The mom is still trying to get answers. Bush promised her in a meeting he would get her some, but then did nothing. His campaign did, however, try to then get the mom to do a TV commercial for his re-election. Nice.
But hey, all you soldiers out there, President Bush really loves you. To death.
Peggy Buryj asked everyone she could to help find out the details of her son's last hours. She even asked President Bush when she and other grieving parents met with him during a campaign stop in hotly contested Ohio. He promised to look into it. Soon afterward, she said, his campaign called and asked her to appear in a commercial for him, but she declined.I hate to say it, but if Peggy Buryj is still a Bush supporter after he lied to her about her son's death, refuses to come clean with her, and then had the nerve to try to get her into one of his TV commercials, well... I feel sorry for any mother that's lost a son. But there's also something called personal responsibility. And if after all this she is still a Bush supporter who strongly believes in the Iraq war, well, then she's made her bed. At some point you have to take responsibility for your own actions, your own vote, and your own continued support of a man who keeps doing the same wrongs over and over again.
Months went by with no clarification. "We had a lot of questions," said Amber Buryj, 22, Jesse Buryj's bride of seven months. "We were left in the dark."
And in the dark they stayed. Family members say they were not told Jesse was killed by "friendly fire," though the Army later said they were. They did not know that Polish soldiers with Jesse's unit may have fired the fatal shot and that his 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.
Even today, 20 months later, Peggy Buryj -- a Bush supporter who believes strongly in the Iraq war -- is left with swirling questions, a shattered faith in the Army, and the unsettling feeling that her son's death has been sullied by partisan politics and international intrigue.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Again, I feel terrible for this mom, but her continued support for President Bush only guarantees he will keep doing this to future moms just like he has to her and so many others. At what point are the American people responsible for their own actions?
And the bigger question for war opponents and Bush opponents is why do people continue to support this president when it would seem clearly not in their best interests? Crack that nut, and we win.
