http://www.theweekmagazine.com/article.aspx?id=1731

"Chief among the defectors is former Bush advisor Richard Perle, who first sold the president on the idea of spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Perle now says that he wouldn't have pushed for war if he'd known that the occupation would be so horribly managed. "You have to hold the president responsible," Perle says. Bush's former speechwriter, David "Axis of Evil" Frum, agrees, saying that the president's inability to absorb complex ideas "is the root of, maybe, everything." Former White House advisor Kenneth Adelman, who famously predicted that Iraq would be a "cakewalk," goes further. He calls Bush and his national security advisors "among the most incompetent teams" since World War II. "Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws," Adelman says, "but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."

It's neo-CON!

adelman, a long time friend of rumsfeld is one of the few people that has told rumsfeld face-to-face that he's an idiot (in nicer terms though).

Yep, I enjoyed reading about that in Woodward's book!

Frum must be hoping people forget he once authored a book abou Bush called "The Right Man" about how Bush was the right guy to be president on 9/11/2001 - doh! Maybe his next book will be called "The Wrong Man."

Andrew

I just finished Woodward's book yesterday . . . I'm now reading between the lines of any bush- or iraq-related news story trying to figure out what must be REALLY going on at the white house.

I think Condi is finished in public life after this -- guilt might nervewrack her to death. Powell, I'm not sure. The president I'm afraid, is gonna sleep like a baby for the rest of his life.

I did get a chuckle about the part where Bush at least once put his business school education to good use when he pointed out to someone that he had too many people reporting to him. Glad Dad's (41) dollars didn't go to waste entirely!

I was Looking for an obituary in the Columbian today, my neighbor (who moved to Vancouver recently) passed away. Her husband is an Iwo Jima Survivor.

But I found this instead, which just confirms my belief that the Iraq mess will be taking it's toll for many, many years.

I think we haven't even heard the beginning of the horrors that will happen when they finally all get home:



Marine's death unexplained

Thursday, November 16, 2006
By DEAN BAKER Columbian staff writer

CAMAS -- The remains of Marine Sgt. William C. Wold, a 2001 Mountain View High School graduate and a veteran of some of the bloodiest fighting in Iraq, were returned home to his parents here Wednesday.

He died Friday at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego of causes that remain under investigation. His funeral will be Friday in Vancouver.

Wold's mother and father, John and Sandra Wold of Camas, angrily charged that the Marine Corps failed to give their son adequate care for post-traumatic stress syndrome and drug abuse. She said her son was harassed and beaten by other Marines.

Sandra Wold said Marine Corps officers told her his cause of death won't be known for at least a month, but she said she believes he died either from an accidental drug overdose or by suicide.

She said believes her son died by accident after doctors changed the medication he was being given as part of his treatment.

Several Marine Corps public affairs officers at the hospital and Camp Pendleton in California declined to release any information on Wold's death. He was found dead in his room at the hospital Friday morning, his mother said. His sister, Becki, 22, said two sergeants who came to the door Friday night to tell her mother of the death said, "We suspect a drug overdose."

"They didn't say 'suicide' but that was the tone," his mother said. "I just want to know the truth."

Wold, 23, loved to play baseball and finished his high school education in three years. At age 17, he followed his brother, Robert, now 25, into the Marine Corps.

Robert and Becki described their brother as a happy-go-lucky young man who was proud of his service as one of President Bush's elite personal guards with top-secret clearance, the "Yankee White," at Camp David.

"When he put his uniform on, you couldn't see a wrinkle in it," Becki said.

"Once, he told my mother he could eat 100 eggs like 'Cool Hand Luke' in the movie," she said. "I think he ate 54, and then he threw up."

Then, family members said, he went to war.

When he returned, they said, he had changed. "He was just gone," said Robert. He was afraid of lightning storms and couldn't stand being approached from behind or going out of the house, said his father.

Sandra Wold said her son described the horrors he faced on the first team entering Falujah in 2004.

She said he described many traumatic incidents. "I'll just tell you one."

He and other Marines were ordered to fire on a vehicle that had crashed through a checkpoint. They couldn't see who was inside it, but it was filled with children, she said, and "he had to pick up those children and take them back to their parents."

He brought home many photographs from the war, she said, including many of him laughing with Iraqis, as well as photographs of "all the people he killed."

