Families of Military Victims are Fighting Back

There are what I like to call faux wingnut tough-guys. These are meek and misguided emotionally-challenged men who cheer on their hero, the chief faux wingnut tough-guy who - like them - never saw the horror of war, but cheer it on like they're watching a football game on TV. These are people who live vicariously through this tough-guy image woven into the fabric of American life by these crackheads and see all this as one big fat spectator sport of Us vs Them. Freepers are classic examples of faux tough-guys. They sit on their fat bloated asses writing ugly tough-guy talk into their computers, but have never walked an inch in any other shoes except their own - if they have the strength to walk at all.

Then there are the people who have to live with the results of the faux wingnut tough-guy mentality. These are the people who need to be heard.

Marine's family has sharp reprimand for Bush administration

Relatives of a Minnesota Marine who was killed in Iraq lashed out Wednesday against the war and the Bush administration's conduct in waging it.

Across the street from the Lake Elmo restaurant where Vice President Dick Cheney had finished speaking an hour earlier, the grandmother of Levi Angell spoke of "my precious grandson I lost to this useless, needless fix we're in."

Lila Angell said the war "is crazy. It's just wrong." Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry "certainly would do better" in Iraq than President Bush. "He couldn't do any worse."

Levi Angell, a 20-year-old Marine from Cloquet, was killed April 8 when his Humvee was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

His father, Gordon, said he never received a condolence call from any member of the administration. "Bush was giving a speech 20 miles away [from Cloquet] and he never bothered to pick up the damned telephone and say 'I'm sorry about your son,' " he said. "From now on, I'm a Democrat after the way they treated us."