By now you all have heard. Would it surprise you to learn that the Gold Star Mom that started all this is with Code Pink?
From CNN:
One of the family members who favors lifting the ban is Karen Meredith of San Francisco, California, who wrote Obama urging him to order the change.
Lt. Ken Ballard left for Iraq on Mother’s Day in 2003. He came home in a casket on Memorial Day 2004.
“I wanted the nation to grieve with me, and if we don’t see those images we don’t know that these young men and women are dying,” she told CNN.
“And to me its an honor to have an honor guard at Dover when they’re bringing these men and women back through the mortuary. But we’ve never been able to see those pictures of the honor being given.”
She’s become friendly with advocacy groups like the Gold Star Families for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and Code Pink. She was asked recently to appear at a counter-military recruitment event, but begged off because it took place on Mother’s Day (although she is quick to note that Mother’s Day started as an antiwar holiday).
She recently participated at a gathering in Berkeley and also traveled to Arlington West, a project by the Santa Barbara Veterans for Peace to re-create the grave sites of soldiers killed in Iraq. Later this month, on Memorial Day, the anniversary of Ballard’s death, Meredith plans to return to Washington to again visit her son’s grave at Arlington.
She also lived in the Crawford ditch with Cindy Sheehan. In an article about Fenton Communications, which ran the ditch bitch fiasco:
Gold Star mother Karen Meredith came here from Mountain View. Her son Ken Ballard died last year.
Karen Meredith, Gold Star mother: “Sometimes things don’t feel quite right to me. They don’t feel wrong, but maybe that’s how they do it in the marketing business.”
ABC7’s Mark Matthews: “You feel you’re part of a marketing business?”
Karen Meredith: “Possibly. Yeah I think so.”
Here is her blog here. She can’t make it a full para on any given post without mentioning her loss. And everyone should know about her loss.
Paul Rieckhoff thinks this is a swell idea as well:
““Less than 1% of the American population has served in Iraq or Afghanistan. There has never been a greater disconnect between those who serve in harms warm and those back home. All too often, the sacrifices of our military are hidden from view,” Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The sight of flag-draped coffins is, and should be, a sobering reminder to all Americans of the ultimate sacrifice our troops have made and the high price of our freedom.”
Other groups disagree:
But a spokeswoman for a military family group expressed disappointment. “This is a complete disregard for the will of America’s military families and the need for their privacy during this solemn moment,” said Meghan Tisinger, spokeswoman for Families United.
HERE IS THE LINK TO THAT IAVA STATEMENT.
My Opinion:
Had I died over there, my Dad would have made the decision (my mom died the day I joined the Army.) Now, I love my Dad, but we discuss 2 things, New England Sports Teams, and the weather in Maine. My Dad was a delegate for Ted Kennedy. To his credit, my Dad would NEVER openly say something about the War in front of me. And when I had a flag flown over Bagram on the day the Pats won the Super Bowl, my dad refused to fly it from the front porch, but instead went out and hired a guy to put a huge flag pole in the back yard. My Dad loves me, loves the country, but he’s a liberal, and he knows little about what I would have wanted. I would like to think he would have told them to screw off, but I don’t know. I sincerely hope that SRP from now on includes some sort of living will type document where the troop gets to voice his opinion on whether to be pictured or not. I also wonder what happens when one divorced parent supports, and one does not. Or the Mom and Dad want the pictures taken, and the Spouse does not. How do they iron that shit out?
SHIT: I called and asked my dad. I shouldn’t have asked.
More on the Code Pink Gold Star Mom, from BOHICA 22.
“There’s no one left to call me ‘Mom,’ ” Meredith told a teary-eyed congregation at First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco on Sunday. “He left the day after Mother’s Day, and he said he’d make it up to me when he returned. Today is my third Mother’s Day that I will not pick up the phone and hear his voice.”
And still more from the totally on fire BOHICA 22:
Karen Meredith (center), who lost her only son in Iraq, hugs activist Pablo Paredes as Sean O’Neill, who served twice in Iraq, stands by at San Francisco’s First Unitarian Universalist Church. Chronicle photo by Brant Ward
And who is Pablo Paredes? Per Michelle Malkin:
Military deserter and anti-war Left poster boy Pablo Paredes has been denied conscientious objector status. His request for Other than Honorable discharge in lieu of a court-martial trial has also been denied.
