Some tuning in, others tuning out

By Timothy Pratt

Thursday, April 3, 2003 | 11:12 a.m.

Television news headlines announced troops were closing in on Baghdad Wednesday and experts offered opinions on how to put Iraq back together again after the war.

But as coalition tanks and trucks rolled toward the Iraqi capital, Nevada families with loved ones in the war struggled with conflicting emotions.

On the one hand, they said, perhaps the news meant the war was closer to an end and their families would soon be reunited. But on the other hand, maybe their loved ones were in the thick of what may be some of the bloodiest battles yet in the 15-day-old war.

Some say the best way to cope is to tune out the news altogether.

Esperanza Amezquita, a Las Vegas resident and mother of Jesus Santiago, who is in the Navy, was ignoring the day's news as she prepared a package to send to her son Wednesday afternoon. It included a scapular, a religious symbol of devotion worn around the neck -- "to protect him,"she said.

"I don't want to watch the news because I suffer from high blood pressure and I get really sick," she said in Spanish.

The mother of four and housekeeper at Mandalay Bay Convention Center said she has to leave the house when her husband, Santiago, turns on the television.

"I go outside and take a pill for my blood pressure," she said.

She said her son was called up in November, on Thanksgiving Day, and missed celebrating his 19th birthday with his family Dec. 7. Then she had to pause for a moment before recalling her last phone conversation with him, on Sunday.

"He only said, 'Mama, I'm OK, don't worry about me and pray for all of us,' " she said.

"I just want the war to end and for everybody to come home."

That's the only news June Darquea wants to hear at the the Comma Coffee shop that she runs, across from the Legislative Building in Carson City.

Darque's son Clinton is a member of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment -- "right out in the front lines," she said. She believes he is in Nasiriyah, not Baghdad -- "but you don't really know."

"(So) I don't have a different emotion or thought hearing that they're closing in on Baghdad than hearing anything else," she said.

Like Amezquita, Darquea is not monitoring the war.

"After the first week of the war, I have opted to not watch TV news much," Darquea said. "I'm functioning on the theory that no news is good news."

Some families in the Las Vegas Valley saw their loved ones being deployed even as the news broke of coalition troops drawing closer to Baghdad.

Dennis L. Cornell, a Vietnam veteran and Henderson resident, said his son David, a paramedic with Arizona National Guard, packed his bags Monday and would be flying to Kuwait sometime this week.

"I'm just sitting on the edge of my chair waiting to see what happens," Cornell said.

He spoke with his son Monday. "I told him, 'Keep your head down,"' he said.

As for the news of the troops, he said, "Until I hear he's heading to Baghdad, I'm not too worried.

"I'm just hoping he doesn't have to go out to the front lines."

Sun City residents Pat and Ernie Buschmann heard this week that their grandson Brandon Huber transferred his bank account from Fort Polk, La., to his hometown in Michigan -- a sign that he would soon be deployed.

"The way he's talking lately, it sounds like he's getting ready," Pat Buschmann said.

She also said that waiting for news of Huber, who is in the Army, made her want to turn away from the television news.

"It makes me anxious and sometimes it makes me angry to see what's happening to our soldiers," she said.

"I have to get away from it ... and I don't want to think of what could happen to my grandson."

Meanwhile, her husband was in the other room of their MacDonald Ranch home, watching the news.

He hoped he was watching the troops drawing closer to war's end as they approached Baghdad.

"I have a wish that, as he is deployed, the conflict will be coming to an end," he said.

"That's my hope but I don't know that this is true."