Velma Berger – 11/6/09

This page was last updated on November 8, 2009.

Casket photo drives home cost of war; Velma Berger; Beaver County Times; November 6, 2009.

From February 2005 through October 2007, Ms. Berger had a series of at least 26 Bush and Iraqi-bashing letters. In one letter, Ms. Berger told us she was proud of John Murtha. In another letter, Ms. Berger actually claimed she had “a clock ticking down to Bush’s last day in office” and that she “carr[ies] it on [her] purse everywhere [she] go[es].”

Far more often than not, the letters were war-related and ended with something like “Bring our troops home now.” For some reason we could speculate about, there were no war-related letters from November 2007 until early 2009. Ms. Berger’s four letters in 2008 were about the election campaign, with one letter supporting Hillary Clinton and another expressing her displeasure with Barack Obama. In one of the 2008 letters, Ms. Berger claimed she was upset with the Democrat party and claimed she would “now be a proud independent.” In my critique of that letter I wrote, “Though Ms. Berger asserts she ‘will now be a proud independent,’ her body of work indicates she will continue to support the leftist candidate, whoever that is. Come November after her short-term anger has subsided, I believe it’s safe to say Ms. Berger will cast her vote for Mr. Obama.” While I can’t say for sure Ms. Berger voted for Mr. Obama, a post-election letter shows Ms. Berger supports him now.

Below is a detailed critique of the letter.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”

[RWC] This is Ms. Berger’s second letter on this topic in 10 days.

“Friday’s paper had a photograph of a scene from Dover Air Force Base. Finally, we are permitted to see them returning a fallen soldier from Afghanistan, with this one being brought home in the middle of the night along with 17 others.”

[RWC] The decision about whether or not to show a picture of a casket is up to the family of the “fallen soldier.”

“Maybe if these lines of coffins with our fallen heroes were shown on the news regularly, people would realize the real cost of the war and demand an end to it.”

[RWC] Unlike Ms. Berger, I don’t need to see caskets to “realize the real cost of the war.”

“Showing the president saluting the caskets says to me that it can’t help but influence his decision concerning sending more troops to Afghanistan.

“We are not being asked to sacrifice material things for this war, but loss of lives is the greatest sacrifice of all.

“Bring the troops home now.”

[RWC] This is the first time Ms. Berger has used her trademark “Bring the troops home now” since the Bush administration. Ms. Berger still can’t bear to mention President Obama by name, however. You’ll note Ms. Berger doesn’t tell us what will happen if we just leave Afghanistan to the Taliban and al-Qaida.