Small U.S. towns bear scars from Iraq

[rodeodance]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070219/ap_on_re_us/iraq_small_town_burden_1;_ylt=ArQqLw5skuGyZp6bEp.lsuOGOrgF

Small U.S. towns bear scars from Iraq

By KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press Writer 20 minutes ago

MCKEESPORT, Pa. - Edward "Willie" Carman wanted a ticket out of town, and the Army provided it. Raised in the projects by a single mother in this blighted, old industrial steel town outside Pittsburgh, the 18-year-old saw the U.S. military as an opportunity.

............

When Carman died in Iraq three years ago at age 27, he had money saved for college, a fiancee and two kids — including a baby son he'd never met. Neighbors in Hawthorne's mobile home park collected $400 and left it in an envelope in her door.

For a year after his death, Hawthorne took a chair to the cemetery nearly every day, sat next to his grave and talked quietly. Her vigil continues even now; the visits have slowed to once a week, but the pain sticks.

Across the nation, small towns are quietly bearing a disproportionate burden of war. Nearly half of the more than 3,100 U.S. military casualties in Iraq have come from towns like McKeesport, where fewer than 25,000 people live, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. One in five hailed from hometowns of less than 5,000......................

[Downtown Hound]

1. Sad, sad stuff.

A lot of these kids entered the military because it was the only real opportunity for them. Leave it to George W. Bush to crush their dreams.

[yardwork]

2. Michael Moore made this point so well in F 9/11

Here it is, years later, and people are still dying. For what? This is a terrible thing.

[Rambis]

3. 3,000 people in my town

We lost a great guy in his late forties with a wife and kids in High school. I used to see him when he was teaching martial arts to the kids across the street from our house. It is just a matter of time before we lose another. There are funerals all over the place in Iowa right now.
The really sad thing is when they come back alive we still lose them with divorce,alcohol,drugs and mental illness.

[tularetom]

4. We've lost probably half a dozen from our rural area

Many of them Hispanic, none from wealthy families. It's very sad when you read that these kids signed up to "do something for their country", the very country that collectively, doesn't give a rats ass that they joined, fought or died. Talk is fuckin cheap, so is stickin a dumbass yellow ribbon on the back of your car. Either oppose this fuckin mess or enlist, you cannot have it both ways.