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The
betrayed mothers of America
Vietnam comes to mind. They talk of their patriotism, though
patriotism is not enough
By Robert Fisk
11/19/05 "The
Independent" -- -- I sit in one of the dives on 44th
Street, uncertain how to approach Sue Niederer and Celeste Zappala,
afraid that their stories can be too easily turned into tears, their
message lost after the Veterans' Day march. They were put at the
back of the New York parade, humiliated, with their little crowd of
anti-war veterans and their memories of boys who left young wives
for Iraq and came back in coffins.
Later I sit between the two women and remember the blood splashed
across the road at Khan Dari and the 82nd Airborne washing away the
brains from the highway in central Fallujah and the body lying
beneath a tarp in north Baghdad. I've seen the American corpses. Now
here are the American mothers.
Sue lost her son Seth on 3 February last year. He was looking for
"improvised explosive devices" near Iskanderiya, south of Baghdad -
the infamous IEDs, roadside bombs which have taken hundreds of
American lives - when a booby trap blew up next to him.
Dates are important to Sue. She goes back over them repeatedly, as
if this will somehow straighten things out, make sense of the
immorality of her son's death, perhaps - I sense this powerfully,
though I am not certain - bring him, however briefly, back to life.
Seth married on 26 August 2003, just five days before he was first
deployed to Iraq; his young wife, Kelly, scarcely had time to know
her husband. He came home on leave on 1 January 2004, left on 17
January and was killed just three weeks later.
Sue's voice rises in indignation above the noise of the New York
diner, angry and brave and drowning out the joshing of two vets at
the other end of the table. "I remember very clearly my son's last
words before he went back after his two weeks' vacation. 'I don't
know who my enemy is,' he said. 'It's a worthless, senseless war, a
war of religion. We'll never win it.' He wasn't killed. He was
murdered. He was murdered by the US administration. He was out
looking for IEDs. He found one, stopped his convoy and was blown up.
I regard it as a suicide mission."
I know Iskanderiya, the place where Seth died. It's a flyblown Sunni
Muslim town south of Baghdad, throat-cutting country where
insurgents man their own checkpoints beside the palm groves and
canals. Vietnam comes to mind. The other voices round the table are
lowered now. The waiter turns up with pizzas and Pepsis and red
wine. There's an American flag in the centre of the table. These
mothers and ex-soldiers all talk of their patriotism, although these
days they might agree with Nurse Edith Cavell: that patriotism is
not enough.
Celeste's son Sherwood was killed on 26 April last year, his end as
tragic as it was unnecessary. He was protecting a group of military
inspectors hunting for President Bush's mythical weapons of mass
destruction when a perfume factory they were searching in Baghdad
suddenly exploded.
"He was getting out of the cab of his truck to help the wounded when
some debris came crashing out of the sky and hit him," Celeste says.
"When they left on their mission, they were supposed to have a lorry
with them with equipment that would explode bombs by radio before
they reached the scene. But that day, the lorry broke down and a
British officer told them to set off on the mission without it. I
will always remember that my son died just a month after George W
Bush made that videotape in front of the press - the one where he
made a joke about looking for weapons of mass destruction and
pretended to search under his desk for the weapons. He was making
fun of the fact he hadn't found them - but my son died looking for
them and they didn't exist."
Sherwood and his 28-year-old wife, Deborah, had a young son. "We
always tell him that his father was a hero," Celeste says. "We think
of him that way. He was a noble man." Sherwood had joined the
National Guard in 1997, believing - like thousands of other American
servicemen in Iraq - that he could use the money to pay off his
college loans. "He'd told us he would go and do the job and that he
would bring all his men home safely. There were 15 of them, all from
Pennsylvania, and he kept his word. They all came home safely -
except for Sherwood."
At the other end of our table, Alex Ryabov, who served in R Battery,
5th Battalion, 10th Marines, in the original 2003 invasion force,
says he was against the war from the start, refusing to believe
there were any weapons of mass destruction.
"When I got into Iraq, I saw what our artillery rounds did to
people. I had to go up front to see where the rounds were falling
and I saw whole Iraqi cities engulfed in flames. There were Iraqi
dead on the sides of the roads - I couldn't tell if they were men or
women."
Is it therefore so surprising that this little group of mothers and
ex-soldiers should have trailed along behind the Veterans' Parade in
New York or that they should now represent Military Families Speak
Out and Iraq Veterans Against the War, and should have joined older
men who belonged to Vietnam Veterans Against the War? These are not
the men and women whom George Bush wants to have at hand when he
denounces congressmen for claiming he fiddled the intelligence files
before the war, when he tells yet more enthusiastic young soldiers
that America will "prevail" in its "war on terror" and I can see
why.
"My husband, Greg, was an absolute Republican, even after my son was
killed," Sue says. "But then we went to see Michael Moore's film
Fahrenheit 9/11. And as we walked out, my husband apologised to me.
I said: 'What are you apologising for?' And he said: 'I'm sorry -
everything you've said about the war is correct. I'll back you 100
per cent in everything you say and everything you do.'"
I say goodbye to this little group of brave American men and women -
the ex-soldiers have no jobs, no future save their enthusiasm for
their own campaign against the Iraq war - and leave their table with
its sad, gold-fringed American flag and head off into the fumes and
noise of Times Square. Up on a giant television screen,
Vice-President Cheney - he who went on lying about the non-existent
links between Saddam and 9/11 long after the invasion - is solemnly
bowing his head in the Arlington cemetery. Ah yes, he is honouring
the fallen. And I wonder if he will ever understand his betrayal of
the men and women back on 44th Street.
