I know this is a long diary, but I hope you will read it, because I know many of you have been through this....and maybe many more of us, like me, need to know what it feels like when it hits closer to home.
MASHPEE — Daniel McGuire was a Boy Scout, Paul Conlon a poet.
McGuire was known for his roles in school plays, Conlon for his catchphrases and Mohawk haircuts.
McGuire was a Marine, Conlon an Army soldier.
But both were sons of Mashpee, and this week, Mashpee brought them home.
On Aug. 14, Pfc. McGuire, 19, was killed in the Anbar province of Iraq when the post he was guarding was attacked by enemy forces.
The next day, Pfc. Conlon, 21, was killed in the Wardak province of Afghanistan when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device then sustained small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire.
I had been thinking lately that I had become too immune to the roll call of killed in action at the end of Stephenopoulos' show because I didn't stop to look anymore. I used to make note of the young ages and I would get choked up, thinking of my own two sons. I think the outrage had quelled a bit over the months and years of dashed hopes that each new revelation of the lies that brought us this madness would be the one to bring them down and bring our soldiers home. I guess when it comes closer to home, it comes closer to your heart and becomes more real...and choking up is the least of what I feel.
The journey home for McGuire began Aug. 14, when two Marines met his father in his driveway around 6 a.m.
First Sgt. Terry Hilson and Cpl. Jacob Miller — the two-man team assigned out of a casualty assistance unit in Providence — were there to say something there's just no easy way to say: "On behalf of the Marine Corps. and the president of the United States, we are here to inform you that your son has been killed in Iraq."
The next day, they returned to begin making arrangements.
"They actually took it pretty well," Miller said. "They weren't hung up on his body. They weren't really concerned whether it would be open casket or closed casket because they knew he was in heaven."
I live on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Whenever I tell someone that's where I live, they assume I'm rich and live in a beachfront home. The reality is that most of the 'year-rounders" live within modest means (with more difficulty every year). We are the people who service your cars and homes ,teach the children, feed you in restaurants and clean the resort homes.
When you live on Cape Cod,you don't live in just one town...you live on Cape Cod. Whenever I am coming home from a trip, as soon as I cross over the bridge onto this sandy penninsula, I feel like I am home, even though I have to drive another 25 minutes to my town. So, last week, when we lost two very young soldiers who both happened to be from the same small Cape Cod town, we all felt the loss.
I'm sure this same feeling has played out for many of you who have lost your local sons and daughters to the lie that is the Iraq War. Yes, Paul was killed in Afghanistan, but we know that if we hadn't pulled troops out of Afghanistan to invade Iraq, the "war on terrah" may have ended there years ago and saved so many lives....American and Iraqi.
A former top aide to Colin Powell says his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "the lowest point" in his life.
"I wish I had not been involved in it," says Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005. "I look back on it, and I still say it was the lowest point in my life."
In one dramatic accusation in his speech, Powell showed slides alleging that Saddam had bioweapons labs mounted on trucks that would be almost impossible to find.
"In fact, Secretary Powell was not told that one of the sources he was given as a source of this information had indeed been flagged by the Defense Intelligence Agency as a liar, a fabricator," says David Kay, who served as the CIA's chief weapons inspector in Iraq after the fall of Saddam. That source, an Iraqi defector who had never been debriefed by the CIA, was known within the intelligence community as "Curveball."
I have two sons in their twenties. One of them is a poet, like Paul. I can't imagine...or maybe it is because of them that I can imagine....the pain the families suffer. There was a candlelight vigil last week....
Courtney Shopshire, who dated Conlon on and off for three years, clutched a stuffed dinosaur — a gift from their first Valentine's Day together — as she listened to a taped rendition of "God Bless America" through the speakers.
Conlon would walk to her house at 3 a.m., knocking on her window just to tell her he loved her, she said. They broke up three weeks ago, but spoke for the last time last week.
"I told him that I loved him and I could never love anybody because I was in love with him and he told me he felt the same," Shopshire said, a bundle of red, white, and blue balloons, along with an "I love you" heart balloon, in her hand.
