The lie that killed my son: Lila Lipscomb believed in Bush's case for war

[G_j]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4965990-103550,00.html

The lie that killed my son
Lila Lipscomb believed in Bush's case for war in Iraq. But when her son died in action, her faith in the American way was shattered. Emma Brockes meets the Michigan mother at the heart of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11

Emma Brockes
Thursday July 8, 2004

The Guardian

Two years ago, if you had asked Lila Lipscomb what she stood for, she would have referred you to the flag in her garden and her four grown-up children. Her priorities were, in descending order of importance, family, faith, country and a place where all three met, what she might have called "service": two of her children were in the military and she worked in the public sector, at an employment agency designed to get people off welfare. She is, as she puts it, "an extremely strong woman. And I've raised my daughters to understand that they come from a long line of strong, independent women. So the men in our lives have to be very unique. Hence Pops."
Pops is her husband, Howard, a car-factory worker. He has accompanied Lipscomb to London today by way of moral support and sits across from her in the hotel suite, eyes brimming. What she is saying is not easy for either of them. Lipscomb describes an event that changed their lives and forced a seismic shift in their political perceptions; a shift that she hopes millions of her fellow Americans will be making between now and election time in November. To her surprise, and the surprise of all who know her, Lipscomb is becoming a figurehead in the fight to oust George Bush.

It is two weeks since Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's polemic on the war in Iraq, was released in America, and in that time Lipscomb's voice has emerged as the film's most powerful. As with any project generated by Moore, the film will be loved and loathed in equal measure, but whatever one thinks of him, it is hard to resist the testimony of 50-year-old Lipscomb, a mother from Flint, Michigan, who still flies a flag in her garden, but is down to three children and a handful of ruptured assumptions where other certainties used to be.

The scenes in which she recounts the story of her son Michael's death have had cinema-goers sniffing into their sleeves. "For many years," says Lipscomb, "I thought I had to control everything. I had a real controlling spirit. But, boy, when the army stands in your house and tells you that your oldest son is killed, all that flies out the window. Over this last year and a half, I've been known to cry a bit."

..more..

[Zomby Woof]

1. a kick for Lila

[donco6]

2. Though I dislike having my emotions artificially tugged . . .

. . . this woman's bit in F911 was quite moving. It was just plain-old REAL. I feel for her.

PS. when that freeper-type came up and yelled at her for talking to that Iraqi woman in front of the White House, I coulda just slugged her right in her stupid face.

[Stocat]

3. Isn't it time to start a campaign to draft Lila Lipscomb?

She'd make a great representative, and she has the national name recognition to hold her own in a political campaign.

[truthspeaker]

16. I'd like to see her speak at the Dem convention

Are you listening, Terry?

[G_j]

4. Mother defies Bush by allowing the media to view son's coffin

McCaffrey defied President Bush by allowing the media to view the coffin

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=537625

The son who came home for the Fourth of July

Last week Nadia McCaffrey defied President Bush by allowing the media to view the coffin of her son, Patrick, killed in action in Iraq. Andrew Buncombe was invited to attend his funeral in Tracy, California
03 July 2004


The photographs of Patrick McCaffrey laid out on the table at the front of the reception hall were the record of a life cut short. There were pictures of Patrick as a young boy, a head of curly brown hair, posing in his judo outfit. There was one of him dressed to play American football and another, taken a few years later, of Patrick wearing a tuxedo and probably heading out to the high school prom. There was one of him with his family - a wife, a little girl and a son so proud that his father was a member of the California National Guard that he had asked for his own set of dog-tags.

Finally there was a photograph of Patrick with his unit in Iraq. It had been taken shortly before the ambush in which Patrick was killed. In the picture he is laughing with his friends. He was 34-years-old and - according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count website - the 848th American soldier to die in Iraq.

"He was the life-saver in the unit," said Joyce Kilzono, one of several hundred friends attending the memorial reception, as she pointed at the photograph. "He looked after the others. That man there is my brother-in-law. He had been dehydrated and Patrick had been looking after him. He was caring for people right up until the end." Mrs Kilzono lowered her voice, turned and added: "There are a lot of us Americans who do not agree with what is going on over there."

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-edit to fix link

[bo44]

10. The local paper would not print the photograph of her son's coffin

The Record, a freeper rag owned by the same pukes that publish the Whore Street Journal, reported Mrs. McCaffrey's choice to open her son's return home to the press but did not print a photograph of it. They also gave a freeper parent from the same town as her three paragraphs worth of kool aid.

