Houston Chronicle’s editorial writer, Cragg Hines neatly wraps up and reinforces what I said in my recent post, Trains, Planes and Taxi Cabs. Those of us who have paid attention, saw through Bush’s Mesopotamian misanthropy from the get-go. But will the Bush propaganda machine manage once again to sell the "Saddam – Osama – terrorism bridge to nowhere" to suburban security moms and nervous Nellies, who have repeatedly fallen for Bush’s fake machismo? Will Bush and the Republicans successfully pull off the sleight of hand that worked in their favor in 2002 and 2004? And will the hapless Democrats let them?
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It is simple – like ribald fun with Chinese fortune cookies. Except, with neo-cons, the future is bloody and solutions to world problems, always lethal. So, how to make sense of grave and ponderous neo-con punditry? Just add "by killing people" at the end of all their statements.
"Everyone knows you can get a good laugh out of your meal at the local Chinese Buffet by opening your fortune cookie, reading the message aloud and adding two words on the end of the message: in bed. If you haven’t tried it before here are some examples:
You are talented with your hands.
Now is a lucky time for you to take a chance.
Watch your relations with other people carefully, be more reserved.
No obstacles will stand in the way of your success this month.
Now I’ve discovered, with the help of booze and Jim Antle of 4pundits.com that there is a phrase that you can tack on to most neoconservative op-eds and essays – which helps to clarify the point they are trying to make. Whenever a neoconservative says something should be done, whether it is democracy promotion, or instilling purpose in an enervated American populace, or diplomacy, you can finish the thought for him by adding three little words: by killing people. Here, try it out: "
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Be very afraid. They are not plain old terrorists any more. Now we have Islamo-fascists, Islamo-Nazis and Islamo- commies. Having made a mess of tackling the real problem of global terrorism and with an election looming, the new right wing talking points require that glorious old wars and ancient enemies be invoked to scare the heck out of American voters. Bush and his supporters fervently hope that the latest scare tactics will succeed and citizens will forget the abject failures of their inept leaders. It is also a transparent and cynical ploy to once again conflate Iraq with 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden. Some suspect that it may even be an attempt to lay the ground work for an attack on Iran.
Donald Rumsfeld recently compared the war on terrorism to fighting fascism and Nazism and compared those who oppose the Iraq war to craven appeasers – that would be 63 – 65% of Americans. Today, George W. Bush repeated the same mantra about fascists and Nazis, adding communists to the mix – further raising the fear index by a notch or two. He grandly recalled US triumphs at Omaha Beach and Guadalcanal so that we may forget his own failures in Baghdad, Basra and Baluchistan. If until now we are not sufficiently terrified of being blown up in air planes, trains and inside tall towers, surely we will start losing sleep over gulags and gas chambers.
"President George W. Bush said Thursday the war against Islamic militants was like last century’s fight against Nazis and communists and that a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would lead to its conquest by America’s worst enemies.
"The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq," Mr. Bush said in a speech to rally support for his unpopular war strategy two months before congressional elections…
"Some politicians look at our efforts in Iraq and see a diversion from the war on terror," Mr. Bush said. "That would come as news to Osama bin Laden, who proclaimed that the ‘third world war is raging’ in Iraq."
The well orchestrated fear mongering by the Bush administration is having one tangible effect. Not in catching real terrorists but in making non-terrorist Asian men targets of undue harrassment, contempt and suspicion. Recently, we witnessed the tasteless Macaca incident involving Sen George Allen of Virginia. An Iraqi American was made to remove a T-shirt with a protest slogan before boarding a plane in New York (via Leiter Reports). Young Asian men face increased scrutiny at airports, be they Hindu, Muslim or Sikh because to the average TSA employee and American traveler, they all look alike. During air travel, Asians now encounter from strangers a mindset similar to what African Americans have experienced for years on the streets. Like DWB (Driving While Black), the newly coined acronym, TWA stands for "Traveling While Asian." But it is not just at airports and subway stations where terrorists may be operating. Senator Conrad Burns (R – Montana) warns us that taxi cabs too could prove lethal for travelers. (Needless to mention here that cab drivers in big cities are overwhelmingly from Asia and Africa).
"Republican Sen. Conrad Burns, whose recent comments have stirred controversy, says the United States is up against a faceless enemy of terrorists who "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night." During a fundraiser Wednesday with first lady Laura Bush, the three-term Montana senator talked about terrorism, tax cuts and the money he has brought to his state.
