This is a heart-rending story about a family in Wisconsin with three sisters in the National Guard serving in Iraq. They've just had a funeral for one of the three. Their parents are now asking that the other two not be sent back to Iraq.
Family of soldier killed in Iraq pleads to keep her two sisters from being sent back San Francisco Chronicle 04/12/04
Asked on NBC's "Today" whether U.S. actions in Iraq were justified, Witmer said it was a difficult issue to sort out, but he recalled daughter Michelle's comments.
"She felt that she had made a difference in that culture and that there was a liberation that went on," he said. "She was also very concerned that if we had a knee-jerk reaction to some of these horrible things that were happening, that thousands of Iraqi people would suffer from a swift exit."
Jan Pretzel, the sisters' grandmother, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that by February, Michelle had an inkling her unit might soon ship out of Iraq because members were told to tell their families to stop shipping packages.
"This is a REALLY GOOD SIGN!!" she wrote in an e-mail. "The redeployment process (though it may be long) is finally beginning! There is finally a light at the end of the tunnel!"
One of the issues of which I'm becoming more conscious is to pay careful attention to stories from Iraq veterans and their families. This is a story we see the complexity of opinions of real people, as opposed to Big Pundit posturing and to the endless ideological productions coming from Fox News and Oxycontin radio.
1 comment:
There are people all across this country, so appreciative of the sacrifice the Witmer family has made. They will continue to be in my prayers.
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