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Thursday, November 01, 2007
Things They Don't Tell You When You Sign Up
When soldiers volunteer to "fight terrorism", they don't usually consider the possibility that the real danger could lie within their own ranks.
Maybe you have already read about these two soldiers who volunteered to serve our country but ended up shot dead, not from fighting terrorists, but at the hands of someone on the base where they were stationed. Others have already written about the connection between these two murders, but I only recently learned of the second death.
Robert Rouse, on his Left of Centrist site, posted a video of the Chicago protest last week. On the video, he spoke with Juan Torres whose son died from a mysterious gunshot wound in Afghanistan in 2004. You can read what I wrote about Juan after I met him at Camp Casey in August of 2005 by clicking here. What I didn't write at that time was that Juan's son was in the military doing accounting work before he died. Just remember that there are a lot of things going on in the land of poppies. You can put the scenario together any way that you want. After all, the military has been doing that ever since Juan Jr. died.
What I didn't know, until I watched Robert's video, was that another soldier who also worked in accounting at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan (same base as Juan) recently died of a gunshot wound to the head. One night in late September of this year, Ciara Durkin was found dead outside a chapel. The military initially reported her as having been killed in action, but they later changed the cause to a "non-combat related incident". According to her family, before she died, she told them that she had witnessed things she didn't agree with and if she died, she wanted her family to investigate.
The family is awaiting the results of the investigation. Ciara was lesbian, and some are wondering if her murder was a hate crime. Maybe. But these two stories are too eerily similar to me.
And I'll be interested in learning what the investigation comes up with.
Maybe you have already read about these two soldiers who volunteered to serve our country but ended up shot dead, not from fighting terrorists, but at the hands of someone on the base where they were stationed. Others have already written about the connection between these two murders, but I only recently learned of the second death.
Robert Rouse, on his Left of Centrist site, posted a video of the Chicago protest last week. On the video, he spoke with Juan Torres whose son died from a mysterious gunshot wound in Afghanistan in 2004. You can read what I wrote about Juan after I met him at Camp Casey in August of 2005 by clicking here. What I didn't write at that time was that Juan's son was in the military doing accounting work before he died. Just remember that there are a lot of things going on in the land of poppies. You can put the scenario together any way that you want. After all, the military has been doing that ever since Juan Jr. died.
What I didn't know, until I watched Robert's video, was that another soldier who also worked in accounting at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan (same base as Juan) recently died of a gunshot wound to the head. One night in late September of this year, Ciara Durkin was found dead outside a chapel. The military initially reported her as having been killed in action, but they later changed the cause to a "non-combat related incident". According to her family, before she died, she told them that she had witnessed things she didn't agree with and if she died, she wanted her family to investigate.
The family is awaiting the results of the investigation. Ciara was lesbian, and some are wondering if her murder was a hate crime. Maybe. But these two stories are too eerily similar to me.
And I'll be interested in learning what the investigation comes up with.
Labels: Ciara Durkin, coincidences, Juan Torres
posted by Carol at 4:15 PM
4 Comments:
Carol, Thanks for writing about this. More people need to learn about what happened to our friend Juan's son and Ciara.
Thank YOU for putting up your video and including Juan in it. He is a good guy. I didn't know about Ciara until he mentioned her. Can't wait for MSM journalists to put the stories together.
Blows my mind. I hadn't heard about this.
Mary, Kinda makes ya wonder what else we don't hear about, eh?
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