A Few Facts Just Don't Add Up in the Death of Freddie Gray

 feel a little ill after watching the latest update on the injuries Freddie Gray sustained on that fateful day.If you get a chance you ought to check out the reporting done by Jayne Miller, at WBAL TV in Baltimore. She has been up front about her information conflicting with what the police have been saying.

Here's what she has uncovered. Gray was placed in the back of the police van in metal handcuffs and leg irons. For unknown reasons he was not seat-belted in. From her investigation, Miller says during the ride, Gray was tossed about for ten minutes in that van, in shackles, unable to protect himself, unable to hold himself steady. It was during that time the medical experts she spoke to believe what happened is the van stopped abruptly, flinging his head back against a part of the van where there was a large bolt. (That bolt is the same shape as a wound on that part of Gray"s head.)

The van continued on for another 20 minutes or so, Miller interviewed the other prisoner in the van at the time who said he heard a few brief soft knocking sounds, then there was silence for the rest of the ride.

How horrid to think, he was put in that van, cuffed and chained, tossed about, helpless, unable to protect himself, and then to left to lie in the van gravely injured for 20 minutes more before getting medical attention. There was no desperate attempt to get emergency medical care until it was way too late. Unimaginable, just awful. Check it out.

More Sanitized War

I am just a little leery of all this talk about going to war. Not for the reason you might think, either. I understand that sometimes a nation needs to take a stand, and put the full resources of the powerful nation that we are behind fighting through to victory, whatever the cost. I get that. I even agree with that.

These days Americans are so comfortable rattling sabers, starting the meme that it might be necessary to put 'boots on the ground' to defend America and punish ISIL for their barbarism. But what they really mean is "let's send somebody else's child or somebody else's spouse" so they can then go on about their daily lives undeterred, uninterrupted, un-inconvenienced.

When men in my father's generation went to war, most every able-bodied man had to go. America as a country sacrificed to support the war effort financially as well as with fighting troops. Going to war meant something to them and to America. And, going to war must not be a sanitized endeavor that doesn't impinge on the daily lives of average people. War is dirty, war is costly. That reality has yet to be impressed upon the American people. The people must not be spared the cost of war, only getting the sanitized version, the feature length movie version with no real blood.

If this country decides to go to war to fight ISIL, every American must know what it is we're getting into; and it shouldn't be left to the young people from families who don't have lobbyists looking to keep them off the battlefield. If we decide to do this, we need to be all in. We need to stop expecting the un-empowered to do our dirty work for us.