A co-worker of mine received a forwarded email today, and felt the compelling urge to hit the forward button and spread this page of propaganda to the entire office.

Here is the email, titled “A Simple Thank You”:

“Last week, while traveling to Chicago on business, I noticed a Marine sergeant traveling with a folded flag, but did not put two and two together. After we’d boarded our flight, I turned to the sergeant, who’d been invited to sit in First Class (and was seated across from me), and inquired if he was heading home.
“No,” he responded.
“Heading out?” I asked.
“No. I’m escorting a soldier home.”
“Going to pick him up?”
“No. He is with me right now. He was killed in Iraq. I’m taking him home to his family.”
The realization of what he had been asked to do hit me like a punch to the gut. It was an honor for him. He told me that, although he didn’t know the soldier, he had delivered the news of his passing to the soldier’s family and felt as if he did know them after so many conversations in so few days. I turned back to him, extended my hand, and said, “Thank you. Thank you for doing what you do so my family and I can do what we do.”
Upon landing in Chicago the pilot stopped short of the gate and made the following announcement over the intercom.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to note that we have had the honor of having Sergeant Steeley of the United States Marine Corps join us on this flight. He is escorting a fallen comrade back home to his family. I ask that you please remain in your seats when we open the forward door [so as to] allow Sergeant Steeley to deplane and receive his fellow soldier. We will then turn off the seat belt sign.”
Without a sound, all went as requested. I noticed the sergeant saluting the casket as it was brought off the plane, and his action made me realize that I am proud to be an American. So here’s a public thank-you to our military for doing what you do so we can live the way we do.
Stuart Margel, Washington, D.C. “

Oh, where do I begin….

First of all, with all the talk about the War in Iraq, the Taliban, and the terrible bogeyman Osama bin Laden, how in the hell can anyone be confused about a soldier in uniform sitting with a folded flag??

The entire conversation that follows his unintelligent observation only serves to highlight his ignorance.

My big beef with these types of emails is that the author apparently wants you to worship the soldiers overseas no matter how wrong, immoral or illegal their actions are. Now, I understand that they are only following orders, but I would think that after six years of searching for the so-called Weapons of Mass Destruction with no success, (and the war being declared over for three years) SOMEONE SOMEWHERE would be saying “Hey, maybe we were wrong.” Instead of blindly dropping bombs on Middle Eastern villages and shooting at old men, women and children, I would think that at least some of these soldiers would stop and think about what they were doing.

We were over there on false pretenses anyway. Now, I know exactly what some of you are thinking, because I have acquaintances that know very well I am not crazy, but still give me the look whenever I say something to that effect.

Open your mind for five minutes, and think about this one thing: On the day of the September 11th attacks, President Bush was at an elementary school in Sarasota, Florida. As everyone knows, he was reading a book about goats. Now, what a lot of people don’t know is that elementary school is less than 5 miles from the
airport in Sarasota. It was widely televised that Mr. Bush was going to be there on the morning of September 11th. When news of the attack in New York came in, Bush sat there calmly, and continued to read the book and answer questions afterwards. Some people might claim that the reason he didn’t immediately jump up was because of the children. He didn’t want to scare them.

Let’s think about that for a minute. He didn’t want to scare them. For one thing, the Secret Service is not going to just let the President of the United States sit unprotected in a building full of children when a plane could be flying into it at any minute.

If you were a parent of a child at Booker Elementary watching the planes flying into the twin towers, and listening to Tom Brokaw talk about “what the President must be thinking”, wouldn’t you be just a little freaked out knowing that your child could be in mortal danger? If our government had nothing to do with the horrendous attacks that happened in New York, Washington, and the plane crash in Pennsylvania, they must not be the brightest cadets in the academy.

Isn’t it their job keep their heads in a moment of chaos? To think of nothing but protecting the leader of our united states? An obligation to evacuate the president in order to possibly save the lives of hundreds of innocent kids?

I don’t know which is worse: That our government could have been so stupid as to not have evacuated President Bush at the time of the plane crashes, or the fact that our government could have been responsible for the entire charade on that day and our presence over in the Middle East is just a cover-up.

You may be asking why the government would want to do such a thing. OIL

In case you haven’t noticed, the oil business is booming (gas prices rising). The government was worried that they were going to be cut off from the oil supply in the Middle East because of disintegrating trade agreements. They staged an attack on the united states, invaded the Middle East and took control of the oil fields. Now our government is making big money on this oil while we are breaking our necks trying to keep up with rising gas prices.

Don’t believe me?

Well, you don’t have to. You can sit there among the other sheep who want to shield their eyes from the truth, who would rather believe that I am out of my skull than to think that our government could have committed such a heinous crime all for the love of money.

Like I said, you don’t have to take my word for it. All you have to do is read this article. It is quite long, but well worth the read. It explains everything I just said here but in greater detail.

As for the co-worker who sent me this email this morning, I think I’m going to send her the link to this post.