ANOTHER
AMAZING DISGRACE
Bush
to dead soldier's mom: "How do you
know his life would have been good?"
Cindy
Sheehan is not the only Gold Star mom who felt disrespected
after a visit with George W. Bush. Dolores Kesterson, whose
son Erik was killed in Iraq in November of 2003, was among
several military families who last year were invited to meet
with Bush as a group. Each family was allotted ten minutes
with the president, but because she is divorced from her husband,
Dolores asked to speak with Bush one-on-one.
Dolores
tried to give Bush a sense of what type of person Erik had
been. She described her son as a "comedian" whose
favorite saying was, "Life is good." The president
replied, "How do you know his life would have been good?"
Dolores
was shocked by Bush's eagerness to question the value of her
son's life. She told the president, "Nobody wants to
die."
Before
he concluded their meeting, Bush proclaimed to Dolores, "We
won't know in our lifetime whether or not Iraq was a success."