MichaelMoore.com

"It scares the shit out of me that there is a single soul in this country that can still be in support of George W. Bush."

From: [omitted]@us.army.mil
Sent: Monday, November 01, 2004 11:57 PM
To: Michael Moore
Subject: soldier to hippie

Mr. Moore,

My name is Kellen Cook and I am an Army veteran. I got out of the Army in August and moved back to the place I told myself I would never return to, Kalamazoo, MI, not too far from your hometown. First of all I want to thank you for your creativity while revealing the scandals in the White House. Your movies rock! I bought Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 almost a month ago. Although they both brought a tear to my eye, you did an excellent job making me laugh while presenting the issues us Americans need to see.

It pisses me off when people tell me you are one-sided. I tell them to wake up and smell the coffee because even if you are, we still need to see that side. Now I'm reading your new book, Will They Ever Trust Us Again? You are a genius for putting that book together and everything else. On a quick side note, I'm not in Iraq anymore but I would love to read, Dude, Where's My Country?, so if you want to send me one that would be sweet, but if not, I will just buy it.

Anyway, your book has inspired me to write you. There is less than 24 hours until we can vote here in the great state of Michigan. And I'm scared shitless that we will have another four years of disaster. Today, I have been more nervous than the day I left for the Army, more nervous than my initial jump out of a C-130 and even more nervous than the day I loaded on to that C-17 to go to Iraq. It scares the shit out of me that there is a single soul in this country that can still be in support of George W. Bush. See, I joined the Army because of what happened on September 11th. I was all about going after the terrorists responsible for attacking us and I still am supportive of going after people like Usama Bin Laden. But the situation in Iraq is flat out wrong.

When we invaded Iraq I was still stateside and I was all for it because I like to trust people and I would especially like to trust my commander in chief. Luckily I saw the light, it’s just unfortunate that my older brother, who joined after me for the same reasons, and I went to Iraq a month apart from each other. We would write each other quite frequently and he said to me in his first letter that it is our mere presence why the Iraqis are attacking us. We thought we were going to do a good thing and it didn’t take long for us to change our minds. He saw soldiers being blown up by roadside bombs and I was more fortunate because I only had to deal with constant mortars and rockets landing all around my camp night after night. But through this all, we did fulfill our duty and we never disobeyed our commander in chief despite him being a greedy, lying son of a bitch.

Oh yeah, and he’s a criminal and a murderer! It makes me sick thinking about it all, how does he sleep and night knowing what he’s done? I guess when you consider the fact that he probably can’t read maybe he just doesn’t know how many people he’s killing. We need some change now, because I can’t watch my family worry about my brother again when he goes back over seas. He just came home September 12th, and they expect him to go back soon. Isn’t taking a year from someone’s life enough? Now they want to take another year from him. He already has one Purple Heart and he doesn’t need to risk getting a second or third for another mans ignorance.

Our soldiers need to get on with their lives and if they have to protect our country when it matters, then I know damn well that they will. My brother has a beautiful wife and they can’t even enjoy their marriage or start a family because of all the bullshit, thanks to the Bush administration. I could go on and on but I know you’re a busy man so keep doing great things for our country, Mr. Moore.

Well, I need to share one more thing with you. Before my brother went to Iraq last September he was visiting Kalamazoo and left a note for me in the spare bedroom at our moms. I was home about a month after him to visit before I departed to Iraq and found this letter:

"Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, Let us, to the end, Dare to do our Duty as we understand it………………………Lincoln."

I’m going to go out on a limb here; I don’t think too many soldiers deployed have faith in shit right now. And if they do, there is some serious brain washing going on.

Thanks again for everything you’ve done!