He has drawn criticism in recent weeks for calling his house painter a "nice little Guatemalan man" during a June speech. Burns, whose re-election campaign is pressing for tighter immigration controls, also suggested that the man might be an illegal immigrant. The campaign later said the worker is legal.
At the campaign event with Bush, Burns talked about the war on terrorism, saying a "faceless enemy" of terrorists "drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill at night."
Perhaps Burns won’t have to worry about those fearsome cab drivers of Washington D.C. for too long. He is in a tight race this November and hopefully, he will soon be able to retire in the civilized safety of Montana ( population: more than 90% white). I doubt there are too many taxi cabs on the wide open roads of Montana and I bet they are not driven by "terrorists."
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Required reading for those who "really" want long lasting peace in the middle east.
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The US has long operated on the principle that tyrannical rules in Asia and Latin America are quite okay, in fact desirable, as long as they are "our" tyrants – democracy be damned. That unprincipled foreign policy made possible brutal, authoritarian regimes in Chile, Argentina Colombia, El Salvador, Iran, and yes, Iraq. Irrational and obsessive fear of communism gave rise to the "Domino Theory" which led to widespread devastation in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1970s. The same paranoia has kept alive a forty year long stand off with Cuba and is spawning new ones with Venezuela and perhaps even Bolivia. We are once again militarily engaged in reshaping foreign governments, this time in the middle east. The result is not pretty as we learn every day. Bush’s iron fisted attempts at spreading democracy by shock and awe continues to bloody Iraq and Afghanistan and their democratic future is very much in doubt. The Lebanese have been left reeling as they take stock of the shattered remains of the Cedar Revolution. But that hasn’t curbed the arrogance of the reckless Bush administration. We are now interfering in yet another nation’s internal politics – for the second time. It’s worth repeating here that one definition of insanity is to repeatedly step in the same crap and expect to come out smelling like roses.
Flashback : United States intervenes — again — in Nicaragua.
Campaign season has begun in Nicaragua, and it feels like old times.
Sandinista Daniel Ortega, ex-president and three-time failed presidential candidate, again is running for office. And, just as in the Reagan years — or, come to think of it, the Roosevelt years — the United States flouts democratic values to intervene.
U.S. ambassador Paul Trivelli is working overtime pushing Ortega’s rival. In May, Trivelli even tried ginning up a primary, hoping to unite the competition. (He failed.)
But the White House isn’t daunted. Ortega has only grown more odious to the administration, thanks to his alliance with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.
What the administration doesn’t get is that this resentment predates Chavez. In Nicaragua, 19th-century mercenary William Walker and the U.S.-coddled Somoza dictatorship planted it long ago. Why feed it by again disdaining Nicaragua’s sovereignty?
The United States needs to defend its interests. But there’s a difference between wanting democracy, or even a candidate, and actively distorting another country’s electoral process.
In the short term, this involvement actually could backfire. A tirade from the U.S. ambassador nudged Bolivian leftist Evo Morales closer to being president. And in Nicaragua, after Trivelli’s failed primary foray, Ortega gained six percentage points in polls. Regardless of who wins the presidency, Sandinistas likely will be the National Assembly’s largest bloc. They’ll surely be in payback mode.
What if Washington’s man wins? Our meddling still is poisonous business. Americans die daily in Iraq, supposedly in service of democracy. It does not escape world notice — or help those soldiers — when U.S. leaders mock democracy in their own backyard.
If the US wishes to proceed aggressively in Nicaragua, after beating the democracy horse to death in the middle east, it might be a tough sell. Bush has two choices:
1. Have Cheney and his biographer concoct a false link between Daniel Ortega and 9/11, thus making an invasion of Nicaragua an inevitability.
2. Commission retired right wing hero Oliver North to stage another Iran Contra debacle.
This time around, the second option may be quite interesting. The original fiasco is twenty years old and the cloak and dagger strategery might appeal to the secretive neocons. Except this time, we will not need an Independent Counsel to investigate the skullduggery. We will be able to read all about it on Ahmadinejad’s blog !
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The blogroll on the left has increased by one. The site came to my attention through a comment left by its author on Accidental Blogger. The author of the weblog uses the blogging nom de plume "Shunya," Sanskrit for zero. I am not sure why – perhaps he will tell us. His site certainly belies the number when measured by the profusion of material it contains. Please check it out here.
