Another diary tells about how the Bush twins went on a 10K run in Richmond, Virginia. It explains they went out drinking the night before, which is OK, because at 24 they are of legal age.
But some kids never make it to twenty-four.
The number of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq who were killed before reaching their 24th birthdays: One thousand seventy-seven.
Ironically, the last under-24 years old casualty listed at http://icasualties.org was from Richmond Virginia, where the Bush daughters ran the 10K.
HIS NAME was Jeremy Ehle. HIS WAS nineteen when he was killed in Iraq.
One thousand seventy-seven American soldiers who never reached the ripe old age of the Bush twins, twenty-four.
No drinks, no reservations, no 10K race for them. Just a grave and a U.S. flag for their mothers.
Ironically, the last under-24 years old casualty listed at
http://icasualties.org is from Richmond Virginia, where the Bush daughters ran the 10K.
HIS NAME was Jeremy Ehle.
HIS WAS nineteen when he was killed in action in Iraq.
HE WAS A Private 1st Class, in the First Battalion of the 36th Infantry Regiment of the First Brigade of the U.S. Army's First Armored Division.
Private Ehle arrived in Iraq only one month ago.
Unlike Jenna and Barbara, Jeremy Ehle didn't grow up privileged or wealthy. No one in his family was President of the United States. No, Jeremy Ehle grew up in a Richmond area boy's home.
On arriving in Iraq, Jeremy wrote the following on his MySpace.com web page:
IT IS A HOT SPOT!!! the last few days there have been a few American soldiers killed in that area ," he wrote. " im just letting you know. i didnt mean it when i said dont worry, but it feels weird not having someone you care for not worrying about you when youre about to go out into an actual warzone.
The man who recruited Jeremy, Staff Sgt. Jamal Ghammashi, explained what drew Jeremy to ROTC and later service in the Army: the chance to finally have a family to call his own.
"He loved it," Ghammashi said. "All the kids grew attached to each other; during lunches they all sat in the ROTC room. They had a very tightknit group. Due to his upbringing -- or lack of it -- that drew him to it. He enjoyed having that close of friends.
Jeremy, the product of a "Boy's Home" got his family -- and got to die with them, serving our country.
Jenna and Barbara -- whose family includes two Presidents of the United States -- at age twenty-four are out drinking and eating and stretching their muscles on 10K fun runs.
Jeremy Ehle, the boy without a family, at age nineteen, will be stretched out in a grave in Arlington Cemetery, the two thousandth five hundredth and twenty-first casualty of a mistaken war.
So, who cares, a commenter writes, that the Bush twins were drinking; after all, they're old enough?
But I ask, who cares about Private First Class Jeremy Ehle, who died in Iraq -- supposedly to protect us from "the terrorists" -- before he was even old enough to buy a beer?
Who cares?
Who is the next nineteen-year-old we ask to die for Bush's mistake?