He couldn't recover from the horror, she said.

He served eight months in Iraq, then took his discharge from the Marines in 2005. At home, he developed a "severe substance abuse problem," said his mother. He took pain pills for relief, she said.

"He said it was a slide show in his head and it would never shut off. He couldn't go out in public. I'd never seen anything like it. He attempted to attend college but other students called him a 'baby killer,' and it got to the point where he couldn't leave our house."

He said he had to go back to his unit to be among his brothers, so he re-enlisted and in July was sent to Camp Pendleton, where his mother said he was mistreated by superiors and other Marines because he had developed a stutter and clearly was out of step.

She said Wold was subjected to a beating by fellow Marines and then was taken off the base and housed in a motel to keep him safe.

Finally, he was admitted to the hospital in September, where he reportedly was free of drugs and recovering. He talked to her Thursday, the day before he died.

"He was happy," she said. "He and a friend were watching movies and eating pizza."

She said he died in bed with a pinch of chewing tobacco in his mouth and his spitting container in his hand.

"That doesn't sound like a suicide," said Robert Wold, who said he talked his brother into joining the Marine Corps.

Dean Baker writes about military affairs. Reach him at 360-759-8009 or e-mail dean.baker@columbian.com.


Update

* Previously: Marine Sgt. William C. Wold, 23, of Camas served in Iraq in 2004 and, in 2003, on the select "Yankee White" detail guarding President Bush.

* What's new: He died Friday at a military hospital in San Diego of causes that remain under investigation. For the past two years Wold suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome and drug abuse after returning home.

...drug abuse after getting home.

Can't say I blame him for that. I can only imagine what a shift that was! How can anyone even begin to seriously relate to day to day life here after going through Iraq!

http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/11162006news77089.cfm

Comments:

Martin chill - November 16, 2006 @ 12:41 PM
it's very difficult to reconcile this story with the one above it on the front page - "Gamers brave elements for PlayStation 3"


His Obituary, with a photo of him next to the Resident:
http://www.columbian.com/obituaries/obitResults.cfm?date=11/15/2006

Sgt. William C. Wold, age 23, passed away November 10, 2006. The son of Sandra and John Wold of Camas, WA, he was born in Wheat Ridge, CO on October 19, 1983. William was a 2001 Mountain View High School graduate. He was eager to join the U.S. Marine Corp, and became the youngest Marine to graduate MCRD, San Diego. Proudly serving his Country, William was stationed on Presidential Support at Camp David, guarding President George W. Bush from 2001-2004. He was then deployed to Iraq with the 3/1 India Company. On his second tour of duty came his untimely death, at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego...

Comment from his obit "guest book":

LET THEM KNOW (NONE) (November 15, 2006)
VANCOUVER, Wash. - Four years ago, William Wold was a Marine so talented, he was among only 94 picked to guard President George W. Bush as part of the presidential support battalion. This month, he died. But not on the battlefield - in California. The Marine Corps won't say how or why he died. His family believes that his time spent fighting the war in Iraq is to blame. He came back a changed man. Wold's mother, Sandi, said her son was involved in some of the war's toughest fighting, including the Battle of Fallujah. "I talked to him about it a lot," she said. "It was horrible." One incident in particular was hard to forget. "And a vehicle came through that hadn't been cleared," she said. "The lieutenant says take them out. He took them out. They went to the van - it was a bunch of little kids. And he had to take their bodies back to the family." It deeply affected the Marine. "He never slept," his mom said. "He couldn't eat. There was no decompression when he got out of the Corps." So Wold went back into the Marines. But he got into drugs and developed a non-stop stutter, classic signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Doctors recognized the problem but Sandi Wold said fellow marines, including a gunnery sergeant, ridiculed her son. "This master gun would say 'who wants to take the 'tard to his appointments today?' " his mom said. "The 'tard - because he stuttered." Sergeant Wold died Nov. 10. Military officials contacted by KATU said an investigation into his death is ongoing. But he declined further comment. "I am terrified for every young man whose mother thinks that their sons will come home OK," Sandi Wold said. "Because they won't. And the Marine Corps doesn't know how to help these kids.



Nice. And that's just one local kid who didn't die over there, but is a fatality just the same.

(And Wayne, do me a favor and don't respond, this post is NOT for you.)