Breslin- What we've really lost in this indefensible war

[realFedUp]

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-nybres243940920aug24,0,700279.column

What we've really lost in this indefensible war
Jimmy Breslin

August 24, 2004

There were four Marines and an Army soldier killed in Iraq in one 24-hour period over the weekend. George Bush, who does not like people who go to war, probably will say that they are not dead.
As of Aug. 20, we list 952 of our troops killed in fighting.
That is the Defense Department figure. When the figure goes over 1,000, that can be devastating in an election.

But the figure of 1,000, so easily remembered, already has been reached. That was on July 7, when a rocket-propelled grenade killed Pfc. Samuel Bowen of Cleveland. The people keeping track at the Army Times newspaper, which has given the best, and often the only, coverage of the war, made Bowen the 1,000th. The Army Times, with no election to effect, properly includes deaths in Afghanistan.

snip-

"When the two Army men came to the house to tell us, I was inside cleaning. I started to scream. 'Oh, my God! My son is dead!' He had his rosary beads in his pocket when he was killed. His wife, Crystal, had been out, and when she came over and saw the crowd in the yard she thought he was home on his two-week leave that he was supposed to be on. She's 19. She was going to go to college but she just can't do it now.

"My son was a beautiful young man. Everybody speaks about his smile. He had such a beautiful smile. My husband's smile. I say to my husband, 'Could you please smile so I can see my son's face?'"