I was gonna suggest a Iraq KIA gallery featuring family of DUers

[Bucky]

Having heard the bad news happening to DUer Gardeaux08's family, with the loss of his 28 year old nephew in Iraq, I was going to suggest that DU set up a tribute to the precious lives lost in this war that affected us as an internet community--not abstract numbers, but real men and women whose lives and futures have been sacrificed to a great country embarked on a fool's mission. And given the sadness of the moment, "fool's mission" is the nicest and most dignified way I can put it.

But then I got to thinking about our lurkers.

About a month ago I started a thread asking DUers to post links to their blogs (a post that eventually led to me doing the new weekly Blog Box column). But as a result of posting to that thread, several DUers whose blogs allowed comments suddenly started getting spammed by our intrepid lurking freepers. For a couple of us, it turned into a real headache.

So then it occurred to me that if we put up a tribute to those brave patriots who's sacrifice is spurring us on to oppose this pointless, horrid war, basically we're inviting the same batch of hateful freepers to trackdown those KIA's grieving families and email the same hateful poison to them. And don't doubt for a minute they'd do exactly that--freepers have a lot a free time living down in their mom's basement.

Then I thought, "Well if they do so, fuck 'em. I want us to pay tribute to the people that our cyber community has lost." And if the right wing freaks who do this sort of thing get off on that, then their hateful taunts to grieving families will just show the world how wrong their cause is.

But then I realized that that doesn't matter. The families have suffered enough. It's not right, even with the best of intentions, to expose them to people who will mock their sorrow.

So I'm confused. And I'm looking for feedback here. Should we ask the admins to set up a tribute page? Am I being paranoid or appropriately cautious about the lurkers? Is it something we should think about doing or is it beyond the scope of this board? We're losing so much as a country and just want this community to have some way of honoring those who serve their country--even when the country refuses to serve them.

Ideas, anyone?

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