Marine's family has sharp reprimand for Bush administration
September 30, 2004 ANGELL0930
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."
He said he got just such a call from John Kerry. "The only ones who seem to care about this whole terrible tragedy are Democrats," he said at the news conference arranged by the Kerry campaign.
Angell said Bush "has deceived the American public so bad, up there smirking on the TV."
The family also appeared later in Duluth, alongside several veterans who are opposed to the Bush administration and the war in Iraq.
Lila Angell said administration officials "have just forgotten the guys over there. But we live it over and over and over. Are we safer here? No. Osama bin Laden's still running around, and he's the one who started all this."
Jim Bootz, a Navy veteran who heads Minnesota Veterans for Kerry, challenged Cheney's assertion earlier Wednesday that the war in Iraq is a vital part of a wider war against terrorism.
"The vice president is confusing the war in Iraq with the war on terror," he said. "It's not terrorists we're fighting, but insurgents."
In Duluth, ex-Marine Bill Soderlind said that, "after Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush and his administration had the whole world at our doorstep," offering help. Now, he said, it's clear that the administration squandered that good will.
Soderlind said: "If I could propose one question at tomorrow's debate it would be, "Mr. President, what did you do with our allies?' "
Bob von Sternberg and Larry Oakes |
