Slain Marine's father leads Atlanta rally

[fintstone]

I wonder why this did not get the same coverage on CNN as Sheehan did?

Slain Marine's father leads Atlanta rally
Texan critical of Sheehan's anti-war protests

By CARLOS CAMPOS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 09/09/05

A Texas father whose son was killed in Iraq spoke at a small rally at Georgia's state Capitol on Thursday, criticizing the anti-war protests of Cindy Sheehan.

Gary W. Qualls of Temple, Texas, told supporters that Sheehan — a soldier's mother who staged a monthlong protest near President Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch in August — does not speak for most of the families who have relatives fighting in Iraq.

Gary W. Qualls of Temple, Texas, holds a cross bearing his son's name on Thursday at the Georgia Capitol. He removed the cross from Cindy Sheehan's anti-war headquarters in Crawford, Texas.

Qualls, whose son, Marine Lance Cpl. Louis Qualls, was killed in Fallujah in 2004, said Sheehan's actions are "wrong, unethical, unjust" and "evil." Qualls said Sheehan is destroying troop morale by advocating a troop withdrawal that would harm the Iraqi people and hurt America's war on terror.

The gathering, which was promoted by the Georgia Republican Party, took place on the eve of a Sheehan visit to Atlanta. Qualls was joined by about 20 people holding signs in support of the troops and Bush. Their messages ranged from "God bless the soldiers that sacrifice for our country" to " 'W' is a Hottie."

Qualls held a white cross bearing his son's name that he removed from Sheehan's "Camp Casey," the headquarters of her protest. "She doesn't speak for us," Qualls said. The camp is named for Sheehan's son, Army Spec. Casey Sheehan, who was killed in Iraq in 2004. Qualls supporters opened up "Fort Qualls" in Crawford in response to Sheehan's efforts.

Sheehan's "Bring Them Home Now Tour" is scheduled in Atlanta today through Monday. She is expected to speak at a church in Stone Mountain on Saturday night.

Sheehan was traveling Thursday and could not be reached for comment. Andrea Buffa, a spokeswoman for Sheehan, said the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq are more demoralizing than anti-war protests in the United States.

"Families respond to death differently and families have different opinions about the war," Buffa said of Qualls' remarks. "And she's just speaking for a growing number of military families that believe it's actually supportive of the troops to bring them out of a situation where there's no end to the devastation in sight."

[Joeaksa]

Because it does not fit the media's outlook on news. Cindy is more liberal and thats what they are looking for...

JoeA

[Mulhollanddose]

Simply an oversight I am sure...sorta like the medias failure to come clean on their knowledge of the links between al qaeda and Sadddam...just an oversight.

[Joeaksa]

Interesting how the liberal Pelican members have "forgotten" to comment on this. That says a lot...

JA

[Don 944 LA]

Originally posted by Joeaksa
Interesting how the liberal Pelican members have "forgotten" to comment on this. That says a lot...

JA

I'm OK with ...
If the guy is proud of his sons death... thats his business.
Now, if he was saying that all Americans should send their sons to die... that I would be against.. and would make a negative coment.

[Joeaksa]

Still very interesting. Widebody, Tech, Speeder and so on still have not commented on this while they jumped on the "Cindy is my spokesperson" bandwagon very early on...

Joe A

[Seahawk]

Nobody sends their children to die...we try to make a difference, while you whine. It is a tough business, even in peace time. Take a minute to read the link. OBTW, I have no affiliation with the OS.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/opinion/orl-insinscasualties11091105sep11,0,1654686.story

[Joeaksa]

Seahawk,

Excellent article and wish more would read it. As one who has been there, there is just no way to describe it to civilians. As well, there is an even more difficult time trying to justify it to civilians.

When the WTC was struck 4 years ago today, THAT made a large majority of them understand, and in terms that they could grasp.

From the Orlando article:

One wonders how past wars could have been fought if news reporting had ignored strategic and tactical goals, and instead consisted almost entirely of a recitation of casualties.

