DISPATCHES FROM AMERICA: He was 22 ... She was 12 ...

[xchrom]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/ML03Df06.html

He was 22, a corporal in the US marines from Preston, Iowa, a "city" incorporated in 1890 with a present population of 949. He died in a hospital in Germany of "wounds received from an explosive device while on patrol in Helmand province" in Afghanistan. Of him, his high-school principal said, "He was a good kid". He is survived by his parents.

He was 20, a private in the 10th Mountain Division from Boyne City, population 3,735 souls, which bills itself as "the fastest-growing city in northern Michigan". He died of "wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit with small-arms fire" and is survived by his parents.

These were the last two of the 10 Americans whose deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq were announced by the Pentagon during Thanksgiving week in late November. The other eight came from


Apache Junction, Arizona; Fayetteville, North Carolina; Greensboro, North Carolina; Navarre, Florida; Wichita, Kansas; San Jose, California; Moline, Illinois; and Danville, California. Six of them died from improvised explosive devices (roadside bombs), assumedly without ever seeing the Afghan enemies who killed them. One died of "indirect fire" and another "while conducting combat operations". On such things, Defense Department press releases are relatively tight-lipped, as was the US Army, for instance, when it released news that same week of 17 "potential suicides" among active-duty soldiers in October.

These days, the names of the dead dribble directly on to the inside pages of newspapers, or simply into the ether, in a war now opposed by 63% of Americans, according to the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp opinion poll, but in truth barely remembered by anyone in the US. It's a reality made easier by the fact that the dead of America's All-Volunteer Army tend to come from forgettable places - small towns, obscure suburbs, third- or fourth-rank cities - and a military that ever fewer Americans have any connection with.




***:mad: :cry:

[Quartermass]

1. The title is misleading. I thought it was going to be about child molestation.