Hampton Branch Library
Are We More Safe or Less?
RECEIVED Tue., Jan. 1, 2008
Dear Editor,
I was a soldier for 20 years. I was always willing and prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to give my life for my nation. I never meant to be a patriot. I just looked in the mirror one day, and there he was, much like the old man who now appears in the mirror these days. 2008 is a new beginning, and during this new beginning, I saw four young men celebrating the coming of the new year in their new wheelchairs and crutches. I am not sure if these injuries occurred before Jan. 20, 2004, or since. Yet these young men will carry these injuries for the rest of their lives. I was never prepared to be crippled the rest of my life. 2007 had the highest casualty count since the beginning of the [Iraq] war, yet this last year of the war was declared to be a great success. I would tell you the total cost of the war, but it goes hidden and unreported – both in financial terms and in lives both dead and suffering. The U.S. death count is at 3,903, so we’ll see 4,000 dead in one month, maybe two. Those four guys in their top-of-the-line wheelchairs and crutches will spend the rest of their lives begging for medical treatment that I believe they earned. I voted a straight Democratic ticket for the first time in my Republican life in the hope that they would frustrate, if not end, the war in Iraq. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid should have impeached President Bush for his civil rights crimes, from voter-fraud “caging lists” to illegal wiretapping to the loss of $10 billion, the Walter Reed Hospital scandal, and most of all the loss of not only our security but the entire world's safety. Just look at the Benazir Bhutto assassination. Does this make us more safe or less?
I was a soldier for 20 years. I was always willing and prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to give my life for my nation. I never meant to be a patriot. I just looked in the mirror one day, and there he was, much like the old man who now appears in the mirror these days. 2008 is a new beginning, and during this new beginning, I saw four young men celebrating the coming of the new year in their new wheelchairs and crutches. I am not sure if these injuries occurred before Jan. 20, 2004, or since. Yet these young men will carry these injuries for the rest of their lives. I was never prepared to be crippled the rest of my life. 2007 had the highest casualty count since the beginning of the [Iraq] war, yet this last year of the war was declared to be a great success. I would tell you the total cost of the war, but it goes hidden and unreported – both in financial terms and in lives both dead and suffering. The U.S. death count is at 3,903, so we’ll see 4,000 dead in one month, maybe two. Those four guys in their top-of-the-line wheelchairs and crutches will spend the rest of their lives begging for medical treatment that I believe they earned. I voted a straight Democratic ticket for the first time in my Republican life in the hope that they would frustrate, if not end, the war in Iraq. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid should have impeached President Bush for his civil rights crimes, from voter-fraud “caging lists” to illegal wiretapping to the loss of $10 billion, the Walter Reed Hospital scandal, and most of all the loss of not only our security but the entire world's safety. Just look at the Benazir Bhutto assassination. Does this make us more safe or less?
Ron Ruiz