Bollettino


CNN has a very confusing report on casualties this morning. Bush's wish for "them" to "bring em on" was granted, to the extent of a number of attacks that wounded 10 American troops. A marine was killed clearing mines, and a soldier died of the wounds received from the attack yesterday that injured six. Or so we presume -- the soldier's death is extremely under-reported.

On another front -- LI wrote a post last week about the suspicious nature of the "accidents" that are killing American soldiers in Iraq. Here's a story from Maine that will get no play in the national press, which goes along, and goes along:

"ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE -- Sen. Susan Collins says the army has assured her it will conduct a full investigation into the death of First Sergeant Christopher Coffin, a reservist from Kennebunk.

The senator just returned from a tour of Iraq herself and spoke with NewsRadio WMTW's Bob Dyk. In the interview, Collins said, "My heart just goes out to the family. It's gotta be so difficult, and the conflicting stories on how he died need to be cleared up."

Coffin was 51.

The army initially told his family that he died in a vehicle accident, but his family says news reports indicate he may have, in fact, died under enemy fire."

Here's the AP report:

An Army reservist whose retirement request was denied because of Operation Iraqi Freedom became the fifth soldier with Maine ties to be killed in the conflict, possibly when his convoy came under attack.

First Sgt. Christopher Coffin, 51, of Kennebunk, was a member of 352nd Civil Affairs Command assisting convoys traveling between Baghdad and Kuwait when he died Tuesday, his sister-in-law, Candy Barr Heimbach, said Wednesday.

The Army initially told the family Tuesday night that Coffin was driving a vehicle crashed after swerving to avoid an Iraqi civilian vehicle."

The family is not going to let that story go without questioning. Here's another piece in Coffin's story:

"Coffin, who was deployed overseas four months ago, was part of a unit based in Riverdale, Md., that was assisting in rebuilding efforts and was not supposed to be involved in active combat."

Interesting contrast: on the one side, Coffin, an honest guy working at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, did his best for his family, gets not only killed in combat in Iraq, but the Army that sends him there tries to disguise the death for political reasons; on the other side, you have a man who skipped his war in Vietnam, not because he opposed it, but because he could; the son of a rich man who officially acted to pipe poor black and white kids to Vietnam while making sure his own son didn't put his foot in that meat grinder; a boy who rose like a queer dollar from one failure to the next, until he has a job in which his evident limits, mental and personal, will have the maximum deleterious effect.

And so they "bring em on." Every day in every way.