Soldier's parents speak out against war

[babylonsister]

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=9027

January 19th, 2007 5:06 pm
Soldier's parents speak out against war

By Dave OBrien / Ravenna Record-Courier

RAVENNA, OH -- Edward August "Augie" Schroeder II was a 23-year-old lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps on Aug. 3, 2005 when an insurgent improvised explosive device killed him and 13 other Marines in Haditha, Iraq.

"He was just the same as all the kids you know. We didnt expect he would go into the military," his mother, Rosemary Palmer, said. "His college roommate told me 'The hardest thing he ever hit was the remote, but he saw 9/11 as an attack on his country and wanted to protect his family and friends."

Palmer and Paul Schroeder, Augies father, have since become vocal critics of the Iraq War, and on Thursday shared memories of their son and their plans for helping all American soldiers posted in Iraq to get back alive with approximately 50 people at a Portage Democratic Coalition meeting at the Capt. Brady Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 3703 in Kent.

A former volunteer on a New-Jersey first aid squad, Augie Schroeder worked for a time at Streetsboros Deluxe Corp.

"(Augie) saw his friends being killed. He told me they were clearing the same cities over and over again, and told me it didnt seem very effective," Palmer said. On the day her son died, she said she thought "So few people really know" what it is like to lose a child.

The couple has turned their grief into action, forming Families of the Fallen for Change a now 1,500-member Internet-based organization at www.fofchange.org that supports American troops, but also believes it possible to criticize government policies that endanger their lives unnecessarily.

Palmer, whose other current project is knitting scarves for Marines in Iraq where temperatures can dip below freezing, said a news reporter pulled her aside once and told her not to say she opposed the war because she would be the target of phone calls and "crazy people."

"I said 'What more can they do to us?" she said, adding that protesters like Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey also died in Iraq and caused her to question the war, "scare people."

The couple has called for a bipartisan plan to end the war, full psychological, medical and prosthetic care for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans "as long as it is necessary," Palmer said, and congressional pressure on the Bush administration to get the troops home.