Anti-war woman's trip to see son serving in Iraq has surprises for both

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | April 3, 2004 | Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

[Cincinatus' Wife]

'Hey, Nick. Your mom's here.' Anti-war Alameda woman's trip to see son serving in Iraq has surprises for both

........Galleymore was more political as a young mother, taking her young children on protest marches during the Iran-Contra controversy of the mid- 1980s. Her children hung out with the progressive thinkers she met while working for a food policy organization. But Galleymore's activism faded as her children entered adolescence, her time eaten up by the demands of single motherhood.

And somewhere along the line, her children didn't absorb her political perspective.

After Nick finished his third year at San Francisco State University and had been accepted for transfer to UC Berkeley, he announced that he had joined the Army.

"It was a total surprise," Galleymore said. "It wasn't like he needed money for college. He was already three years in, so that doesn't hold water."

She dismissed Nick's volunteering as a phase; it wasn't. Her son not only wanted to be in the Army, he wanted to be in an elite unit. He passed up completing his college degree and left for boot camp on Independence Day weekend, 1999.

Galleymore still doesn't know exactly why. They could never fully discuss it.

In January 2003, Nick was shipped to Afghanistan. He had become an Army Ranger, a jump master for paratroopers and a sniper. He was in the thick of the action. Last Dec. 19, his 26th birthday, Nick called to say he was headed to Iraq. At that point, with U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians being killed almost daily, Galleymore began to panic. She couldn't sleep at night, "because I was thinking, 'My kid is going to get killed for something I don't believe in, and I don't think he knows what he's getting into.' "

She began talking with other military mothers, hoping to get their perspectives on how to cope. But many knew little about what was going on in Iraq. Frustrating her effort to learn more about Nick was that she felt the news reporting from the front lines was giving an overly rosy picture of the U. S. occupation.

At wit's end, she decided that the only way to calm her fears was to go to Iraq. She got in touch with Code Pink, which has led about a dozen parents to Iraq over the past few months. After holding a fund-raiser, which netted half of the trip's $2,200 cost, she left for Iraq on Jan. 24. ................

[facedown]

She got in touch with Code Pink...

Words fail me.

[alnick]

"I don't know if he hasn't been responding to my e-mails because he can't, or because of something else," Galleymore said.

Gee, maybe it's because she portrayed her son and the rest of the troops as thugs who randomly shoot civilians for no apparent reason.

[alnick]

What jumped out at me was her comment that her son might die for something SHE doesn't even believe in. The woman doesn't seem to have the capacity to understand that the important thing is that HE believe in what he's doing, which he apparently does.

[FreedomPoster]

>>Somebody needs to run a fundraiser to buy this woman a clue.

LOL, and worth saying again. That's pretty much the one-line synopsis of this article.

[kristinn]

That poor soldier. Thank God he turned out better than his mother.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

...He had become an Army Ranger, a jump master for paratroopers and a sniper...[yet she says] "and I don't think he knows what he's getting into.' "...

This 26 year-old man knows full well what he's getting into and is clearly one heck of a soldier.

[ReleaseTheHounds]

The sentence in this article that sums it up for me is when the mother says: "Don't do anything here in Iraq that you'll be ashamed of..."

This is the disgusting truth about the anti-war movement... their prejudice that the US and its soldiers are inherently, inevitably bad, criminals, and bound to be doing wrong. This woman should be celebrating what her brave son is doing, especially having rejected all the cr*p that he had been spoon-fed by her and the kid's professors at those knee-jerk "liberal" (communist-leaning) schools in California.

This young man is helping to liberate and give freedom to millions of Iraqis -- tens of millions if you consider the future generations who will be blessed by this liberation in 2003-4. That is more "goodness" than any of these anti-war activists could ever imagine doing, even in their wildest left-leaning imaginations.

[alnick]

What do you say about someone who would compromise the security of her own son by going over there and "bogging down" the process?

And she's writing a book, so she plans to profit from it to boot.

And the oedipal thing -- just ick.

[metesky]

"I want my son home and everybody's child home, but at the same time I think were doing the right thing -- I think it's important and we should be there until it's done," Porter said, adding her son told her, "'Mom, I'm finally doing something that matters.'"

I'll bet every mother in the world wishes her children could say that to her.

Actually made me teary.

[Lee'sGhost]

Good luck to your son. BTW, my dad went to UGA after WWII.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

In all honesty, she sounds like she is mentally ill.

[sakic]

You may disagree with what she's done but she obviously cares about and loves her son. Anyone who thinks she took this trip for political reasons or any other reason is nuts.

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

Shame on you, you forgot the barf alert.

I nearly spewed with this quote, "What was most striking was how isolated the soldiers are over there," she said. "They're not interacting with the Iraqi people that much."

One good thing, this article shows that the socialists are losing. Here's a young man raised as red diaper doper baby who is 180 from what his commie mommy hoped for.

[sakic]

And you can also be sure that when it's over the son will hug his mother as soon as he can.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

In one essay, Galleymore asked for others to appreciate that the soldiers are in a dilemma, "caught in a military culture that encourages the numbing of most emotions but anger. Whip up enough anger in young men emotionally isolated, denied friends, family, lovers, even civilians clothes, physically exhaust them, nourish them inadequately, expose them to extreme temperatures and violent behavior, confine them to base and portray everyone else as murderous and you create impossible stress."

What IS she smoking? Every word she's said here is a window into her liberal preconcieved notions about the military, which have no basis in reality.

A while back there were some pictures floating around showing soldiers cradling Iraqi babies, helping paint schools, etc.

Someone ought to e-mail those pictures to her.

[raybbr]

Isn't liberalism a mental disorder?

[Lee'sGhost]

"C'mon you other moms, get over there and visit your kids. Maybe we can get so many moms over there that we'll bog down the process..."

Translation: C'mon you other moms, get over there, visit your kids, and get killed. Then we'll blame your death on Bush's quagmire instead of our stupidity.

[kcvl]

Then you need to read her website.

[Enduring Freedom]

Socialism has always been about women.

The male qualities are discouraged and even discriminated against.

Soft liberal metrosexuals cannot defend themselves.

And that is why Al Qaeda supports Socialist regimes - they do the work for them.

Socialism for a country is self-termination, i.e. Suicide.