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Another ethically challenged, pious Republican has spoken out in favor of religious meddling in public life. The notorious Katherine Harris aka Cruella Deville, the dishonest Florida Secretary of State who helped put George W. Bush in office is overflowing with religious fervor. Her nefarious role in the disputed 2000 electoral circus is not the only instance of Harris’ less than steady moral compass – she is also entangled in a bribery scandal. Now that the Republican bigwigs have withdrawn their support of her senatorial bid, Ms Harris is appealing to a higher power.
"In an interview published online Thursday in Florida Baptist Witness, a weekly magazine of the Baptist State Convention, Harris also said the constitutional separation of church and state is a "lie" that has led people to think they should avoid politics. She said God chooses our leaders.
"If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you’re not electing Christians, then in essence your are going to legislate sin," Harris said in answer to a question about why Florida Baptists should care about this primary election. "They can legislate sin. They can say that abortion is all right. They can vote to sustain gay marriage."
In response to a question about what role "people of faith" should play in politics, Harris said: "We have to have the faithful in government, and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking they need to avoid politics, and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers. And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing these godly men and women… then we’re going to have a nation of secular laws. That’s not what our founding fathers intended and that certainly isn’t what God intended."
Harris said that if leaders are not Christians, "then average citizens who are not Christians, because they don’t know better, we are leading them astray and it’s wrong."
Oh please! God chooses our leaders? In that case, the current crooked bunch was surely chosen to punish and put the fear of god in us sinners. Perhaps Harris too was doing god’s work when she lied, cheated, suppressed and intimidated Democratic voters in order to put G.W. Bush in office so that he could wreak havoc on all god’s earthly creations. God’s work indeed, by hook or by crook – mostly by crook!
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This is Part I of a three part book review that I have put off for too long. The longer I wait, the more I forget. So it is time to put it together – to be published in three installments in the coming days (hopefully). All three books are non-fiction and each is about the history and the fate of a city. The first book deals with the hurricane portion of the 3-H title of my post.
Isaac’s Storm: Erik Larson’s excellent account of the hurricane of 1900 that devastated the city of Galveston has been on my mind since last summer when Katrina and Rita terrorized the gulf coasts of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. It is the story of the biggest hurricane to make landfall in the recorded meteorological history of the United States – a storm against which all subsequent storms have been measured. On Saturday, September 8, 1900, the morning in the coastal city of Galveston, Texas, began calmly enough. A hurricane that had been brewing off the coasts of Cuba was expected to take a northerly turn along the eastern flanks of Florida and the Carolinas – far removed from the gulf coast of Texas. Isaac Cline, the resident meteorologist stationed in Galveston, a meticulous weatherman, had been thus assured by the headquarters of the US Weather Bureau. Yet on that September morning, Isaac was troubled by what he saw – deep swells in the waters of the Texas gulf that should not have been there if the predictions from the Washington D.C. office were to be believed. Isaac had no idea how wrong the reports were and what was to be unleashed by mother nature. Before he understood the true grimness of the event and could issue a warning, residents of Galveston were blindsided by a monster storm which submerged the city in water that rose to the second floors of buildings in some areas of the island. By the time the fury of the storm was spent, 6000 men, women and children were dead. The tiny island of Galveston (built along the architectural aesthetics of New Orleans) with its ambitions of becoming the richest and most stylish city in Texas, lay in ruins. Galveston never recovered from this blow and neither did Isaac Cline, who lived out the rest of his life broken hearted and haunted that he, who had prided himself in accurately reading the sea and the sky, had been so fooled by both. But in reality, Isaac had been fooled by man as much as by nature.
Isaac’s Storm is the story of a man, a storm and the city of Galveston . It is also a stern reminder that even with increasing knowledge and technology at our disposal, sometimes the only safeguard against nature’s unmatched fury is to run and find safer grounds. The irony in the devastation of 1900 was that those with the superior technology had been instrumental in making the bigger blunder. The weather bureau in Havana, Cuba where the storm had made an earlier landfall, had predicted that it was headed for the Gulf of Mexico and not the Atlantic Coast as the US Weather Bureau had announced. But due to an intense and petty rivalry between the two agencies, the chief of the US bureau, a pompous man, dismissed the Cubans’ warning as so much "Latin melodrama" – not to be taken seriously by cool headed, scientific minded northern folks ! It was based on this arrogant and false assurance that Cline had felt relaxed about Galveston on that fateful September day – with lethal consequences.
