Iowa Insurance

Dubuque, Iowa - In the days and months to Michael J. English was killed by a landmine, he continued as an armoured personnel carrier of the establishment of a road near the Baghdad International Airport, several memories of his short life and early death came to the his parents home in the American River Near City, Mississippi.

The first cavalry back its military goods shipped in a Duffel bag and two boxes. Michael died on the last day of July last year, 21, but the pocket and not boxes has remained for months. His mother, Ilene, said she was not ready for the wave of mourning, they still wash when they sorted through the artifacts of their youngest son’s last days. The U.S. military also sent home a Bronze Star, Michael’s posthumous distinction, and his father, Wayne, take into account the small star discreet, without talking, a backhand pass on his T-shirt.

For Iowa State, Germany has benefited from a family perfectly folded American flag that flew for a day to Michael’s Honor above the Capitol in Des Moines. And from the White House a letter of condolence signed by President Bush. Two letters, actually.

“Exactly the same twice,” Wayne English, dry, seated at his kitchen table wooden house as part of Dubuque’s working-class North End neighborhood. “Whether you say? It was a ceremony writing. ”

If Bush believes, hold the White House on the strength of his performance as war itself defined the President, Dubuque, in the heart of an electoral process battleground along the spine of the Mississippi, Missouri, running up by Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, is the kind of place where it is the case. Dubuque is a Democratic city, but also very blue-collar, Catholic tradition and committed, full of voters once known as “Reagan Democrats, was on the GOP by calls to their cultural conservatism and patriotism.

These voters are at the centre of an intense struggle between campaigns, the president and his Democratic challenger, Senator John F. Kerry (Mass.). They are an important element still undecided-Block - back-and-intrinsic torn between support of the army and concerns over the unfolding events in Iraq.

The citizens of Dubuque half the world lives near Baghdad, and also a great distance by the Pentagon and Lower Manhattan, where attacks on September 11, 2001, Bush finally on its way to Iraq. But questions of war and peace and national security reverberate here. They are also in hundreds of possibilities, political and personal - relatively insignificant issues, as the mayor’s concern that Homeland Security plan would force tourists through metal detectors before Stepping Delta Queen, or require, Security Guards in Jo’s Diamond Casino River boat to bear arms, if the perceived threat to the national level, orange, on such issues as deeply and irrevocably that the death of a native son, PFC. Michael English.

Michael is the only Dubuque soldier to die in Iraq, but its history is not regarded as a misfortune at a distance. The call and the deployment of more than 4000 soldiers of the National Guard in its reserve and army units, Iowa ranks near the edge of all States, the percentage of men and women in Iraq and the Middle East , And is an excellent Dubuque Engine in this effort.