This really is quite sad

Meet Sue Niederer. Patriot. Heroine. This New Jersey woman's 24-year old newlywed som, Seth Dvorin, a 1st LT in the US Army was killed on February 3rd outside of Baghdad. Ms. Niederer, a gold star mother, is very angry that President Bush sent her son off to die in Iraq. She obtained a ticket to a Bush rally, and arrived wearing a T-shirt bearing the message, "President Bush You Killed My Son." Laura Bush was addressing the crowd, and Ms. Niederer shot up and exclaimed, "When are yours going to serve?" referring to Barbara and Jenna Bush. Ms. Niederer was immediately arrested. has never been a supporter of the United States' war with Iraq. To her, it is just another pointless military conflict, like Vietnam. And when her 24-year-old newlywed son, Seth Dvorin, a 1st lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was killed Feb. 3 during a mine-sweeping operation outside Baghdad, the Hopewell Township woman's anger turned toward President Bush. The republican crowd on hand was not at all sympathetic, predictably. Now, this is the point of this post. The right-wing, in abject denial about just how badly things are going in Iraq and how pointless it all was, can come up with only one response to despairing relatives of those killed in Iraq. "They chose to go." "They chose to go." Did they? The men and women of our armed forces certainly chose to go to defend our country against our enemies. The men and women of our armed forces certainly volunteered to join. But isn't there an implicit understanding that the government won't send them to slaughter for a pointless war that had no bearing whatsoever on our national security? Why, even Bush & Co. never sold the war way back when as a national security issue. It was about WMDs. It was about Iraq violating Security Council resolutions. No one could credibly make the argument that Iraq could somehow deliver WMDs to Americans. In fact, they all said that Iraq used WMDs before. On their own people. Setting aside for a moment whether Kurds consider themselves to be the "same people" as the Sunni Ba'athist fascist mob that gassed them, that underscores the point that even Saddam Hussein isn't so stupid as to cause a shitstorm to rain down on him by gassing Americans. Saddam, like most cowardly totalitarian dictators, was all about self-preservation. Any amateur political scientist would tell you that it was not in Saddam's self-interest to cause a catastrophic wave of death on Americans anywhere. Saddam isn't the PLO of the 1980s or the Lebanese militia of the 1980s or the al Qaeda of the 90s and today. He wasn't in a struggle to obtain power. He already had it. Job #1 for him was subjugating his own people. That's it. As for subjugating his own people, the right-wingers will all tell you how great it is for Iraqis that Saddam is gone. Well, at least with Saddam they knew what actions or words would get them in trouble. Now, their risk of death is completely random. So are they better off? And what about every other totalitarian dictator with WMD capabilities? Are we going after Iraq next? Syria? What about North Korea? Ms. Niederer has every right to be pissed off. No one has the right to tell her that her son "volunteered" to fight in Iraq. I'd wager that many of them volunteered to fight in Afghanistan. I'd wager that very few of them are or were eager to get bogged down in Iraq. (Full disclosure: I supported the war in Iraq at the time. I bought Bush's argument hook, line & sinker. How stupid I feel). Iraq casualty's mom arrested as protester