Bush Legacy
Jul 5th, 2008 at 2:32 pm by Susie
Just thinking about how many soldiers there are like this
makes me want to cry:
PINEHURST, N.C. A former Army medic made famous by a photograph that showed him carrying an injured Iraqi boy during the first week of the war has died of an apparent overdose, police said.
Joseph Patrick Dwyer died last week at a hospital in Pinehurst, according to the Boles Funeral Home. He was 31.
The photograph, taken in March 2003, showed Dwyer running to a makeshift military hospital while cradling the boy. The photo appeared in newspapers, magazines and television broadcasts worldwide, making Dwyer became a symbol of heroism.
Dwyer laughed when a reporter told him of the photo and its widespread circulation, and he tried to deflect focus to his entire unit. His mother, Maureen, said then that the photo embarrassed her son because it singled him out while other soldiers were doing the same thing.
Last week, Dwyer called a local taxi service to take him to the hospital after an apparent overdose, Capt. Floyd Thomas of the Pinehurst Police Department told the Fayetteville Observer. When the driver arrived, Dwyer said he couldn’t get to the door, according to a police report.
Police kicked in the door at Dwyer’s request, and he was taken by ambulance to a Pinehurst hospital. Thomas said bottles of prescription pills were found near Dwyer when police arrived. The former medic died later the night of June 28, according to authorities.
I was the copy chief at Army Times when it published this picture, back during the initial invasion of Iraq. This result was entirely predictable and is why I walked away from that job without looking back. There’s no end to the trauma of war — for the craven media, there’s no end to it. At Army Times, war is a form of porn mixed with a peculiar fetish for things military. For them, there’s a war on and business is GOOD. Thank the gods that I no longer have to handle content like this, which drips with the blood of kids. Dwyer was a just cog in the Gannet money machine and just a day’s drama copy for Army Times. RIP.