Larson is a gifted writer – one with the rare talent for writing lyrically about stuff such as weather charts, meteorological instruments, latitudes and longitudes. Having scoured numerous letters, telegrams, recorded testimony of survivors and rescuers, Larson has put together a weather story which is as suspenseful as a first rate mystery and as tragic as a melodramatic tear jerker. He records in excruciating details the lives of ordinary citizens going about their business just before the storm and the same lives upturned and torn asunder in its aftermath. He chronicles the history of each building that went down and those which withstood the battering. One of the most heartwrenching events depicted is the discovery of a group of young girls, students in a Catholic convent school, found dead with their teachers after the storm. The little girls were tied to each other with a rope – a safety measure deemed necessary by the nuns to prevent the girls from getting separated during evacuation. Interwoven through the account of the storm of 1900 are the history of Galveston, the world at large at the turn of the last century and the life story of Isaac Cline. Fortified with the current scientific understanding of storms, Larson spins a compelling tale which is made all the more fantastic by the realization that it is all true. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Last year when Rita menaced the coast of Texas, I was reminded several times of Isaac and Galveston of 1900. In the end, Rita spared Houston and Galveston although she managed to issue a dire warning: if you live in a hurricane prone coastal area, it is only a matter of time!
I want to end with an interesting quote from Isaac explaining why he became a scientist and a weatherman instead of a preacher or a lawyer – two professions that he had considered at different times in his life.
"I first studied to be a preacher, but decided that I was too prone to tell big stories. Then I studied Blackstone for a while and soon learned that I was not adept enough at prevarication to make a successful lawyer. I then made up my mind that I would seek some field where I could tell big stories and tell the truth." – Isaac Cline
Hence meteorology and the weather!
Note: In my article I refer to Isaac Cline by his first name rather than the customary last one. I did so following author Larson’s example throughout the book, as also in its title.
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There is a whole host of depressing reports about airline security, terrorist threats, diverted flights and increased fear and suspicion of Asian men, specifically those of Muslim descent. Buried amidst these stories of real and imaginary threats, paranoia, persecution and profiling, I came across a slightly bizarre and rather comical story which indicates that at least some men are more afraid of their mothers than of Homeland Security.
"CHICAGO — Cook County prosecutors say a 29-year-old man traveling with his mother desperately didn’t want her to know he’d packed a sexual aid for their trip to Turkey.
So he told security it was a bomb, officials said.
Madin Azad Amin, 29, of Skokie, was stopped Aug. 16 at O’Hare International Airport after guards found an object in his baggage that resembled a grenade, prosecutors said.
When officers asked him to identify it, Amin said it was a bomb, said Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Lorraine Scaduto. He later told officials he’d lied about the item because his mother was nearby, Scaduto said.
He’s been charged with felony disorderly conduct, said Andrew Conklin, a spokesman with the Cook County state’s attorney’s office.
Amin is due back in court Sept. 13. He told the Chicago Sun-Times that security officials did not give him a chance to explain the misunderstanding and that he would never use the word "bomb" while going through a security checkpoint."
On a more serious note, Muslim men may be facing real problems not just in the air but on the ground too.
Muslim men earn less post-Sept. 11
Reuters News ServiceNEW YORK — The earnings of Arab and Muslim men working in the United States dropped about 10 percent in the years following the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a new study.
The study, to be published in the Journal of Human Resources, measured changes in wages of first- and second-generation immigrants, from countries with predominantly Arab or Muslim populations from September 1997 to September 2005.
The average wage was approximately $20 an hour before the attacks in 2001 and dropped by $2 an hour after them, said Robert Kaestner, co-author of the study and a University of Illinois at Chicago professor of economics.
That drop persisted through 2004 but showed signs of abating in 2005, he said.
"I was surprised," Kaestner said. "We see an immediate and significant connection between personal prejudice and economic harm."
The study looked at 4,300 Arab and Muslim men, ages 21-54, from the 20 U.S. states where 85 percent of all Arab and Muslim Americans live. …"
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So, the IAU voted to bump poor Pluto off the planetary line-up! I am quite heartbroken. Well, at least, very disappointed. I was not wholly certain whether the three new planets would be inducted into the planetary family but I sure didn’t expect Pluto to be expelled unceremoniously. Henceforth school children will have to memorize just eight planet names in the solar system, rather than the nine (since 1930) or the possible twelve, had Ceres, Charon and 2003 UB313 (or Xena) passed the planetary muster.
