Please note: Some names, dates, and non-essential details have changed to protect the innocent. Eveyone's innocent in this except BushCo.
My friend whose only son, 28, was killed in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Iraq one year and ninety-four days ago told me a story that I will never get my mind around, not ever.
There was another woman I’ll call 'Jane Smith' whose son ‘John’ also had been killed in Iraq. Jane was in a group of families meeting with President George Bush. Before the meeting, she had sent a long and anguished letter to Mr. Bush trying to describe the particular reality of her son, that he was not just a number, this complex and unrepeatable darling, daring life whose unique loss was unbearable to her. One of the details that she mentioned was that when anyone asked John how he was, he had this motto: he always said, “Life is good!”
Eventually it came Jane’s turn to have an audience with President George Bush. He said that he’d heard that she had especially wanted to talk to him. As they talked, the subject of John's motto came up. George Bush leaned, as my friend described it, “right up in Jane’s face, way too far into her personal space.” And then President George Bush said, “How do you know his life would have been good?”
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Who, what, could possibly say such a thing to anyone? Least of all the President of the United States to a grieving mother who just buried her only son? I have spoken the essence of this ghastly encounter as starkly and unvarnishedly as I can.
In the conversation, the Mother translated this as saying, “Your kid got killed on my lying watch, but his life probably wouldn't have been so hot anyway.” “How do you know his life would have been good?” Chilling.
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8 Rabbit . Lamat tzolkin 8 06.09.05 2:30:54 am
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I saw an interview with a quite old photographer who had shot photos of all the famous people of the mid-to-late twentieth century from Gandhi to Elvis to Pete Seeger to Nixon to Martin Luther King. The interviewer eventually asked him what he thought of George Bush whose photograph he had taken when Mr. Bush was governor of Texas.
The photographer had been all but gushing about every type and kind of person. But here there was a long pause. Then he said, “George Bush is a hard little man.” This photographer who had been looking at people's souls in intimate contact for fifty years, this observer, spoke sternly of only this one person. I thought it was very telling. And chilling.
6.10.05 I read Tin Soul yesterday with delight, and today I sailed through Toadster Bush with glee. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble to the little monster: half a million signatures already (last week actually)to demand an explanation, and our only knight so far is Conley. Oh, well, any tin hero will have to do for now, eh?
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