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11/20/2005:

"Middle America asks: 'Did we give up our young so cheaply?'"

...'He came here when he needed votes,' Peggy Logue tells us as the family prepares to go to Lima Company's homecoming to be reunited with their son, Mike. 'When the marines were killed, there was no sign of him and if he should come now I'd be sickened. Does he think we give up our young so cheaply? He wasn't here for the death and the pain, why should he be here for the glory?'

Not that there was ever much chance of Bush appearing at the homecoming. He doesn't do those either. Nor does this Commander-in-Chief, unlike many of his predecessors, greet the flag-draped coffins of fallen soldiers that traditionally arrive back at Dover air force base. In fact, for the war dead from Iraq he tried to impose a total news blackout, banning the release of pictures taken by the military's own photographers.
observor.guardian.co.uk

Thrill of the Kill: The Other Tragedy in Iraq
The Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright was embedded with the first marines to go into Iraq, hard men who punched the skies with their fists when American helicopter gunships flew overhead, shouting: "Get some!"

In Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America, and the New Face of American War, Wright vividly describes the confusion and raw brutality of executing a military strategy in a civilian landscape.

In one story, after a bloody expedition through an Iraqi town, a marine who was excited at the death and mayhem pants: "I was just thinking one thing when we drove into that ambush. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. I felt like I was living it when I seen the flames coming out of windows, the blown-up car in the street, guys crawling around shooting at us. It was f---ing cool."

Fisk: The Betrayed Mothers of America