, we’ve now heard Senator Rick Santorum and his friends at the Pox "news" channel screeching and caterwauling about how they "found" the WMDs. Uh-huh. Yeah. Five hundred artillery shells -- scraps of some chemical leftovers from the old Saddam regime -- dating back BEFORE the first Gulf War. From HOW long ago? 1991? At least two presidents ago. At best, if it dated from Saddam's last days in power, that would make this stash more than three years old. If I'm not mistaken, most of these vaunted WMD stockpiles don't have much of a shelf-life when they're in whole form, much less in pieces . Sorry, Pox-folks, this ain't it. Keep looking. Maybe you'll find them farther under the rug in the Oval Office where George Bush jokingly searched in that adorable little bit for one of the recent White House Correspondents Association banquets (you know, the one before Stephen Colbert ripped them all a new one). Maybe you'll find Ann Coulter's conscience if you look hard or long enough. MAYBE. I suspect the war-lovers out there will find a small shred of heart in her long before they ever turn up any respectable hauls of WMDs as outlined by Bush in an early State of the Union speech when he first started telling those scary stories around the national campfire. Make sure you look "in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat," like Donald Rumsfeld guaranteed during an interview with George Stephanopolous at the end of March, 2003.

In the meantime, America is still being held hostage to the blood-lust of the Bush Administration and all its GOP apologists and cover-up artists on Capitol Hill. They cling to this war as drowning men cling to splinters of broken boat. What was saddest was listening to the families of the latest and best-known young victims and the way they're trying to come to terms with their loss. Their precious babies, the flower of their families, have been cruelly and hideously murdered. Two families, two different ways of processing this. The family of Kristian Menchaca voiced doubts and questions about why their boy was sent to his death. The family of Thomas Tucker, on the other hand, desperately and heartbreakingly tried to voice pride in their lost love. Theirs, I think, is the greater burden.

I can't imagine what it would be like to lose my son or daughter in this grotesque abortion in Iraq. I just can't imagine it. I don't dare even go there in my darkest “what-if” musings. It's just too stomach-turning. Knowing what I know about the war, the lies that dragged us into it, and the liars who betrayed America's trust and exploited America's fears for the sake of swaggering around in a crotch-stuffed flight-suit, I could NOT bear to think of losing a child to that. There's no way I could rationalize it. I certainly couldn't be proud. Nor would I be reassured just because one well-known guy was taken out. So what if Zarqawi's gone? I suppose that means that nobody at all will jump in to take his place and snatch his bragging rights? I suppose al-Qaeda now in Iraq (since we motivated them to move in there -- with our lovely war) won't feel like exacting revenge? What do you think the deaths of Menchaca and Tucker were? I remember back when that infamous deck of cards was all the warmongers could gush about. Oh, Bush bless us! We just nailed the Jack of Diamonds! WHOOPEE! They've always acted as though that's that. No one's ever bothered to point out that when one of these guys is taken out, there are likely dozens of incoming, eager, highly-motivated, and enraged would-be replacements. That hole in the lineup doesn't just sit there, remaining empty. How many potential Zarqawis have we now invited to the party, since we thoughtfully made room at the top for any number of upwardly-mobile and ambitious new terrorists?

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http://worldnewstrust.org/modules/AMS/article.php?storyid=3778

This is SUCH a devastating read but thank you for posting it! :hug:

Jenn

Thanks for sharing...