A Special Memorial Day Message
I've seen a photo showing a far greater atrocity than any of those
atrocities shown in those Iraq prison torture photos we've all seen over
and over. This photo, in the "Washington Post," shows a grief-stricken,
weeping, Maria Isela Rubalcava with her hand on a flag-draped coffin
containing "the remains" of her only daughter, Army Sgt. Isela
Rubalcava. She was killed by shrapnel when a mortar round exploded
during an attack in Mosul on May 8 --- three days before her 26th
birthday.
This "Post" story reports military historians as saying that the 20
female U.S. service members who have died so far in Iraq is the highest
number to die in combat operations since World War II. In addition, 162
women have been wounded, 99 of them too badly to return to duty,
according to the Defense Department.
Incredibly, one in seven of our troops in Iraq is a woman.
In this story, Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military
Readiness, says that one of her concerns is that single mothers in Iraq
are being killed. For example, Pfc. Lori Piestewa, 23, who was killed in
the early days of the Iraq invasion, had two children. And the director
of the Women In The Military Project noted that in Iraq, "we are seeing
women POWs, women with their legs blown off."
At the beginning of this "Post" article --- which sickened and
angered me --- it is said that when Sgt. Rubalcava's body arrived at the
El Paso, Texas, airport from Iraq, her Mother, in Spanish, "wailed like
a child," saying: "I don't want to see her like this. Why, Isela, why?
Get up, get up! Let's go home."
Well, I, too, wish, with all my heart, that Isela Rubalcava's Mom
did not have to see her like this.
It is the God-commanded order that men are to fight for and protect
women and their country. Women are not to fight for and protect men and
their country. If I'm elected President, I will do everything within my
power to see that women do not serve in the Armed Forces --- at all,
anywhere, period.