"The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001," Suskind writes. "It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq - thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President's Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link."
Daniel and Paul couldn't be more different. They went to the same school, but they didn't know each other. It's a tragedy that we will only know them from who they were and not who they were destined to be.
He described himself as "very conservative," on his Facebook profile, McGuire wrote about his time overseas. His days, he wrote, were filled with sleeping, standing post and working out. In a note posted July 27, McGuire wrote, "People who get the most out of life are the ones who take the time to stop and look around them and experience, not just the moment, but the things in the moment."
McGuire was active in Christ Chapel in Centerville growing up, even attending a mission trip to Calais, Maine, where he performed nightly for Vacation Bible School children.
"Dan was always eager to be a part of the skits and to get the kids laughing," the church’s youth pastor, Peter Axelson said. "He was always successful at doing that."
The more than 6-foot-tall McGuire, who also excelled academically, continued acting through high school, where he was active in the Blue Falcon Theater Company, taking on the starring roll in "Harvey" and playing a flying monkey in "The Wizard of Oz."
He also served as a mentor to younger Scouts, Bradshaw said — a testament to a love of children that his parents described. If he didn't become a career Marine, he wanted to be a kindergarten teacher, they said.
The flag at Mashpee High School yesterday also flew at half-staff, and the school plans to offer grief counseling to any current or former student who desires it, Bradshaw said.
"Our collective hearts are broken," she said of the Mashpee school community. "He was a very personable, warm, and handsome young man. He was highly respected by adults and his peers."
Conlon was described by his family as artistic and musical. He also wrote poetry.
"He always stood out, in the way he dressed, in the way he acted," said his aunt, Vicky Baron, of Sandwich, who is just four years older than him.
"He proved you didn't have to be like everyone else to have as many friends as the popular kids."
His aunts and uncles, John Baron of Mashpee and William and Vicky Baron, gathered yesterday at the family business, Ziggy's the Auto Specialties in Hyannis, where they shed tears remembering the kid that made everyone laugh.
His catch phrases, goofy poses, sometime mohawk haircuts and interesting hair colors, led family and friends to refer to his "Paulsonality."
Born with a small hole in his heart, Paul had to be delivered during an emergency C-section. He was born "legally dead," his mother said.
"The odds were stacked against him," his mother said.
Growing up, his enthusiasm, eccentricity and big-heartedness won him countless friends, said Vicky Baron.
These qualities made him a devoted soldier. He recently received a Purple Heart after shrapnel lodged in his arm during an attack.
While bleeding, lying on the ground waiting to be rescued, he went against strict Army policy and borrowed a satellite phone to call his mother, she said.
Maria later learned that he'd continued fighting that day despite serious blood loss.
The injury was apparently bad enough for the Army to allow him to go home, she said. But Conlon refused.
He told her, "Ma, I know you want to check me out and make sure I have all my fingers and toes, but you don't know what they are doing to women and children here. I can't leave my brothers."
" I can't leave my brothers". How often have we head that from our brave soldiers? If only the people who sent them there had the same sense of loyalty.
Daniel McGuire and Paul Conlon will be forever with their 4,460 ( so far)brothers and sisters who have been sacrificed for the lie that is the Iraq War.
We have proof it was a lie. How many more documentaries will we watch and books will we read that lay out the facts before they are held accountable?
The video below is something I put together last year in frustration and never thought that we would still be in the same situation. If you've gotten this far, please watch it...if only for the origninal song by my oldest son, the poet. He didn't write it for this video, but I thought it fit very well. It 's titled "Sell Your Own"...how appropriate.
To our Democratic Leaders....to our future president Barack Obama....
Look into the eyes of these brave young soldiers, forever closed to the life they were meant to lead....look into the eyes of the thousands of parents, brothers, sisters, spouses and children left behind....the thousands of wounded and broken Americans who pledged to give their lives to preserve our freedom...they trusted their leaders and paid the ultimate price.
And tell them...."Never again!"
And read every single name on the roll call, and honor them by making sure there will be no more.
And for their sake, Hold the bastardsaccountable.