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Born at the Crest of the Empire

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

A sham on the families of the fallen

This is really disgusting. A group is flying the families of the fallen to Iraq to show them that their children didn't die in vain.

BUT, they're flying them to Arbil in Kurdistan which is peaceful and completely free of sectarian violence, trying to show the families that Iraq is so much better than the news reports. A crafted lie.

The group, Move America Forward is more or less run by a Sacramento PR firm which works for the more extreme elements of the Republican party, and now they're manipulating the parents of the fallen for stories and quotes.

She broke down crying.

"I needed to make that trip," said Bastian, who traveled with her husband, Todd. "All of us were very, very disappointed in the media coverage over the war. I had so many avenues that were telling me different, that there were good things happening in Iraq, that they were just reporting the bomb of the day."


(A quick Google on MAF will tell you all you need to know.)

posted by mikevotes at 8:45 AM

6 Comments:

  • Jan says she hopes to help lead another trip, possibly to Baghdad, with a larger contingent of families.

    That might change her pespective, not that this group would ever let it happen.

    By Blogger Praguetwin, at 9:14 AM  

  • There are families who are opposed to the war, and there are families who are supporters of the war.

    There are also families who live in a bubble filled with nationalistic myths and fantasies who, if confronted by the perverse realities of Bush's war, would not have the emotional fortitude to confront that reality. For them, denial is easier. And there appear to be others willing to feed off their tragedy and denial.

    By Blogger -epm, at 11:06 AM  

  • Praguetwin, they did point out in the article that none of these families will be allowed to visit where their children died because those areas are too dangerous.

    ....

    EPM, I understand that denial. I would not want to think that my child died for this horrendous mistake.

    It wasn't my intent to attack that denial, people have to handle their grief in their own way, but creating and exploiting that belief for political ends is truly vile.


    ....

    Thinking about this as I was driving around this morning, I realized it was like taking someone to the wealthiest, privately policed community in town to convince them that is no gang and crack problem in Houston.

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 11:29 AM  

  • My, my, aren't they getting desperate...

    By Blogger QuakerDave, at 3:38 PM  

  • Good post. It is absolutely vile but not surprising. This admin has shown time and time again that it will lie, cheat, degrade and destroy innocent people in its pursuit of this agenda.

    That anyone would still believe their crap and support this agenda is very disturbing, and those that do are very suspect.

    By Blogger expatbrian, at 5:24 PM  

  • This really is just so deplorable to me.

    Frankly, I don't have a problem with MAF lying about what's going on in Iraq, but taking these families that are still coping with their loss on a Potemkin tour to get them to churn out press releases....

    Mike

    By Blogger mikevotes, at 5:43 PM  

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