I Cogitate
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William Stout entered the Valley of Death and never returned
The casualties on all sides have been horrendous. The sad and sadder stories abound.
That's the brutality of war.
Buy why President Bush exhibits more loyalty to Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld than to William Stout is inexcusable.
And every time the VFW leaders and membership overwhelmingly applaud the Commander-In-Chief and bash any dissenters, even within their own ranks, is inexplicable.
The Iraq War was unnecessary. The lead up to it, at best, specious. The conduct of the campaign incompetent. The commanding of military personnel to commit torture repellant. The funding for the physical and mental health of veterans incomplete.
Read the following, or at least try to, and ask yourself: is the war in Iraq worth it? Keep in mind the few who have actually made a sacrifice.
Wounded livesTo read the rest. go here.
After three years of war, many who served in Iraq are returning home to face a different kind of battle. And the casualties this time are American families.
Sunday, March 19, 2006
JULIE SULLIVAN
The Oregonian
The Fourth of July had fizzled into a tense fifth at the tidy two-story Hillsboro home. Outside, water shimmered blue in the backyard pool and bicycles lay on the lawn. Inside, William R. Stout Jr.stepped toward his wife.
"Give me the gun," he demanded.
Thirteen-year-old Samantha Stout pushed between her parents. Sam was petite for her age, but her voice was strong. "Dad," she said, "stop it!"
"Dad and I are just trying to talk," Wendy Stout recalls saying. "Go into the other room."
"I just want to clean my gun," police reported the father of two saying. He'd started with a beer that summer evening and then moved on to four tumblers of Jack Daniel's and Coke. Then he demanded his 9 mm Makarov.
"It's not here, Bill," Wendy recalls saying. The relief that the 40-year-old woman felt at having her husband return from Iraq nine months earlier had dissolved in his dark moods and the growing realization that he could hurt himself. Wendy was worried enough to have taken Bill's old pistol from its bedroom hiding place, wrapped it in a plastic bag and shoved it under the back deck.
"Give me the gun," he barked again. He smacked the electric fan, sending it skittering across the floor. Sammy's little sister, Maggie, 10, started to cry. Their dad never hit anyone or anything.
Suddenly, Bill grabbed his wife's left wrist. The girls screamed.
Wendy snatched the telephone, dialing 9-1-1 and crying out for help "Now!" Minutes later, Hillsboro police pounded across the freshly stained porch to the front door.
Bill slammed out the back. The Oregon Army National Guardsman limped across the large and well-used backyard. He passed the girls' tiny playhouse and his prized garden of tomatoes, beans and corn, now weed-choked and abandoned. He headed to his motorcycle shed as he had every summer day since returning from Iraq, barricading himself behind a wall of head-busting heavy metal music and the stale smell of alcohol.
As police officers stood before the barbecue grill and lawn chairs, Bill "appeared to be in a trance and remembering the events in Iraq." He didn't want to be ambushed, they said in their official report, by them -- or the Iraqis. Then, as police watched, Sgt. Stout pulled out his cell phone and called in help.
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