Just For One Day

One day, a particularly gruesome indictment of the war is going to give me a heart attack as I get ready in the morning while listening to NPR. While not related to the war, I saw the first five minutes of a Frontline report on global warming and how the Bush administration pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, which, according to one expert, was the equivalent of "flipping the bird" to the international community. This morning, I was treated to audio clips of testimony given at a House committee about the death of Pat Tillman. One item of note, which I cannot for the life of me find online, is the tidbit that the Army held off on rescuing Jessica Lynch (who testified about the culture of lying that's rampant in this administration's war) because they needed to tape her rescue. Yes, the Army wanted to be viewed as the saviors of a cute blonde girl who shot bullets at everything that moved but was still caught, when in fact she didn't fire a shot. So they let this girl remain a POW for an extra day for some good PR? Nice.

I have said it a million times, but it remains true. The sacrifices that soldiers and their families make are worth more than this. People who volunteer to go to a foreign country and fight for some obscure goal deserve to keep their dignity. If he or she should die while serving, the government owes their families, as well as the rest of America, the truth. Especially if it was a case of friendly fire, which is what killed Pat Tillman.

I think Jessica Lynch summed it up quite nicely:

"The American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate lies."