|
Bush hasn't made it to a single funeral of a soldier killed in HIS war |
Former U.S. presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), lays flowers on the casket of U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel during his military funeral at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington DC, December 2, 2004. Gavriel, from Haverhill, Massachusetts, died November 19 while fighting in Al Anbar Province in Iraq (news - web sites) and his funeral is the 99th 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. REUTERS/Jason Reed
From
Common Ground Common Sense
PS: Thanks to all the links, poems, comments and pictures that made this post so much better than what I could ever dream. -- law
A special thanks to Armando and others who tried to keep the thread in the spirit it was intended
:-)
Update [2005-2-2 19:3:26 by lawnorder]: - Many thanks to Arlington Net and Legacy for keeping up the pictures of the funeral, long after Yahoo erased them...
Update [2004-12-6 11:11:48 by lawnorder]: To my surprise, this was a top diary for 3-4 days and keeps on getting comments. A lot of people, like me, got choked up when they saw the picture, for a variety of reasons, and shared their feelings about it here. You can see a lot of people explaining why down below, but I wanted to share this summary I got in my e-mail.
It touched many, perhaps more than you anticipated. It became a forum for many to express their grief that a real human had not become the President It was especially so to those, who like myself, are not into self-deception or conspiracy theories. I believe you have begun an importan aspect of the healing process. I further think that you have begun a new chapter for John Kerry by showing him as an effective and humane person AFTER the election. I suspect that this will be a turning point in perceptions of John Kerry and that this will spread by rippples.
Update [2004-12-8 1:13:31 by lawnorder]: This (and a small blurb at Salon.com) are THE ONLY news pieces on Kerry's attendance to the funeral of an Iraq vet last Thursday. AP has great pictures but no article. Curious, heh ?
2 Very Different Men, Bound Now at Arlington (washingtonpost.com)
Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry attend the funeral at Arlington for Lance Cpl. Dimitrios Gavriel, a Massachusetts native.