I sit in one of the dives on 44th Street, uncertain how to approach
Sue Niederer and Celeste Zappala, afraid that their stories can be
too easily turned into tears, their message lost after the Veterans'
Day march. They were put at the back of the New York parade,
humiliated, with their little crowd of anti-war veterans and their
memories of boys who left young wives for Iraq and came back in
coffins.
Later I sit between the two women and remember the blood splashed
across the road at Khan Dari and the 82nd Airborne washing away the
brains from the highway in central Fallujah and the body lying
beneath a tarp in north Baghdad. I've seen the American corpses. Now
here are the American mothers.
Sue lost her son Seth on 3 February last year. He was looking for
"improvised explosive devices" near Iskanderiya, south of Baghdad -
the infamous IEDs, roadside bombs which have taken hundreds of
American lives - when a booby trap blew up next to him.
Dates are important to Sue. She goes back over them repeatedly, as
if this will somehow straighten things out, make sense of the
immorality of her son's death, perhaps - I sense this powerfully,
though I am not certain - bring him, however briefly, back to life.
Seth married on 26 August 2003, just five days before he was first
deployed to Iraq; his young wife, Kelly, scarcely had time to know
her husband. He came home on leave on 1 January 2004, left on 17
January and was killed just three weeks later.
Sue's voice rises in indignation above the noise of the New York
diner, angry and brave and drowning out the joshing of two vets at
the other end of the table. "I remember very clearly my son's last
words before he went back after his two weeks' vacation. 'I don't
know who my enemy is,' he said. 'It's a worthless, senseless war, a
war of religion. We'll never win it.' He wasn't killed. He was
murdered. He was murdered by the US administration. He was out
looking for IEDs. He found one, stopped his convoy and was blown up.
I regard it as a suicide mission."
I know Iskanderiya, the place where Seth died. It's a flyblown Sunni
Muslim town south of Baghdad, throat-cutting country where
insurgents man their own checkpoints beside the palm groves and
canals. Vietnam comes to mind. The other voices round the table are
lowered now. The waiter turns up with pizzas and Pepsis and red
wine. There's an American flag in the centre of the table. These
mothers and ex-soldiers all talk of their patriotism, although these
days they might agree with Nurse Edith Cavell: that patriotism is
not enough.
Celeste's son Sherwood was killed on 26 April last year, his end as
tragic as it was unnecessary. He was protecting a group of military
inspectors hunting for President Bush's mythical weapons of mass
destruction when a perfume factory they were searching in Baghdad
suddenly exploded.
"He was getting out of the cab of his truck to help the wounded when
some debris came crashing out of the sky and hit him," Celeste says.
"When they left on their mission, they were supposed to have a lorry
with them with equipment that would explode bombs by radio before
they reached the scene. But that day, the lorry broke down and a
British officer told them to set off on the mission without it. I
will always remember that my son died just a month after George W
Bush made that videotape in front of the press - the one where he
made a joke about looking for weapons of mass destruction and
pretended to search under his desk for the weapons. He was making
fun of the fact he hadn't found them - but my son died looking for
them and they didn't exist."
Sherwood and his 28-year-old wife, Deborah, had a young son. "We
always tell him that his father was a hero," Celeste says. "We think
of him that way. He was a noble man." Sherwood had joined the
National Guard in 1997, believing - like thousands of other American
servicemen in Iraq - that he could use the money to pay off his
college loans. "He'd told us he would go and do the job and that he
would bring all his men home safely. There were 15 of them, all from
Pennsylvania, and he kept his word. They all came home safely -
except for Sherwood."
At the other end of our table, Alex Ryabov, who served in R Battery,
5th Battalion, 10th Marines, in the original 2003 invasion force,
says he was against the war from the start, refusing to believe
there were any weapons of mass destruction.
"When I got into Iraq, I saw what our artillery rounds did to
people. I had to go up front to see where the rounds were falling
and I saw whole Iraqi cities engulfed in flames. There were Iraqi
dead on the sides of the roads - I couldn't tell if they were men or
women."
Is it therefore so surprising that this little group of mothers and
ex-soldiers should have trailed along behind the Veterans' Parade in
New York or that they should now represent Military Families Speak
Out and Iraq Veterans Against the War, and should have joined older
men who belonged to Vietnam Veterans Against the War? These are not
the men and women whom George Bush wants to have at hand when he
denounces congressmen for claiming he fiddled the intelligence files
before the war, when he tells yet more enthusiastic young soldiers
that America will "prevail" in its "war on terror" and I can see
why.
"My husband, Greg, was an absolute Republican, even after my son was
killed," Sue says. "But then we went to see Michael Moore's film
Fahrenheit 9/11. And as we walked out, my husband apologised to me.
I said: 'What are you apologising for?' And he said: 'I'm sorry -
everything you've said about the war is correct. I'll back you 100
per cent in everything you say and everything you do.'"
I say goodbye to this little group of brave American men and women -
the ex-soldiers have no jobs, no future save their enthusiasm for
their own campaign against the Iraq war - and leave their table with
its sad, gold-fringed American flag and head off into the fumes and
noise of Times Square. Up on a giant television screen,
Vice-President Cheney - he who went on lying about the non-existent
links between Saddam and 9/11 long after the invasion - is solemnly
bowing his head in the Arlington cemetery. Ah yes, he is honouring
the fallen. And I wonder if he will ever understand his betrayal of
the men and women back on 44th Street.
Copyright The Independent
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