This one was just 18

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

Every US death in this war was a person with a life, all too often too short, that was sacrificed on the altar of George W Bush's cupidity, greed and lies. And because George W Bush is a coward for whom not admitting a mistake is more important than a soldiers life, there will be more deaths. Some will be people like Army Spc. Christopher D. Kube.

He was 18.

He was a newlywed.

He was killed on July 14, eight months after he arrived in Iraq on a deployment that made him nervous from the start, as one fellow soldier remembered. Back at his home station, Fort Carson, Colorado, he drew attention for being so young, so short, so slight and so cheerful.

"When I saw him I asked, `How old are you, 10?"' recalled his platoon sergeant, Staff Sgt. Eugenie Byron-Griffin. "`What are you doing here? You're a baby.' He looked me straight in my eye, with his chest poked out like he does, and he said, `I'm 17, and I ain't no baby. I'm a man."'

Yes, he was a man for an all too brief time and he died as a man for that damnable Texican pissant in the White House and every bootlicking Republican stooge in Congress.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. We Should Start Putting Up Pictures Of The War Dead All Over Every Town

To remind us of what's really at stake here. It ain't a fucking game, and the craven swine that caused it and enabled it should receive proper blame. It utterly kills me that two of the three Dem frontrunners for President voted for this catastrophe.

[bonito]

2. .

[beam me up scottie]

3. Oh, man.

He looks just like my older brother at that age.

Except my older brother came back from Iraq alive.

RIP Chris.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. He looks just like I did in my

stupid boot camp picture, except for the uniform.

[beam me up scottie]

7. Hurts.

I hope we never get like the chicken hawks.

It should hurt.

A kid dying for a lie.

It should hurt a lot.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

15. It never seems to hurt the right

people, that's the eternal problem, ain't it?

[Bitwit1234]

4. You know up to now I really did not hate bush I don't really know what hate is.

There are a lot of people in my life I have disliked. I just don't make contact with them. I tend to make sure I don't associate with them. But with bush it is different.

I can't understand people like him and the republicans in congress. I can't understand why he pretends to be religious and he doesn't care one wit about poor people, those with no insurance that suffer needlessly because they don't have access to medical help. He had a colonists last Saturday. How many people really need them and can't afford them. The smirking hyena just keeps going on. He and the republican congress before this one shredded every single bill that would help the poor. Bush want to veto legislation that would increase the number of poor children to receive insurance. And the sorry ass republicans in congress agree with him.

Hate what is it. Is it non feeling. Is is distaste for even looking at a person. Is it wishing them harm. I don't know. I really truly don't know what hate is. But bush and his republicans are making he come to some type of feelings for them and I think it is HATE.

[frogcycle]

6. another picture of him here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1460902&mesg_id=1460902

scroll down to 7/14


but pay your respects to the others, too

or click the 'slideshow' - turn audio on (have kleenex handy)

[Sukie1941]

8. Why do they sign up? And re-sign up? And re-re-resign up?

They are all "volunteers."

I see so many young mostly men who re-enlist over and over again. These people are often married and have young kids.

I hear them say "I don't want to leave my buddies behind" or "I need to be with my buddies in Iraq," etc.

What about their wives and kids? Who is raising these kids?

I wonder if some of these re-enlistees just don't fit in with married and family life and use their need to "be with my buddies" (and thus reenlisting) as an excuse.

[SheilaT]

9. Some time in the early

1970's -- I simply do not recall what year -- Time or maybe Life posted the photos of all the young men (and back then it was young men only) who had died that week in Vietnam. It was heartbreaking, because it put a real face on the abstract. I have two sons, who are now 20 and 24, and every time I look at casualty lists I know that it could be my sons who are listed, never mind that i would do everything in my power to keep them safe from such harm.

Each and every person who dies in a war is someone's son, brother, husband. Or maybe someone's wife, daughter, mother.

I find myself moving daily in the direction of true pacifism, of opposing all war, of not saying, this one is just and that one is not. No one should ever die in war.

[frogcycle]

12. I post those photos every day

all 3646 are on my website - link below

July: http://www.dbc3.com/Fallen/jul07/fallen_jul_07.html

[regnaD kciN]

14. If anything, the photos of the Vietnam dead are even sadder...

...not only because there are so many more of them, but because most of them were draftees.

I don't write this to brush off the deaths of brave soldiers like Spc. Kube, but at least they chose to volunteer knowing there was a chance that choice would put them in combat. Draftees, on the other hand, had their role forced on them, courtesy of a president (much like our current one) who couldn't abide the thought that history would describe him as having "lost" a war, and was more than willing to send thousands of our youth to the killing fields to save himself from such a "disgrace."*

I remember a Molly Ivins column from a long time ago. It was about an unidentified woman's visit to the Vietnam Memorial to find the name of an old boyfriend. It was obvious that the woman in the story was Ivins herself. Even though I was a "veteran" of the anti-war movement, reading that article was the first time it really hit home -- that guy was taken from those who loved him because Richard Nixon was unwilling to become "the first President to lose a war." And I found myself hoping that it was especially hot where Tricky Dick was now residing (or, for a more poetic punishment, that he would have to spend the rest of eternity apologizing to those who had died to protect his ego).

---
* By the way, let this be a cautionary tale for those who advocate a return of the draft on the grounds that, if the children of "middle Americans" were subject to use as cannon fodder, the will of the people would never allow us to get into an unnecessary war. Sorry to say it, but "the will of the people" means nothing when the Commander-in-Chief values his own reputation over the lives of tens of thousands of those children of "middle Americans"...and Vietnam was the proof of that.

[ninkasi]

10. My youngest grandchild will turn 14 on Monday

The oldest is now 23. I have 2 great-grandchildren. This was just a boy, a child. Anybody who has ever raised children knows that kids this age are not mature yet. They can't drink until they're 21, because they're considered too immature until then.

In Texas, at least, young men pay higher auto insurance premiums until they are 25. We can acknowledge immature behavior in many ways, except when it comes to sending our young to die, or be maimed in the hell of war.

If a young person is too immature to order a drink, why should that same person be saddled with the responsibility of killing others, or being killed? The ones who wanted, lusted, for this war are older people, mostly men. Let them fight, then and save the younger generation to rebuild society.

I think that fighting a war should be the responsibility of people 50-55, or older. If that were the rule, I think we'd have much less fighting. Those who lie us into war would be put in the position of either joining the conflict, or working out a diplomatic solution. As it is, wars are decided by older people, usually people of wealth, who have no personal investment in what happens.

The deaths, and the maimings, will not be theirs, or their children's. The ghastly toll will be paid by the loved ones of those of us who are poorer, or at most, middle class. It's easy to instigate a war if somebody else fights it, and you only collect the profits due to your crony affiliations.

Whatever it is, the oil, or the power, that Bushco is fighting for, it's not a fight I have an interest in. I don't want to kill other people, or destroy other countries, or steal another country's resources. I wish, many times, that instead of being the worlds only superpower, we were like Great Britain, or France, just a Western world country, comfortable, but not all-powerful, paying more taxes, but enjoying a better quality of life.

What we have become is not anything I ever thought would be possible. What we are under Bush is frightening, and ugly. I can't wait until 2008, and we elect a Democratic president, and have a far larger share of votes in Congress.

[scarface2004]

11. very very sad!

bush belongs in jail..enough already.

[Rick Myers]

13. I cannot TELL you how I feel looking into his eyes!

Godspeed, child. And may the SICK BASTARDS that put you in harm's way for NOTHING serve their time in Hell.