Then I wrote this:
Then it becomes not about the Democrats or the Republicans, about a particular pol I like or one I don't. It's about those kids I saw at my son's graduation last June, those three kids who stepped forward to received their acknowledgement from the US Marines that they were accepted and were going to boot camp in the summer. Everyone in that high school graduation crowd understood, these 18 and 19 year olds were going to be in Iraq before the end of the year.
Sometimes, just sometimes, Iraq makes me cry. I think of one of those young inductees and how their enlistment was cancelled because their older brother was killed in Anbar Province in Iraq in May and the mother didn't want her only surviving son to also possibly die in Iraq. I think of the young girl who was smiling as she took her Marine letter and her brother who lost a leg in Fallujah.
George Bush and the Republican Party in Congress do not deserve the service of our young. They do not deserve the trust of parents who let their kids join the military. They do not deserve the support of the American people.
$500 Billion dollars, 104 Amrican soldiers dead in October alone, thousands and thousands of wounded and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, and the GOP wants to focus on a botched joke. Pardon me for a second as I cry. This is not from defeat, not from sorrow for any one Dem pol, it's sorrow for those two kids I saw graduate this summer and the lack of support and the lack of plan to back up what they are doing in Iraq. I cry for their families. I cry because George Bush doesn't deserve this. He is an utter failure and he doesn't care about these people.
Every so often, Iraq hurts more than I can bear. Then I remember those kids and I remember I have to bear it, because those kids need someone to speak for them. So you dry the tears and you fight again.
Dear Lord in heaven! No wonder the morally bankrupt Right Wing wants to talk about gaffes and fake outrage about who supports or doesn't support the troops.
Guys, just a hug today. Reality slaps hurt. They make me cry.