Wesley was a member of Troop K, 3rd Squadron of the 278th Regimental Combat Team in Jamestown, Tennessee, part of the Tennessee National Guard.

Wesley was 20 years old, a 2003 graduate of Celina High School. He was married to his high school sweetheart, Muriel, and has an 11 month old daughter, Cameron. Wesley went to Iraq in November of 2004, as part of the largest deployment in Tennessee National Guard history. He was scheduled to come home next week, back to Muriel and Cameron, and his parents and sister, and this small-town community in the foothills of the Cumberland mountains in northern Tennessee. Sadly, Wesley is coming home, but he was killed last week, on October 13th, when an "Improvised Explosive Device" went off near the humvee he was driving near Ad Dujayl, Iraq.

So today, there are ribbons and signs and flags all over town, and everyone waits for Wesley to come home. The soldiers who came to tell his mother he was killed told her he fought hard to live, through several cardiac arrests, but he lost too much blood, and so he is gone. He won't be here to ride his horses, or his four-wheeler, or to see Cameron grow up. Cameron knows his picture...she points at it, smiles, and says Daddy. And that is all she will ever know of Wesley...just the pictures and the memories of others.

This is my hometown, and this is the first soldier lost from this immediate area. And I am so angry. I consider this boy a victim of Bush and Cheney and Condaleeza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld and that whole cabal of war criminals. But I can't say that to anyone here at home, because that would be considered an insult to Wesley. So I am telling you about this lovely boy, another victim of George Bush. May he rest in peace, and may George Bush someday get what he deserves.