They May be Evil, but at Least They're Vile
So you might think that the next this family would hear from the Administration is an answer to just how Jesse died. But no. Bush's campaign called and asked her to appear in a commercial for him.
They said no.
And Jesse? It turns out he'd been shot by Polish soldiers operating with his unit. Josh White of the Washington Post, which ran this story on today's front page, says that Jesse's death "had the potential to cause a rift with a coalition partner right before the 2004 presidential election. They asked friends in Jesse's platoon what had happened, but the soldiers had been told not to discuss the incident until the investigation was complete."
White and Jesse's family compared his case to Pat Tillman, ex-Arizona Cardinals player who died from friendly fire in Afghanistan.
Buryj's death had international ramifications. U.S. officials alleged within internal channels that Polish troops killed him with reckless shots. Polish officials said Polish troops could not have killed him. Tests that could have determined the truth were not conducted.
"If they can lie to Pat Tillman's family, what do you think they're going to do to Ma and Pop in Middle America here?" asked Peggy Buryj, who had supported her son's decision to join the Army after his high school graduation in 2002. "The story changes. You can't believe anything."
Peggy and Amber Buryj believe they were strung along because Jesse's death became a diplomatic embarrassment. Documents obtained by The Washington Post reveal one investigation that was abruptly terminated because of diplomatic concerns, another that was not shared with Polish allies, and delays in the release of official reports about Buryj's death. Those documents were not issued until after Bush was reelected -- with the help of a slim margin in Buryj's home state of Ohio.
"I'm angry, I'm so angry," Peggy Buryj said. "I gave them my son, and he served proudly. He didn't deserve this. His family didn't deserve this. I just want to know the truth."
posted by Anonymous at 9:14 AM
1 Comments:
deja vu all over again. this is so reminiscent of c.d.b. bryan's book friendly fire, about the mullen family of iowa. their son, a graduate student in biochemistry and the hope of the family, gave up graduate school when he was drafted in l969 and went to vietnam. less than a year later, he was dead, of a "fatal missle wound," as the family was told. when the body came back with no visible marks on it except a small wound the size of a pen top in his back, the family began to wonder about the death. after three or four years of hard slogging, interviewing the people in their son's unit, looking at newspaper accounts, enlisting the help of their congresspeople, they finally determined that american artillery killed their son--the people on the guns failed to correct for the height of some trees when they were firing some rounds to warn off vc in the middle of the night. the shells exploded over their son's position and a small piece of shrapnel pierced his heart(he wasn't wearing a flak jacket). but the process was so corrosive and disillusioning...this family lost their faith in their president, in the american government, in this country in general, and they had once been the most patriotic people on earth. death of a son, death of faith. you get that same sense from this story.
wars will do that to you. that's why you don't choose war, you NEVER choose war.
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