The Betrayed Mothers of America

Thursday, 24 November 2005

We were remiss in not putting up this testimony, gathered by Robert Fisk in New York City during the recent Veteran's Day remembrances. Remember these good people whenever you see the hideous smirking rictus of Cheney or Bush defending the monstrous crime they have wrought.

From the Independent (via Information Clearing House). Excerpts:

...Sue's voice rises in indignation above the noise of the New York diner, angry and brave and drowning out the joshing of two vets at the other end of the table. "I remember very clearly my son's last words before he went back after his two weeks' vacation. 'I don't know who my enemy is,' he said. 'It's a worthless, senseless war, a war of religion. We'll never win it.' He wasn't killed. He was murdered. He was murdered by the US administration. He was out looking for IEDs. He found one, stopped his convoy and was blown up. I regard it as a suicide mission."

...Celeste's son Sherwood was killed on 26 April last year, his end as tragic as it was unnecessary. He was protecting a group of military inspectors hunting for President Bush's mythical weapons of mass destruction when a perfume factory they were searching in Baghdad suddenly exploded.

"He was getting out of the cab of his truck to help the wounded when some debris came crashing out of the sky and hit him," Celeste says..."I will always remember that my son died just a month after George W Bush made that videotape in front of the press - the one where he made a joke about looking for weapons of mass destruction and pretended to search under his desk for the weapons. He was making fun of the fact he hadn't found them - but my son died looking for them and they didn't exist."

...At the other end of our table, Alex Ryabov, who served in R Battery, 5th Battalion, 10th Marines, in the original 2003 invasion force, says he was against the war from the start, refusing to believe there were any weapons of mass destruction.

"When I got into Iraq, I saw what our artillery rounds did to people. I had to go up front to see where the rounds were falling and I saw whole Iraqi cities engulfed in flames. There were Iraqi dead on the sides of the roads - I couldn't tell if they were men or women."

...I say goodbye to this little group of brave American men and women - the ex-soldiers have no jobs, no future save their enthusiasm for their own campaign against the Iraq war - and leave their table with its sad, gold-fringed American flag and head off into the fumes and noise of Times Square. Up on a giant television screen, Vice-President Cheney - he who went on lying about the non-existent links between Saddam and 9/11 long after the invasion - is solemnly bowing his head in the Arlington cemetery. Ah yes, he is honouring the fallen. And I wonder if he will ever understand his betrayal of the men and women back on 44th Street.

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