[G_j]

5. 'Moral Clarity' falls Dumb before those who have lost Children to War

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0707-13.htm

Published on Wednesday, July 7, 2004 by the Globe and Mail / Canada

The Mother of All Anti-War Forces

Washington's talk of Moral Clarity falls Dumb before those who have lost Children in its Wars

by Naomi Klein

There is a remarkable scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 when Lila Lipscomb talks with an anti-war activist outside the White House about the death of her 26-year-old son in Iraq. A pro-war passerby doesn't like what she overhears and announces, "This is all staged!"

Ms. Lipscomb turns to the woman, her voice shaking with rage, and says: "My son is not a stage. He was killed in Karbala, April 2. It is not a stage. My son is dead." Then she walks away and wails, "I need my son."

Watching Ms. Lipscomb doubled over in pain on the White House lawn, I was reminded of other mothers who have taken the loss of their children to the seat of power and changed the fate of wars. During Argentina's dirty war, a group of women whose children had been disappeared by the military regime gathered every Thursday in front of the presidential palace in Buenos Aires. At a time when all public protest was banned, they would walk silently in circles, wearing white headscarves and carrying photographs of their missing children.

The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo revolutionized human-rights activism by transforming maternal grief from a cause for pity into an unstoppable political force. The generals couldn't attack the mothers openly, so they launched fierce covert operations against their organization. But the mothers kept walking, playing a significant role in the dictatorship's eventual collapse.

<snip>
Last week, California resident Nadia McCaffrey defied the Bush administration by inviting news cameras to photograph the arrival of her son's casket from Iraq. The White House has banned photography of flag-draped coffins arriving at air force bases, but because Patrick McCaffrey's remains were flown into the Sacramento International Airport, his mother was able to invite the photographers inside. "I don't care what wants," Ms. McCaffery declared, telling her local newspaper, "Enough war."

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[G_j]

6. given the popularity of F 9/11

I thought there would be more interest in this story :shrug:

[Stone_Spirits]

7. for the mothers

:kick:

[Brewman_Jax]

8. kick

:kick:

[G_j]

9. Lila, photos from F 9/11

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hc&id=1808580561&cf=pg&photoid=535361&intl=us

[Stone_Spirits]

11. & another kick

[G_j]

12. try again

[G_j]

13. kick

[lastliberalintexas]

14. This is what will eventually be the end for this administration

Parents who have lost their children to the unbridled greed of the oil tycoons. And probably even worse, parents whose children return from the battle wounded for life, whether mentally or physically. I think some who initially supported the war(s) may be in denial for a time, and will probably want to believe that their child died for something grand. But once the realization sinks in that their child's life was wasted and misused by this administration, the emotional toll will be devastating. I just hope that the parents (and other family members) will find some measure of peace.


I am a new parent myself, and I can't imagine how these people feel. I've known my son for a relatively short time, but there is nothing that I would not do to keep him safe from these monsters. The Secret Service doesn't have to worry about a crazy person attacking Shrub- they merely need to watch out for a grieving parent.

[G_j]

15. she is not alone

<snip>
But so far, she has had only positive responses. The letters and emails are pouring in, many, she says, from the parents of soldiers serving in Iraq who have echoed the sentiments of her son. She is a member of Military Families Speak Out, an American organisation for people "with relatives or loved ones in the military" who oppose the war in Iraq. "Through us, their voices will be heard."

She has heard from people all over the country, "just incredible, incredible, men calling and leaving messages, sobbing and thanking me for my courage. Women just going 'Yeahhhh! Michael has a hell of a mother.' And then the night of the Flint showing , there was a message from a young lady named Tracy." Tracy had been friends with Michael when they were children and hadn't known he was dead until she saw the film; she had to be carried out. Tracy is in the navy and on her way to Iraq.

The most surprising letter came from a man Lipscomb knew only slightly, who had sold her her house. "It was a full-page, handwritten letter from a man - that in itself is unique. He said he'd seen the film and when he got home he had to write. He had always been a very strong Republican, but his views are now changed."

Lipscomb's employers have been supportive. Her friends in Flint have been stunned. She wonders if her phone has been bugged and how her unlisted number seems to have become so quickly and widely known. "Interesting, isn't it?" And she wonders if she will ever get to the White House. It is on her to-do list. "When I go to Washington DC as an American citizen I have a right, I have a right to go to the White House and I'll not stop until that right is given back to us. My son's blood paid for that White House, and I can't go in? That's my White House. I'm furious." What would she say to Bush if she met him? "God have mercy." She shakes her head. "God have mercy."

<snip>