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Bracelet Wars
September 28, 2008 11:34 AMIt was meant as a sign of respect, but now conservatives are saying Sen. Barack Obama's invocation of his "hero bracelet" bearing the name of a fallen soldier is being done against the family's wishes. Is it true? What's the reality here? Some background, first. During Friday night's presidential debate, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., mentioned the moment when the mother of a fallen soldier gave him a hero bracelet bearing her son's name, Matthew Stanley. "I had a town hall meeting in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and a woman stood up and she said, 'Senator McCain, I want you to do me the honor of wearing a bracelet with my son's name on it.'" McCain recalled. "He was 22 years old and he was killed in combat outside of Baghdad, Matthew Stanley, before Christmas last year. This was last August, a year ago. And I said, 'I will -- I will wear his bracelet with honor.'...And then she said, 'But, Senator McCain, I want you to do everything -- promise me one thing, that you'll do everything in your power to make sure that my son's death was not in vain.' That means that that mission succeeds, just like those young people who re-enlisted in Baghdad, just like the mother I met at the airport the other day whose son was killed. And they all say to me that we don't want defeat." But a month later, Ryan's father Brian -- who is no longer married to Tracy -- told Wisconsin Public Radio that his ex-wife had misgivings about Obama wearing the bracelet and mentioning their son on the campaign trail. It seems as though just as Tracy Jopek supports Obama and wants to end the war, Brian Jopek has a different take on what should happen in Iraq and may be more inclined to support McCain. (You can listen to Brian Jopek about 10 minutes into THIS CLIP.) After pointing out that he and Tracy are not married anymore, Brian says that "from what I understood from email exchanges with Tracy .she wanted to put a name, she wanted Sen. Obama to know Ryan's name...She wasn't looking to turn it into a big media event...She just wanted it to be something between Barack Obama and herself." Bryan Jopek went on to say that "because of some of the negative feedback shes gotten on the Internet, you know Internet blogs, you know people accusing her of or accusing Obama of trying to get votes doing it and that sort of thing, she has turned down any subsequent interviews with the media because she just didnt, she just didn't want it to get turned into something that it wasnt. She had told me that in an email that she had asked, actually asked Mr. Obama to not wear the bracelet anymore at any of his public appearances." Conservatives are now criticizing Obama for exploiting a fallen soldier whose mother has asked him to stop wearing the bracelet or mentioning her son's name. I'm not sure what the reality is behind this story -- I have a call into the Obama campaign and Tracy Jopek to find out more about this story, and will let you know what they say. I feel like McCain has earned the right to wear a fallen soldiers bracelet to honor that individual if he is asked. However, I don't think either candidate should inject this into politics. It seems to tarnish the fallen soldier a little Posted by: JohnQC 2008-09-29 |
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