"Forget what you learned in third grade. Pluto is no longer one of the nine planets of the solar system.The International Astronomical Union in Prague ruled today that the much-maligned Pluto no longer qualifies as a planet under historic new guidelines, thereby stripping Pluto of the planetary status it has held since it was discovered in 1930, news services reported.
The prestigious international group in the Czech Republic today spelled out the basic tests a celestial body needs to pass before it can be deemed a planet: "A celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a . . . nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit."
It’s the last part of the definition that doomed Pluto. Its oblong orbit overlaps with Neptune’s. Pluto will now be reclassified in a new category of "dwarf planets," similar to what astronomers have long called "minor planets. Membership in the sun’s solar system will be restricted to the eight "classical" planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
The decision at a conference of 2,500 astronomers from 75 countries was a dramatic shift from just a week ago, when astronomers came up with a new definition that would have saved the tiny body’s place in the sun’s family.
That plan proved highly unpopular, dividing the group into factions and triggering an acrimonious debate full of angry denunciations that ultimately sunk Pluto."
Bummer! I will miss Pluto. But why? I have never visited Pluto and don’t expect to in the future. I haven’ even seen Pluto. My life is not affected by whether Pluto is or is not a planet. I never think about Pluto until the subject of planets comes up, which in my day to day life, is not often. But what I learnt in childhood about the planets is etched in my mind and in that memory, Pluto is the faraway ninth planet in our own celestial neighborhood, the solar system. I feel reluctant to shake off the notion, if for no other reason than dogged sentimentality. It is indeed interesting how casual familiarity with objects and ideas shapes our view of the world … and the universe. New words enter the lexicon every few years. New gadgets enter our homes. New knowledge enters the body of human wisdom. With advancing age, some find the changes unsettling. Most however, adjust to new facts and revise their outlook. But what we learn in our childhood and early youth is our most "natural" knowledge and that is the most enduring yardstick by which we measure the world around us. And that is what in part, gives rise to the generation gap.
Each year in August, since 1998, Beloit College in Wisconsin compiles a list of ideas and objects which the entering class of students has grown up with and which are therefore expected to have shaped their world view and cultural mind set. This list is famously known as The Beloit College Mindset List.
Here is a partial list of what contributed to the mindset of this year’s entering class of 2010. (For the entire list, check out the linked page.)
- The Soviet Union has never existed in their lifetime.
- There has always been only one Germany.
- They have never actually heard anyone "ring up" a register.
- They are wireless, yet always connected.
- DNA fingerprinting has been permissible in court.
- Smoking has never been permitted on airplanes.
- "Google" has always been a verb.
- There has always been a Disneyland in Europe and Asia.
- There have always been bar codes on almost everything including library books.
- They don’t know what carbon copy is.
- "Outing" has always meant a threat, not an adventure.
- Professional athletes have always participated in the Olympics.
School textbooks will take a few years to update. Teachers will need time to tailor their teaching material to meet the new standards of planetary eligibility. New charts and models of the solar system will have to be constructed. Assuming that school children learn elementary astronomy in the 2nd or 3rd grade, in which year will the Beloit College Mindset list include college students whose view of the universe did not include Pluto as a "real" planet?
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Two stories from India – one about smart folks setting up to help kids and the other about the abysmally stupid. The stupid one first.
Granted that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and that perceptions of history and world events often vary across geographical boundaries. For example, the names of Fidel Castro, Yassir Arafat, Ho Chi Minh and Karl Marx don't quite bear the same negative connotation in many parts of the world as they do in the west, especially the US. Countries which have themselves struggled for freedom from colonialism or feudal exploitation tend to sympathize with nationalistic movements in other parts of the world – even bloody ones. But Hitler? Leaving aside racist neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, can any one still harbor a fond (and in this case, appetizing) image of Hitler in this day and age? After all we have learnt in the sixty plus years since WW II? Apparently yes. Utter ignorance too can lead to the resurrection and rehabilitation of Hitler – at least as the symbol of an upscale eatery in Mumbai, India!
(click for enlargement)Mumbai: Hitler is back. This time in Navi Mumbai. However, he's not building gas chambers but dishing out gastronomical delights. And of course, it's controversial.Stomach this! Hitler is "apparently" cool these days. Well, that's at least what the owner of a restaurant thought when he named his new eatery Hitlers' Cross.
"It's just that we wanted to give a different name. We wanted a good campaign. That's the main reason. Nothing else," Managing Director, Hitlers' Cross, Puneet Sabhlok said.