The D-Day invasion was one of the greatest organizational feats ever achieved by human beings, and one of the most successful. But what if the only news Americans had gotten about the invasion was that 2,500 Allied soldiers died that day, with no discussion of whether the invasion was a success or a failure, and no acknowledgement of the huge strategic stakes that were involved?

Or what if such news coverage had continued, day by day, through the entire Battle of Normandy, with Americans having no idea whether the battle was being won or lost, but knowing only that 54,000 Allied troops had been killed by the Germans, with each such death a newspaper headline?

How about the Battle of Midway, one of the most one-sided and strategically significant battles of world history? What if there had been no "triumphalism," as liberals sometimes call patriotism, in the American media's reporting on the battle, and Americans had learned only that 307 Americans died -- never mind that the Japanese lost more than 10 times that many -- without being told the decisive significance of the engagement?

Or take Iwo Jima, the iconic Marine Corps battle. If Americans knew only that nearly 7,000 Marines lost their lives there, with no context, no strategy and only sporadic acknowledgement of the heroism that accompanied those thousands of deaths, would the American people have continued the virtually unanimous support for our country, our soldiers and our government that characterized World War II?

We are conducting an experiment never before seen, as far as I know, in the history of the human race. We are trying to fight a war under the auspices of a media establishment that is determined -- to put the most charitable face on it -- to emphasize American casualties over all other information about the war.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to state the obvious: Being a soldier is a dangerous thing. This is why we honor our service members' courage. For a soldier, sailor or Marine, "courage" isn't an easily abused abstraction -- "It took a lot of courage to vote against the farm bill" -- it's a requirement of the job.

Even in peacetime. The media's breathless tabulation of casualties in Iraq -- now, more than 1,800 deaths -- is generally devoid of context.

Here's some context: The Defense Department reports that from 1983 to 1996, 18,006 American military personnel died accidentally in the service of their country. That death rate of 1,286 per year exceeds the rate of combat deaths in Iraq by a ratio of nearly 2-to-1.

That's right: All through the years when hardly anyone was paying attention, soldiers, sailors and Marines were dying in accidents, training and otherwise, at nearly twice the rate of combat deaths in Iraq from the start of the war in 2003 to the present.

Somehow, though, when there was no political hay to be made, there was no great outcry, or gleeful reporting, or erecting of crosses in the president's hometown about this much higher death rate.

In fact, one is hard-pressed to find any contemporary expression of concern by reporters, politicians or political activists about the 18,006 American service members who died accidentally in service of their country from 1983 to 1996.

The point? Being a soldier is not safe and never will be. I recently heard a news reporter say that about 2,000 servicemen and -women have died in Afghanistan and Iraq "on President Bush's watch," as though the job of the commander in chief were to make the jobs of our soldiers safe.

They're not safe, and they never will be safe, in peacetime, let alone wartime.

What is the president's responsibility? To expend our most precious resources only when necessary, in service of the national interest.

We would all prefer that our soldiers never be required to fight. Everyone -- most of all, every politician -- much prefers peace to war.

But when our enemies fly airplanes into our skyscrapers; attack the nerve center of our armed forces; bomb our embassies; scheme to blow up our commercial airliners; try to assassinate our former president; do their best to shoot down our military aircraft; murder our citizens; assassinate our diplomats overseas; and attack our naval vessels -- well, then, the time has come to fight.

And when the time comes to fight, our military personnel are ready. They don't ask to be preserved from all danger. They know their job is dangerous; they knew that when they signed up. They are prepared to face the risk, on our behalf.

All they ask is to be allowed to win.

It is, I think, a reasonable request. It's the least that we -- all Americans, including reporters and editors -- can do.

John Hinderaker is a trial lawyer with a national practice and is one of the authors of the Power Line web site, powerlineblog.com.

We have gotten ourselves in a situation where information is beamed back at times even live from the war zone. This never happened in the wars before and is influencing things as never before.

As the author states above, we have military people who are in "harms way" so that we do not have to be ourselves. They should be left alone and "allowed to win" and then the arm chair quarterbacks can come in and discuss until they find something else to become an expert with. With this endless discussion going on day after day about who is right and who is wrong the only people its helping is the enemy.

Our military need and deserve our support, especially at this time.

Joe A