Just a number

I'm gonna shit myself. How do people survive
a year of this


From today's gaggle

Q Tony, American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?

MR. SNOW: It's a number, and every time there's one of these 500 benchmarks people want something. The President would like the war to be over now. Everybody would like the war to be over now. And the one thing that we saw in Iraq this week is further testimony to the quality of the men and the women who are doing that, and the dedication and determination to try to ensure that the people of Iraq really do live in a free, effective democracy of their own creation and design.

I was going to lay a line of invective against such a horrible comment.

Instead I'l just post this:

WWII airman laid to rest, decades after crash
Associated Press

NEW YORK - A bombardier lost over the Pacific during World War II has finally been laid to rest in Queens, six decades after his death.

Lt. Frank Giugliano was one of 11 U.S. airmen who vanished when their B-24J Liberator disappeared in bad weather after bombing enemy targets in New Guinea on April 16, 1944.

The bomber was last seen off the coast and was long presumed to have crashed into the ocean.

The remains weren't recovered until 2002, when a team of specialists from the Hawaii-based Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command checked out a tip from an island resident of who had come across the crash site.

Giugliano was buried in a flag-draped coffin at St. John's Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens on Friday.

"He made us proud," a 72-year-old cousin, Joe Cosenza, told the New York Daily News. "I was too young to know him, but every time I spoke to my brother he just told me more and more about him. His is a story you couldn't make up. It's fantastic that he's home."

HIs cousin was a child when Giugliano died. He is now 72 years old.

Frank Giugliano wasn't a number, he was a young man with a family who died in the service of his country and after 62 years, his family wanted to bury him with honor.

That is something Tony Snow will never understand.