It's not often that this job gives me great pleasure. I'm not complaining, but, let's face it, making one local politician look good or another look bad can be duller than dishwater.
I was proud last week, though, proud of you Reporter readers, your patriotism, and the way you came through for our boys and girls in Iraq.
It was a great, great pleasure.
The whole thing came about because the Redhead, in a previous life, was a librarian. She still belongs to the various professional organizations and, a month or so ago, she got an e-mail from Michael Spencer, librarian at St. Bonaventure University. Michael's son, Capt. David Spencer of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, is stationed somewhere in Iraq, and the young captain was looking for some books his people could read during their down time.
It's not like they have cable, or much else to do over there.
Anyway, we ran an editorial and gave Capt. Spencer's APO address. A couple of Web sites, left-wing and right-wing together, picked the story up and posted it.
The result was that, in a short period of time, the 173rd had amassed a library of more than 1,000 books.
I'm pretty sure that Capt. Spencer has enough to do over there without opening 10 boxes of books a day, putting them on shelves, looking for shelves to put them on and everything else.
There's a couple of Web sites he recommended that can handle the distribution of books, cards and letters as we head into this holiday season.
The first is www.booksforsoldiers.com. This is an excellent humanitarian site where you can link with individual soldiers and send stuff that won't necessarily go to the 173rd.
Then there's the site set up by the Veterans of Foreign Wars at www.operationuplink.org. As a VFW member, I can tell you there's no finer organization out there and none that will pay more attention to the needs of our fighting men and women.
Anyway, I just wanted to express my appreciation for all of you readers who ponied up above and beyond the call of duty.
You made my day.
As long as I'm writing about Iraq, I should mention that I've still got a major problem with that chickenhawk, AWOL, uniform-wearing fool who sits in the Oval Office.
President Kennedy was a legitimate war hero and I never saw him wear a uniform while sitting in the president's office. Likewise, Dwight David Eisenhower or Harry Truman. Even Jimmy Carter, who had a respected record as a submarine commander during the Cold War, eschewed military trappings for a cardigan sweater during his failed presidency.
But now we have a coward who used his daddy's connections to get him out of Vietnam with a wardrobe so full of military uniforms it would make Benito Mussolini blush.
New York Sen. Hillary Clinton walked around the streets of Baghdad while President Bush hid with an aplomb he hasn't shown since his Jockey-staining performance of Sept. 11, 2001. He went there only because the picture of him standing on the aircraft carrier in front of the "Mission Accomplished" sign looks pretty silly today.
Real soldiers have been dying at a rate of more than two a day over there since this nonsense began last March. That's 444 Americans, 53 Brits and 32 Italians, Spaniards, Ukranians, Poles and Danes.
These aren't people who put a uniform on so they can get their picture taken in it. They wear it because it connotes honor, bravery, respect and tradition, things George W. Bush knows precious little about.
As the body count continues to grow, and as our unelected president continues to disrespect our war dead by dodging military funerals, let us think about patriotism.
Is the patriot the guy who shouts from the rooftops about what a patriot he is while sending young Americans off to die in a foreign land based on lies about weapons of mass destruction? Is the guy who wears the uniforms of the services he avoided in complete cowardice a patriot?
If you asked the people who run Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and Worldcom, they'd tell you yes.
Because he's their boy. They're making billions of dollars off this war.
And the deaths of your boys and girls make no difference to them at all.
Or to this president.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | December 9 2003 |