Women with relatives in military speak out in Vegas

Kirsten Searer

Thursday, Oct. 7, 2004 | 10:55 a.m.

Some women said they keep their sons or husbands away from loud noises now -- even the rainstorm exhibition at Aladdin's Desert Passage sent one recent Iraq returnee into tears.

Others said they're still waiting for their relatives to open up about experiences in Iraq or Afghanistan.

A group of military mothers, wives and grandmothers met Wednesday to talk politics at the Santa Fe Station.

They included the Moms with a Mission, a group of military mothers and wives who are traveling the country to put a human face on the casualties in Iraq -- and to campaign for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. The Moms with a Mission are on a seven-state tour of battleground states.

"The only people who continue to say everything is fine is George Bush and Dick Cheney," said Nita Martin, a mother of two Marines from Pennsylvania and a registered Republican.

Martin said her son went online to purchase a helmet he could trust before he was sent to Iraq.

Other participants at Wednesday's gathering come from longtime military families and were staunch supporters of President Bush.

Cheri Helton has a son-in-law and a nephew who recently have gone overseas and has seen the consequences.

"Everyone needs to know it's so traumatic," she said.

But she pointed out that Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction against his own people and buried military planes deep within the desert sand.

Who knows, she asked, what else is buried in the desert or was shipped to other countries while the U.N. inspected the country for weapons of mass destruction?

"I still don't believe anything we were told in the beginning was a lie," Helton said.

Matthew Hutchings, an undecided voter who runs the Family Support of Southern Nevada, which deals with family services for the National Guard, told the women that he doesn't worry about the justification for going to Iraq.

"I don't think the biggest problem is 'Why are we there,' but 'What's our exit strategy?' " he said.

While they disagreed on the purpose behind the war, many agreed that there are not enough troops on the ground.

They said basic supplies are more available than when the war first started, but mothers such as Las Vegas resident Lisa Hunt, whose 22-year-old son is serving his second stint overseas, said she said she still spends hundreds of dollars a month shipping socks, goggles and vitamins to her son.

Maura Satchell's first son to go to Iraq had enlisted when he was still 17 years old -- right after Sept. 11, 2001. Soon he was digging foxholes in sewage pits and sharing meals and water bottles with other troops, she said.

He got in trouble with his superiors when he arranged to obtain chickens from a local Iraqi man, said Satchell, who is from Tennessee.

Another son is getting ready to go to Iraq, probably early next year, and Satchell said her oldest, who has returned home, wants to know his sacrifice was meaningful.

"He can't square it in his head that we went into Iraq for no reason," she said.

Martin also had one son enlist in the Marines after Sept. 11, 2001. It was "a very patriotic act that I respected but which made me very fearful," she said.

She said she believes that Bush was set on going to war in Iraq and pushed troops in without proper supplies and enough troops on the ground.

"I don't want George Bush to be in charge of my sons anymore," she said. "I want John Kerry to do it."

Her second son, Zach, is in Iraq now. She hopes he gets a "hero's welcome" when he returns, just as her older son did. But she worries that the country is becoming complacent about casualties.

"What I'm afraid of is Zack is going to come home to not being acknowledged," she said. "... I worry that his sacrifice isn't going to be appreciated as his brother's was."