Billboards, balloons, lamppost kiosks, there's a mark of Hitler everywhere around Khargarh in Navi Mumbai, where the restaurant is situated. Hitler may have ordered thousands to death but that isn't stopping people from visiting the restaurant.
"The name has a very negative impact because Hitler reminds you of a gas chamber. But, then, I thought, let me try what's this all about," a patron, Vaishali Shreedhar said.
However, Khargarh's Jewish community is appalled. "I don't think anybody will eat at that restaurant. Because the word Hitler disturbs us," Sect. of the Bethel Synagogue, Joseph Massin said.
Feathers have been ruffled but regarding people’s emotions being hurt, the proprietor of the restaurant said, "I haven't thought about that."
Hmm… didn't think he did. What a dolt! The customers thronging the restaurant are not exactly of the enlightened variety either. See a story here about the nature of the clientele and sponsors of the "Restaurant of Bad Taste". (Link via Sepia Mutiny)
The next story describes an ambitious plan for the remote tutoring of US school kids in rural areas – from halfway across the world in India. A Bangalore based company, Tutor Vista plans to fill in the gap left by the US education system. Hopefully, they will be able to get Bill Gates' foundation and local phone and cable companies to pitch in. Good intentions alone will not get this venture off its launching pad. It needs high speed internet.
"One problem with the No Child Left Behind Act is that 80% of the kids entitled to after-school tutoring–at taxpayers' expense–aren't getting it, according to a new government report, and some rural districts offer no tutoring at all. But extra help is on the way. And like a lot of customer service these days, it comes with a distinctly Indian accent. The Bangalore-based TutorVista, which last fall began providing online tutoring to U.S. students in everything from grammar to geometry, last week announced it will provide a year of free tutoring to kids in the 10 poorest rural counties in the U.S.
That means all students in, say, Texas' Zavala County or South Dakota's Ziebach County can get first-rate help–which ordinarily would cost $20 an hour–regardless of whether their school is performing poorly enough to be on the NCLB's watch list. (The only catch for kids in impoverished, remote areas: they must have access to a high-speed modem.) TutorVista chairman Krishnan Ganesh dismisses critics who lament the further siphoning of jobs overseas. "There is plenty of work to go around," he says. "The American educational system is pathetic."
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Cindy Sheehan may have a new ally – the mother of another dead soldier, shocked and grieved by an encounter with George W. Bush’s heart of stone. Dolores Kesterson, whose son Erik was killed in Iraq in 2003, was treated with an amazing lack of grace by the Commander In Chief. During a recent meeting with military families, Bush met with Kesterson, who said that her dead son’s favorite saying was, "Life is good." To which George Bush replied with characteristic loose lipped candor and brusqueness, "How do you know his life would have been good?" !!!! Another Gold Star mom callously dissed by our trigger happy president. Young men like Erik Kesterson and Casey Sheehan are just so much cannon fodder in the Bush administration’s insatiable hunger for world domination.
(Bush’s challenge to Kesterson ranks right up there with Ann Coulter’s equally heartless and tasteless quip about the 9/11 widows of whom she said," "And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren’t planning to divorce these harpies?…" Birds of a feather, indeed!)
Dolores Kesterson meets the president.
By Jeff Norman
August 11, 2005Cindy Sheehan is not the only Gold Star mom who felt disrespected after a visit with George W. Bush. Dolores Kesterson, whose son Erik was killed in Iraq in November of 2003, was among several military families who last year were invited to meet with Bush as a group. Each family was allotted ten minutes with the president, but because she is divorced from her husband, Dolores asked to speak with Bush one-on-one.
Dolores reports exclusively for U.S. Tour of Duty that she waited alone in a small partitioned area, wondering if her request would be granted, before a Bush aide suddenly announced, "The president will now see you." As the commander in chief strode briskly toward her, it seemed to Dolores that he was trying to intimidate her. "He came marching in and got right in my face…eyeball to eyeball, and said, ‘I’m George Bush, the president of the United States, and I understand you have something to say to me in private.’"
Dolores tried to give Bush a sense of what type of person Erik had been. She described her son as a "comedian" whose favorite saying was, "Life is good." The president replied, "How do you know his life would have been good?"
Dolores was shocked by Bush’s eagerness to question the value of her son’s life. She told the president, "Nobody wants to die."
Before he concluded their meeting, Bush proclaimed to Dolores, "We won’t know in our lifetime whether or not Iraq was a success."
Here is an account of Kesterson’s encounter with anothe right wing bully, Bill O’Reilly.
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