My personal "war story"; why I despise bush and all rightwingnuts.

[LynnTheDem]

I knew bush's invasion rhetoric was bullshit way back in summer of 2002. Most people in the world knew. Even the majority of Americans knew.

But in November 2002 I dared to post my opinion, that bush was lying thru his teeth, on a board I'd been a member of for years.

I was attacked, sent death threats, cyber-stalked, and generally went through what people such as Scott Ritter went through, but on a much smaller and more personal level. My design business was boycotted and the rabid rightwingnuts threatened to get at my husband in various ways.

My husband is active duty army, 20 years in. He, and most his unit, also knew this "threat" and "WMD" and "liberation" rhetoric was all bullshit. But by April 2003 they were ordered into Iraq, and to Iraq they went. The other choice was military jail, and I think we all have a pretty good idea now of what life is like for prisoners under US military guard.

So hubby left for Iraq, for a war he, and I, and his unit knew was total bullshit. And I was all alone with rabid rightwingnuts trying their best (they still are) to torment and terrorize me.

I kept posting my opinions, albeit on political boards, not the original board I'd been on for so many years & had made so many friends from. It wasn't fair for me to continue posting on that board and bring trouble onto everyone else.

Through my postings, I met up with Pat & Michael, who run the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count site; they asked would I help them with thier site, as well as post on their Luna blog. Of course I was very honored to do so, and have been doing so ever since.

With the ICC, it's very wearing. So many names of so many fallen soldiers, and every single one of those names passed through my hands, either by my reporting them to the site, or Pat or Michael reporting them to me. We also look hard for personal stories in the media about any of the fallen, so we can add a bit of the actual person to the name, and make their life and loss to the world something more than just a number.

My own husband was in Iraq. With every notice of death(s) a bit of me died a little inside, and life stopped until the military released info on what unit(s) were involved. No 4th ID deaths meant my husband's unit wasn't involved. 4th ID deaths but none in the Sunni Triangle area meant probably not my husband.

Then the names would be released and that was more reassurance that I still had a husband still alive.

It was a tremendous amount of guilt mixed with relief; my pure joy that the dead did not include my husband -this time- also brought me deep guilt that while I was rejoicing, other people, some I knew personally, were in despair, having been told they'd just lost their whole world.

And meanwhile, of course, I was still being stalked and threatened by this group of rabid rightwingnuts. It got so bad, and my being alone in a small town in Texas, no family close by, that I barricaded our front door. Sounds silly now, but remember the fog of war back then; the rightwingnuts' shrieking that I should be dragged through the streets of America, kicked and spat on until dead, wasn't something I was prepared to totally ignore.

I'd gone to several funerals. At one, the dead soldier's daddy broke down, crying "My baby! My baby boy!". The names of the dead just kept on pouring in; they still do. The number of wounded was in the thousands; brain dead, limbs gone, permanent nerve and brain damaged, blinded.

One Friday night, in November 2003, I was manning the newsfeeds for incoming deaths, when a notice came up on screen that 5 US soldiers from 4th ID had been killed in Baquoba when their TOC was mortared.

My hubby was 4th ID, stationed in Baquoba, and worked at the TOC (tactical command center). I knew he was supposed to be on duty at the TOC that night.

What I didn't know, for 3 days, were the names of those 5 soldiers killed.

For three of the longest days in my entire life, I sat on the floor of our home, despair washing over me like a tidal wave, my door barricaded, waiting to hear if my entire life was gone and over, as blasted forever into pieces as the bodies of the 5 soldiers. And if I were one of the lucky ones, if my husband wasn't one of the dead, then those we had personally known were.

My husband wasn't one of the dead that night, I found out the following Monday afternoon, when the 5 names were released. And he did make it back home safe and sound-ish.

I was lucky. My life wasn't over. My husband's life wasn't over. So many others have not been, and will not be, as lucky.

It's horrific and devastating when your loved one is killed, be it an automobile accident or a war, natural causes or not. But it's unforgivable when the accident is caused by a drunk driver. And it's unforgivable when the war is a pack of lies. Both are wrong, both cause senseless deaths. Both are, for me, unforgivable.

And that is why I despise bush and all the armchair warmongering rightwingnuts. What they've done, and continue to do, is simply unforgivable.

