"I want to know why I'm planning a funeral while George Bush is planning a wedding."

Waldorf Mother Is Furious At Soldier Daughter's Death
Many 'Don't Believe in This Mission,' She Says

By Avis Thomas-Lester and Hamil R. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, August 21, 2007; Page B01

Army Sgt. Princess C. Samuels was a girly girl.

She was a cheerleader in high school. She had a white poodle named Skylar whose ears and tail she had dyed pink. She had her Mustang custom painted pink and purple to match a Barbie car she owned as a child. She loved fashion, especially pink clothes.

Skylar and some of those pink clothes will be on hand next week when Samuels, 22, one of the latest casualties of the war in Iraq, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

A graduate of Charles H. Flowers High School in Springdale, where she was in ROTC, Samuels, of Mitchellville, was killed by enemy fire Wednesday in Taji, Iraq. She was stationed there as an intelligence officer with Headquarters and Headquarters Troop, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, according to a Defense Department statement.

"I am very upset that this has happened," Samuels's distraught mother, Anika Lawal of Waldorf, said yesterday. "I want to know why I'm planning a funeral while George Bush is planning a wedding."

Mother names her "Princess"

Mother says: "...She loved her clothes and makeup. She wanted to be a model, but I was against it. I told her to focus on her brains and to be educated."

Daughter does: "...Instead of heading to college after high school, Samuels enlisted in the Army. She told her mother she wasn't ready for college..."