Sad Summation

With the word that the Bush Administration will attempt to keep American troops in Iraq in substantial numbers in perpetuity comes this daily reminder for hundreds of families.

My son, Curtis, was a warrior all his life. He was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, a scuba diver, Harley rider, competition shooter, white water kayaker and an outdoorsman. When the war in Iraq started, he wanted to fight for our country. Too old to re-join the Army, he joined Blackwater Security. That put him on the roads in Iraq almost daily, the most dangerous place to be. I've never seen him more proud.

He enjoyed throwing candy to kids along the road. Like me in Vietnam, at first, he thought progress was pretty good.

But civilian miscalculations — such as not sending over enough troops to secure ammo dumps and borders, and then deactivating the entire Iraq army, which instantly created thousands of potential terrorists — began to take effect.

I saw my happy-go-lucky son start to harden. His eyes, which always had had a twinkle, were different in the pictures he sent. When I could get him to talk about his job, he began to sound disgusted at the worsening situation. The last several weeks of his life, disgust had turned to anger.

He was killed by an improvised explosive device on April 21, 2005, near Ramadi. I heard a report that a woman had set off the bomb. In his coffin, the flag was pulled up to his chin. I don't know how much of my boy was left.

I understand the seething anger building in our troops as they are sent, time and again, into that meat-grinder war. They struggle each day just to survive the day. It's one thing to go down shooting, it's another to be shredded by an unseen bomb. When a young American sees his best friend blown to pieces, and sees the locals laughing about it, ask yourself, how would you feel? Do you think the "core values" training being forced on all of our troops is going to make them feel all warm and fuzzy the next time a bomb goes off?

So, now, we see President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on TV, deploring the suspected acts of some young troops. What we won't see are those three incompetents — pretending to be war leaders, who have never been in a war and who sure aren't going to send their kids to war — taking any blame for the horrible mess they have made of the whole thing. They don't have the honor. One of President Theodore Roosevelt's sons landed on Normandy on D-Day. That's honor.