Soldier's LTTE: Bush taints soldiers' sacrifices when using the word "we".

[pacalo]

To the Editor:

In March 2003, I was ordered to go to Iraq to "be all I can be" and fight for my country like other soldiers in the U.S. Army. Besides being in Iraq for one year for no reason, there was another thing that annoyed my fellow soldiers and me. That was the way President Bush used the word "we" when he talked about the sacrifices that soldiers are making, extending our stay in wartime and the reason we were there.

The sacrifices that soldiers are making in Iraq are being tainted every time Bush talks about it using "we." The president is not the one who is losing his wife, children and dog to some other man named "Jodie" at home. He is not the one missing the first breath of a firstborn or the last breath of a soldier, mom or dad.

(snip)

The president should ask himself: Why are U.S. troops in Iraq? Because we, the soldiers, are the ones living the everyday, never-ending hell. Soldiers and people dying, a great amount of oil, but still we have not found any weapons of mass destruction. When you ask a soldier who has been living in Iraq for a year why he is there in front of a camera, he might reply that it is to make Iraqi people free. But when he is out of the spotlight, his anger, pain and hate will come flying out like it does in his everyday Iraqi life.

http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/poststandard/letters/index.ssf?/base/opinion-4/1103535394177972.xml