2000 and counting

[ste_noni]

Sometime yesterday, the 200th serviceman/woman died in Iraq. I'm consciously avoiding the topic of the Iraq War because I can't talk about it without getting angry.

Before Ellie was born, the idea of soldiers dying made me sad. It seemed like such a waste. Since her birth, however, the very idea of losing a child can bring me to tears if I think about it for more than a few minutes. Just the idea of losing Ellie is almost unbearable.

Joe and I knew two men who died in Iraq. The first was a friend of Joe's and they worked closely together. Joe used to see him every day when they deployed.

The second guy Joe knew just barely. I knew his wife. His wife made an impression on me because she was at the airport with a friend whose husband was coming in the day Joe came home from Iraq the first time. She had never met me before, but we figured out that our husbands worked together. When Joe hugged me as he walked off the plane, she took pictures for me. When I heard her husband had been killed, all I could think about was that she would never get that moment of seeing her husband step off the plane to hugs and balloons.

Anyway, the NY Times has a list of all the people who died in Iraq. Matt Schram died on May 28, 2003. Josh Byers died on July 23, 2003.

Comments

[sarameg.livejournal.com]

Back when Doonesbury ran the list of names, I had to send it to my brother because one of his friends, and a former drill instuctor were listed. And they're up there.

The friend, Joseph Rodriguez, had a son a few months younger than my brother's child, and I know that's something that hit my brother and his wife hard. Dominic got extra hard hugs that week.

[zonewombat.livejournal.com]

I was tending toward sad anyway, and reading your post pushed me completely into a cosmic, all-encompassing sadness. I know that the servicemen and women want to serve their country, and I know they know what they are getting into. I work with them every day, and I used to have a job sending them into harm's way. So I can't really claim that Bush is killing them in cold blood.

But I hate that we as a nation are asking them to lay down their lives for this particular goal.

[ste-noni.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to have made you sadder.

The thing that upsets me the most is that while everyone in the military is a volunteer, I want the thing they are risking themselves for to be worth it.