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by Jimmy Breslin
In less than a month, there have been 37 same-sex deaths of our troops in Iraq. There is one woman, Army Spc. Julie Hickey, age 20, who died of illness on the Fourth of July. If the men were getting married, George Bush would shout more than ever for a constitutional amendment.
As they die in battle in the Middle East, Bush doesn't even notice. This man of limited mind and unlimited arrogance is unmoved by deaths that have put blood on his hands for all time.
I want to tell you what it's like to type this list of names that runs below. You keep typing these ages of "20" and "19" and "22" and soon, you hear them. They are shouting over loud music. Laughing uncontrollably. Girls, girls, girls. Swearing viciously at their fates. And always with these young fast voices. Why should they die? What right have we to play God and send them to be blown to pieces? I finish typing this job and go to bed. These young should be living in the sounds of an American summer, of water rushing over rocks, or lapping a lakeshore pier, or crashing onto an ocean beach; of music in the soft nights or the elated cries of kids running through a field. If not a field, then enjoying nature's finest sight, a crowded city street.
Anywhere except a box on a plane arriving at Dover, Del., where morgue workers do autopsies and put dress uniforms on the dead bodies. This president, with a face of rich boy smirks and sneers, who lives on the dark side of truth, does not deign to be present. He is not a man for mourning, this George Bush. Life is best when he struts onto a stage in front of an overjoyed white audience in York, Pa., where he sputtered that the people fighting in Iraq had hijacked a great religion and now we would fight them anywhere. That great religion is Islam and it has 2 billion members worldwide and if he wants to fight them, let him go ahead; he likes it so much he was having his teeth cleaned when he was eligible to face bullets.
He could send his vice president, Cheney, except Cheney has the North American record for draft dodging - five deferments in Wyoming - and clearly likes his wars to be fought by others.
When Sen. Jay Rockefeller released the report on the ocean of falsehood used by Bush to take this numbed country into a war, Rockefeller said that Bush "wanted to be a wartime president." He sure did. When he came into office, Bush regarded China as Enemy No. 1. It is good that he found Iraq before taking on China. He then was nasty to North Korea, saying that the United States had "no intention" of invading North Korea. If he wasn't thinking of it, why did he mention it? But he then said that "all options are on the table" if North Korea didn't disarm. North Korea could be a difficult match. It sure was in the 1950s.
Bush and his defense secretary, Rumsfeld, warned Syria and Iran about meddling with our war in Iraq. We could have troops fighting at once in Fallujah and simultaneously in the alleys of Tehran and Damascus. Maybe North Korea, too.
You get an example of the sheer religious madness of this Bush by looking at the casualty lists which we run below. They represent less than a month of shooting in a strange land. And their ages represent the monstrous crime of young death.
Sgt. Kenneth Conde Jr., 23. 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. Died July 1 from enemy action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Home: Orlando, Fla.
Sgt. Christopher A. Wagener, 24. Army's 10th Aviation Brigade, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) Fort Drum, N.Y. Died July 1 when convoy vehicle hit a land mine in Mosul, Iraq. Home: Fairview Heights, Ill.
Lance Cpl. Timothy R. Creager, 21. 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C. Died July 1 in hostile action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Home: Millington, Tenn.
Lance Cpl. James B. Huston Jr., 22. 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. Died July 2 in action in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Home: Umatilla, Ore.
Spc. Julie R. Hickey, 20. Army Reserve 412th Civil Affairs Battalion, Whitehall, Ohio. Evacuated from Bagram, Afghanistan, and died in Landstuhl, Germany, of non-combat related illness on July 4. Home: Galloway, Ohio.
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