[auntAgonist]

1. Thank's to both of you , is hardly enough.

I will keep your story and show it to others. May you now enjoy a peacefull, peacefilled happy life together.


Thank You .. Both.

[TransitJohn]

2. Love and warmth to you.

Thank you for working tirelessly on a very important project. :hug:

[LittleClarkie]

5. Laughter through tears

She made me cry, and then your sig made me laugh. Thanks John.

Be well, Lynn. I pray that we get our sanity back Nov. 2.

[burrowowl]

3. Thank you for the work you are doing

I hope your husband makes out okay, he has been through hell as well.

Best regards

[KharmaTrain]

4. Inspiring! Thank You!!!!

While my dark days of the past 4 years haven't been anywhere as traumatic as yours, I'm starting to feel a cloud starting to lift and some sunshine coming through. Maybe it's just a break in the storm, but for a moment in time I can feel truly optimistic about how things are going.

The past four years have been a real ordeal for many of us (I'll go back to the Clinton Inquisition to the start of my online trek into right wingnut message board hell. Logic went all to hell and soon an all-out assualt began on us "librul commies" in the online world who dared to post opinions or attempt to reason.

I have bittersweet vindication in knowing from the very outset this Iraq invasion was going to be an absolute nightmare (clusterfuck better defines it). As the father of a now 17-year old son, you know how much I want to see this evil regime gone and have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of hours in doing so...and I'm not close to being done yet. Rest doesn't come until I see President-Elect Kerry on the front page of the Chicago Tribune! Then it's only for a breather.

I want to salute the many great online people I've encountered who helped me stay relatively sane during these years. Most notable, Bartcop who was one of the first blogs, then came Mediawhores (he/she), Buzzflash, DU, Kos, TPM and the voices have grown louder, stronger and clearer. It's rejuvenating to witness this taking place and how it's starting to really make a difference.

Cheers to us all...now let's focus and get the first big step in restoring sanity to this country and world.

[chookie]

6. (Breathing again)

That was a powerful post.

Many of us have no personal connection to the war -- I don't. But that doesn't mean our hearts are not with those who do. This may sound stupid, but the only person I know in the war is just a photograph -- his Mom is a bank teller, and has his photo on her window. I asked about him once and she said he was in Iraq. All i could say was, God bless him. I think about her all the time. Every day she gets up and goes to work and does her job courteously and efficiently and quietly, and I honestly don't know how she can do it.

It would be easier for folks like you, your husband, me, and others, if we could just choose not to face the facts, because the facts are brutal. It would be easier to believe that this is some sort of happy crusade that will rid the world of senseless death, and that it looks like it is going badly only because the media just reports the bad stuff.

What makes me most angry is that -- the most obscene aspect of this of all -- that Bush is trying to cover his cluelessness and incompetence by saying that the guys fighting over there, and the families who have lost loved ones, must know that they did not die in vain. The inference is -- shut up about my mistakes, or you will make all these nice people feel really terrible, and then hold me accountable for what I brought to them through my poor decisions. Of all he has done, this is what I hate him the most for -- for cloaking his sins with the blood of our young serving men and women, and with the lives of the victims of Sept 11. Blinding my eyes to reality, and buying into a fantasy, and praying that some wacky-assed half-shit imcompetent plan is somehow miraculously going to turn around and yield glorious results -- sorry, i can't do it, and I don't believe that any true American would ask me to turn off my brain operations because it noticed that they have been sent into a horrific, unwinnable situation.

"Don't blame the troops!" We sure don't. But the honor and professionalism of our serving men and women does NOT automatically sanctify their leadership or justify them. We know where the blame points -- right up to the top. These idiots running this thing don't know the first thing about the region, or waging war successfully -- they're merely insane ideologues, or cynical profiteers. Who blames the troops? Bush does. Something goes wrong, he's the first guy to point the finger at some fall guy, when it's very obvious that at least some of these misdeeds can be attributed to command influence. Abu Ghraib? It wouldn't have happened if there was not, at some level, an assumption that it was okay to do this kind of thing to people....

