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The believer: as an Army veteran who lost a son in Iraq, I felt it was my duty to go to Crawford to tell Cindy Sheehan why she's wrong about the war--and why president Bush is right.

Article Excerpt
I GREW UP IN HARKER HEIGHTS and went to Killeen High School. My dad was in the Army and was a professional shooter, so I grew up hunting. I enlisted in the Army in 1974. I was sent to Saigon but was there for only a few days before the war was over. Later I was transferred to a special operations unit, and after that I went to sniper school. I was a pretty good shot. I've been accused of knocking a gnat off a fly's butt. I said, "No, but I got the fly." I got out of the Army but stayed in the Texas National Guard and worked at the VA hospital here in Temple as a surgical OR tech. I volunteered for sniper duty in Bosnia in 1999 and came home a year later. Two months after I retired, we were attacked at the World Trade Center--Pearl Harbor number two. September 11 was an eye-opener. It reminded us to always keep watching.

My son Louis was born in 1984. His mother and I divorced, and I raised him and his younger brother, David, by myself. Three kids lived in this household, and I was the oldest. That's how we lived. All three of us would scuba dive together, go fishing, hunting, riding Harleys. Louis was born into the military--I always had him decked out in cammies--and he always wanted to go into the service and be like his daddy.

He joined the Marine Corps Reserve on his eighteenth birthday...

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