At least three more US soldiers have died since this
Christian Science Monitor editorial was published on
Friday...I send it to you because of its source..it is
not from the European press or from Madison,
WI...There are worse scenarios, for the Bush cabal
than losing in 2004. For example, suppose Bush clung
to power through the quirks of the Electoral College,
seasoned with some black box voting and some Scalia
gravy, but in disgust the US Senate and perhaps even
the House of Representatives returned to Democratic
control...Who would have subpeona power then? Who
would have the power to investigate? No, for the Bush
cabal, the options are narrowing down to declaring
marshall law or leaving town in a deal (i.e. take a
fall in the election, and we won't come after you for
your crimes against the US Consitution and the
soldiers who defend it)...
Christian Sciene Monitor editorial: The daily death
toll has become a backdrop for a policy debate that
has become maddening. This week, David Kay, the United
Nations chief weapons inspector, said the intelligence
provided President Bush and British Prime Minister
Tony Blair was "all wrong." There were no weapons of
mass destruction. There was no collaboration between
Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. The Bush administration
owes the American people and hundreds of grieving
families an explanation.
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.cmonitor.com/stories/news/opinion/editoria2004/edit013004_2004.shtml
Editorial: Iraq death toll
Friday, January 30, 2004
Monitor editorial
Names of the dead were missing from the political
debate.
While New Hampshire voters were casting their ballots,
six American soldiers died in Iraq. Four more were
wounded in a pair of suicide bombings that also
claimed the lives of an Iraqi civilian and four Iraqi
policemen. Two CNN employees covering the war were
also killed.
Lost in all the primary election campaign's talk of
the rights and wrongs of war were the names and faces
of the week's war dead.
On election day, the Department of Defense released
the names of five more America's soldiers killed in
Iraq. Three of them died on Saturday, a day the
presidential candidates spent wooing voters and
defending their votes and statements for and against
the war.
One of dead, Sgt. Randy Rosenberg, 23, was from
Berlin. Rosenberg played hockey, graduated from Berlin
High School in 1998 and married Misty, a Goffstown
girl, just 18 months ago. He wrote regular letters
from Iraq to his grandfather, William Gemitti, a
Korean war veteran and the hunting and fishing
companion of Rosenberg's youth.
In the Humvee with Rosenberg when the bomb went off
along a road near Khalidiyah, a city 60 miles west of
Baghdad, was Specialist William Sturges of Spring
City, Pa. Sturges, whose wife was serving as a medic
in a combat hospital in Iraq, was 24. The couple have
a 16-month-old son. Sturges also had a 4-year-old son
from an earlier relationship. The modern Army allows
both parents to serve overseas if it approves their
child care plans.
Killed with Rosenberg and Sturges was 22-year-old
Jason Chappell of Hemet, Calif. All three were part of
the "All American" Task Force of the 9th Calvary.
Chappell, who had a 3.8 grade-point average, was a
star member of his high school's championship academic
decathlon team. He joined the Army, a local newspaper
said, because he had not decided what to do after high
school.
Two more American soldiers were killed in a separate
bombing that Saturday, the day Sen. John Kerry skated
with Bruins hockey stars in Manchester, Wesley Clark
held a rally with Ted Danson, John Edwards met with
voters at a Laconia soda shop and Howard Dean held a
town meeting on the Seacoast.
One was Sgt. Keith Smette, 25, of Makoti, N.D., a town
of 140 people near Fargo, where his parents run the
local grain elevator. Like Rosenberg, Smette was an
athletic kid. He liked to hunt, fish and play
baseball. He left North Dakota State University with
one year to go to volunteer for duty in Iraq.
Sgt. Ken Hendrickson was the fifth man killed that
day. The 41-year-old former school custodian left for
Iraq four days after his wedding. His teenage son told
the paper in Hendrickson's hometown, Bismarck, N.D.,
that his father loved to do "animated voices as he
read his favorite books" - The Stinky Cheese Man and
The Foot Book by Dr. Zeuss. From Iraq he sent his
family photographs of the ground to prove that it was
not sand but "powdered dirt."
As of Wednesday, 519 members of the armed forces had
died since the invasion of Iraq.
The death toll, in Iraq and elsewhere, shows no signs
of abating. Yesterday, seven U.S. soldiers were killed
by an enormous explosion in Afghanistan.
The daily death toll has become a backdrop for a
policy debate that has become maddening. This week,
David Kay, the United Nations chief weapons inspector,
said the intelligence provided President Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair was "all wrong."
There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was
no collaboration between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.
The Bush administration owes the American people and
hundreds of grieving families an explanation.
Friday, January 30, 2004