Commas for Profit

By Cindy Sheehan
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 26 September 2006

Our "compassionate conservative" misleader was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and he had the following to say about the heartache and pain that he has caused the world since his illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq began.

BLITZER: Let's move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public: a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war - if not already a civil war. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.

BUSH: Yes, you see - you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is - my point is, there's a strong will for democracy.

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That is 125 commas.

With 2701 of our children killed and over 20,000 injured, I would have to type 182 lines filled with commas. Then if we take in to account the low figure of 100,000 innocent Iraqis killed, I would need pages of commas.

Martin Luther King Jr. said: "Nothing is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." I believe that anyone who still supports George and his war of terror on the world has to be going out of his way to ignore the facts, or is profiting some way from this occupation: politically or financially.

I want George and the conscientiously stupid people who avoid evidence like the plague to know that my son was not a comma. Casey was not a cardboard figure, or the one dimensional figure of his widely printed boot camp picture when his cheeks were still chubby from good and plentiful food.

Casey was three dimensional and had hopes and dreams. He wanted to finish college and teach elementary school. He wanted to marry and have babies. I wanted him to marry and have babies. I wanted to hold his children and spoil them and love them like a grandmother should.

Casey loved his brother Andy and his sisters Carly and Janey. He loved our dogs Buster and Chewy and our cats Emily and Molly. Casey watched professional "wrestling" on TV and called it: "male soap operas." He collected toys, and we have many boxes of unopened action figures and other collectibles in a storage now.

Casey breathed air, drank water, ate food and everything else that all other human beings do. Above all, he loved God and wanted to serve God his entire life as a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Church. He also bled and died like a human when he was shot in the back of the head.

Conservatively, the "commas" that the Bush Regime has killed by their lies would fill many pages, but in reality, the once-breathing human beings are filling thousands upon thousands of graves and lying under tons of rubble.

I am sorry that the leader of our once great nation is so callous toward the people whose lives he has destroyed. Whether one agrees with President Chavez of Venezuela or not, it is inherently evident in our country and the world that we should agree with him when he says democracy is not imposed by "bombs and Marines." Democracy rises from the people. Great Britain did not go to war with our forebears to impose democracy, but to stop it.

Killing innocent people, torturing, draining our treasury, stealing elections, spying on American citizens without due process, leaving the people of the Gulf States hanging on their roofs for their dear lives, etc., do not bestow democracy, and the people harmed should not be reduced to punctuation marks.

My son and the others will not go down in history as "commas" but as more victims of the war machine and I hope as the last victims of wars for profit. How can George keep a straight face when he talks about the enemy being willing to "kill innocent people?" When has BushCo every shied away from murdering innocents?

George Bush* will be an asterisk in history.

*Impeached, removed from office, imprisoned for crimes against humanity.

The sooner the better.

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Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Casey Austin Sheehan, who was KIA in Iraq on 04/04/04. She is the author of Peace Mom: One Mom's Journey through Heartache to Activism.