WP: Talking Wounded, "...[Bush's] ego is getting people killed"

[Rose Siding]

snip>
Like the rest of the 13,877 Americans wounded in Iraq, Rodgers has a story to tell. He tells it in a matter-of-fact voice, like he's talking about making a midnight pizza run or something. He's sitting in an armchair with his right leg propped on an ottoman, the foot encased in a soft black cast that reaches almost to the knee. His crutches are lying on the rug beside the chair.

"The Humvee finally comes to a stop and the right side is just torn apart and I hear my squad leader screaming, 'I think I lost my arm!' And my best friend Maida was in the front passenger seat where the bomb went off and he was screaming, 'Where's help? Where's help?' And then he went quiet.
....
One day a nurse came in to ask Rodgers if he wanted to meet President Bush, who was visiting the hospital. Rodgers declined.

"I don't want anything to do with him," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Maybe not completely but enough that we wouldn't be losing people -- at least not at this rate. So I think he himself is responsible for quite a few American deaths."
...
Rodgers says he also declined to meet Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. This wounded soldier has lost faith in his leaders, and he no longer believes their repeated assurances of victory.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/09/AR2005080901441.html

[dbt]

1. bu$h is responsible for ALL the American deaths.

That sorry son of a BITCH was lying and he KNEW he was lying. He sent our young people to die in Iraq so Cheney and the boys could get richer.

[Rose Siding]

2. This kid says he wasn't political when he signed up

It's remarkable to see in yet another prominent story that Bush's folly is an increasingly more impossible sell.

[quisp]

3. It's a shame for him to have to go through that to

realize that it's ego (and money) getting Americans killed in Iraq.

I work with a couple of wingnuts and they were totally for the war when it started, but now one has a son in the Marines and the other has a son going into the Navy and neither one of them still supports the war.

[Supersedeas]

4. stamped for Print Media Only: TV Networks will never touch this

Wounded Veterans are not supposed to talk, right?

[GreenPartyVoter]

5. This kid is pulling no punches. I am surprised that the WaPo did this one

[Rose Siding]

6. I was too

And it's pretty in depth, as it goes.