You were brave to speak out. It's been a few crazy years. It has been dangerous to speak out since 2000. But honey, you know you have a lot of company, and from all over the place. As for our serving men and women, and their families, the view, I understand, is highly ambivalent. They're 100% professional and patriotic, but that doesn't mean their brains don't work and that they don't understand that they have been sent into an impossible situation.

The war pigs pulled this shit in Viet Nam too -- that we "lost" the war because America was not united behind it. Baloney. We never should have been in that war to begin with, and it was waged badly. If those of us at home said so -- well, we were just being honest about what a hopeless mess it was. And yet, some today believe that *we* were the factor that lost the war -- not the idiots who got us in it, and then bungled every operation....

Bush talks about "No more Viet Nams!" How convenient! No more any American citizen second guessing a disaster. I guess he'll keep us in Iraq like the Kilkenney Cats, killing until there is no one left, but to show that he's not "soft." And to think that when things go badly there, or elsewhere, it plays well to his base, because a lot of his supporters believe we are in the End Times, and so do not hold him to any rational accountability.

Fuck you George -- you ARE soft, goddamnit! Being too cowardly to put on a uniform in 1972 does not give you the right to compensate for it now, by setting the world on fire in order to appear "resolute".

My dear -- I am sorry for ranting on and on. But my feelings are so strong.

I thank God, and have much joy, that your man came home to you. Such a mercy in this wicked time. It is enough. But yet, it is not enough -- and we ache for those who wait for someone, worry for someone, or mourn someone, or sit by the bedside of someone maimed, or who try to heal those whose have been emotionally lacerated by their experiences.

Always standing by your side, my dear. Your friend always. And you give that great man of yours a big DU hug and tell him we love him, and thank him now, and remember forever.

[BamaGirl]

7. Powerfully said

We were active duty for a number of years, got out just in time to go Guard before 9/11. I wasn't a fan of Bush before 9/11, but after that, when people decided it was ok to question the loyalty and patriotism of anyone who questioned their agenda, they completely lost me. My Guard husband got deployed for two years, and they had the nerve to question my loyalty and patriotism for questioning the war? Isn't it my duty as an American citizen to question my government? I've lost a few friends over it, but I figure I'm better off without them.

I don't know that my heart could take what you're doing. I feel like we'll all be recovering from this for a long long time to come. And then, of course, there is the worry about when the next deployment will come. I tell myself every day that we will win, we must win. We don't have a choice. I want my country back, and dammit my husband is not leaving again. What these idiots have put you through is horrendous, doubly so when you can't trust your own community to see you thru it. I will be so glad to see sanity return to America.

[evilqueen]

8. Aye

Thank you both for everything you're doing. I know what military life is like. I also know what it is like to battle the hate-filled rightwingers who, like the punks they are, come at you in droves (both online and off) like a typical street gang. They mindlessly parrot the lies they've been fed, they don't stop to think about the things they are saying and doing, and they don't or won't take the time to read history or do a little investigative work to find out the truth behind the Chimp's lies. You can sit here and write post after post in other forums and even in your own blog, all the while citing your sources, and they will not counter anything with facts and citations... they just keep on and on like a bunch of really sick fucks endlessly repeating the catch phrases and the lies.

I've started telling them, if you so back this war and support our troops like you say you do, then why aren't you down there at the recruiter's office enlisting? I served my time, I'm a disabled vet and a woman. If I can do it, why can't they? They never have a valid response.

Instead they resort to ad hominem personal attacks, and an across-the-board refusal to look at anything that doesn't jive with their bullshit. Outright rejection of seeing F911 or Going Upriver, they condemn those films without ever having actually watched them.

At this point, I am damned glad I'm not in the military now and serving under this incompetent coWard-in-chief, but I have a son who is now 17 and planning on enlisting next summer... and everyday I am doing everything I can so that Bush will be gone and so that my son won't be serving under that piece of shit.

[Qanisqineq]

9. my story is very similar to this

as my husband served in Iraq from June 2003 until end of March 2004.

[LibertyorDeath]

10. simply unforgivable. Thank you for sharing that.

Glad your Husband made it back.

You could not say it any better than this

" What they've done, and continue to do, is simply unforgivable."

Peace be with you.

[zinsky]

11. God Bless You

Let us all pray that our long national nightmare comes to an end on November 2nd!!