Ouch

The soldier's girlfriend, who was weeping quietly in the cold rain, had more sense than all her purported betters in this city. Informed that the mayor of New York had just made a huge and bold move on the White House and asked for citizenship for her dead soldier, who was a Dominican, she said at the wake, "What good is it now? He can't use it." He sure can't. He was Private Luis Moreno. He was 19 years old. They were loading him in his box into a hearse for the ride to a cemetery forever. She also had a question: "Why is he dead?" She is Jessica Corporan and she is 18 and was going to marry him when he got back from Iraq. If you are going to have your heart broken, 18 is not the easiest age to evade pain, and she showed it on Friday. Mayor Bloomberg was proud that he sent a hand-delivered note to President Bush requesting citizenship posthumously for Private Moreno. The idea wilted in the noisy steam coming out of the radiators in St. Francis of Assisi church on Shakespeare Avenue in the Bronx. Along with Bloomberg's request, here was a general of the army giving a bronze star posthumously to Moreno. The general couldn't speak Spanish. Bloomberg's request was about a 19-year-old who was shot dead in a war in Iraq that was started and continues because of George Bush and no one else. The blood of 525 Americans is on his hands.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 13, 2004 at 08:01 AM | Permalink