1600 kids have lost parents in Iraq

[roguevalley]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/29/us/29grief.html?ei=5065&en=adac66bb3f852d5f&ex=1149566400&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print


May 29, 2006
After Loss of a Parent to War, a Shared Grieving
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ

ARLINGTON, Va., May 28 — Jacob Hobbs, 10, did not mince words about the death of his father.

"He was in a Humvee, driving at night on patrol, and a homemade bomb blew up on him so bad it killed his brain," Jacob said of his father, Staff Sgt. Brian Hobbs, 31, of the Army. "But he wasn't scratched up that much. And that's how he died."

Sitting across from Jacob in a circle at a grief camp over Memorial Day weekend, Taylor Downing, a 10-year-old with wavy red hair and a mouthful of braces, offered up her own detailed description. "My dad died four days after my birthday, on Oct. 28, 2004," Taylor said quietly of Specialist Stephen Paul Downing II. "He got shot by a sniper. It came in through here," she added, pointing to the front of her head, "and went out there," shifting her finger to the back of her head.

"Before he left," Taylor said, "he sat me on his knee and he told me why he had to go: because people in Iraq didn't have what we did. They didn't have enough money. They couldn't go to school. And they didn't have homes."

An estimated 1,600 children have lost a parent, almost all of them fathers, to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

[niyad]

1. 2400+ families here, 100,000+ iraqis, all have lost loved ones. I wonder

how that child taylor is going to feel when she realizes that what her father told her was a lie, that he died for a lie.

[IndyOp]

2. Real Shock & Awe: After 15 Years War, Sanctions 1,000,000 Iraqis Dead

Real Shock & Awe: After 15 Years War, Sanctions 1,000,000 Iraqis Dead

[dajoki]

3. What a coincidence, *'s address n/t

[welshTerrier2]

4. how many kids lost their lives in Iraq?

grieving for American kids who have lost parents in Iraq is perfectly justified ...

failing to acknowledge the far greater suffering of Iraqi kids is not ...

we all would be better served on Memorial Day to reflect on the horrors of war for all involved more than on just honoring our own troops and their families with nationalistic blinders on ...

[roguevalley]

5. kids everywhere suffer. god bless them all.