"My big, fat, collateral damage wedding"

[kpete]

What's better than being vice president? Duh, president. But not if you're Dick Cheney. As he and President Bush prepare to leave the building, Cheney already has his sights set on what his family calls the best job ever: Grandpa to his six grandkids. "He and my mom are completely involved grandparents," says daughter Mary, the mom of 14-month-old Sam. "It's always been amazing to me how much he makes time for them," she tells us. And we have proof. Jeanne Coley, a mom of twin girls, tells us that she was at Potomac, Md.'s Saddle Club, where her daughters were enrolled in pony camp last month, when the veep's motorcade arrived. Out popped Cheney to watch his granddaughter Grace perform in the week's final show. "You could just see how proud he was," says Coley. What's more, he stayed behind to take pictures with well-wishers like Coley's daughters, Katie and Morgan. "He complimented them and said they did very good, too," coos Coley. Saddle Club Director Carolyn Nordberg says Grace, the daughter of Cheney's daughter Elizabeth and son-in-law Philip Perry, had a lot to show Grandpa after her pony camp. "Just like any little girl, I think she was over the moon to have her granddad there," says Nordberg. Mary Cheney says her dad loves having the grandkids around and often sneaks off the compound to attend their events. He and wife, Lynne, also schedule special events for them, like this month's July 4 trip to Boston to hop aboard the uss Constitution for its annual turnaround. Pal and former aide Mary Matalin adds: "I can't think of one place the Cheneys have been without at least one and usually more of the kids." Mary Cheney says it surprises people when her parents show up with their lawn chairs at soccer or field hockey games. But the grandkids have a different view. "The kids have this great perspective on it which is, 'Yes, he's the vice president, but he's my Grandpa.' "
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/7/11/grandpa-cheney-into-the-sunset.html

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The Wedding Crashers: U.S. Jets Have Bombed Five Ceremonies in Afghanistan

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted July 15, 2008.

We have become a nation of wedding crashers, the uninvited guests who arrived under false pretenses, tore up the place, offering nary an apology.

It was a tribal affair. Against a picture-perfect sunset, before a beige-colored cross and an altar made of the very Texas limestone that was also used to build her family's "ranch," veil-less in an Oscar de la Renta gown, the 26 year-old bride said her vows. More than 200 members of her extended family and friends were on hand, as well as the 14 women in her "house party," who were dressed "in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match the palette of… wildflowers -- blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds." Afterwards, in a white tent set in a grove of trees and illuminated by strings of lights, the father of the bride, George W. Bush, danced with his daughter to the strains of "You Are So Beautiful." The media was kept at arm's length and the vows were private, but undoubtedly they included the phrase "till death do us part."
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/91457/?page=1
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It was then that the American plane (or planes) arrived, ensuring that she would never say her vows. "They stopped in a narrow location for rest," said one witness about her house party, according to the BBC. "The plane came and bombed the area." The district governor, Haji Amishah Gul, told the British Times, "So far there are 27 people, including women and children, who have been buried. Another 10 have been wounded. The attack happened at 6.30AM. Just two of the dead are men, the rest are women and children. The bride is among the dead."

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Nothing barbaric lurks here, even though we can be sure that these civilians were hardly less surprised by the arrival of the attacking planes than were the victims of 9/11. For their deaths, no word portraits are ever painted. No one in our world thinks to memorialize them, nor is there any cumulative record of their deaths. Whole extended families have been wiped out, while the dead and wounded run into the hundreds, and yet who remembers?

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Here's the truth of it: In Bush's wars, the wedding singer dies, the bride does not get a chance to run away, and the event might be relabeled my big, fat, collateral damage wedding.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/91457/?page=1

[groovedaddy]

1. Dick should show the grand kids some pictures

of the death, destruction and mayhem he has sponsored. That should make them really proud!