Sign tallying Iraq casualties makes a stir in Duluth

PATRICK CONDON
Associated Press

DULUTH, Minn. - Scott Cameron never thought his modest memorial to American troops in Iraq would transform a quiet downtown street here into the latest front in the country's tense debate over the war. Cameron's sign tallying the war's dead and wounded rests just a few feet from the local Army recruiting office, and Cameron's refusal to take it down despite Army requests has drawn national attention. The fuss is giving the Vietnam veteran a chance to air a view he wishes he'd expressed long ago - and, he hopes, to raise some money for veterans besides.

"The way veterans have been treated in this country is shameful," Cameron, an Army veteran, said this week. But his tribute has irritated the half-dozen recruiters who work next door, who dislike the daily reminder of friends lost.

"They're saying, 'Why should we have to look at that? We lost people over there,'" said Staff Sgt. Gary Capan, the post's commander. "It's not just a number to them." Of the seven recruiters in the office, Capan is the only who didn't see action in Iraq. He said he asked for the sign's removal for his colleagues' benefit, not because he feared it would scare off recruits, as some of Cameron's supporters believe.

"You're a young kid and you see those stark numbers, you might realize there's a cost you didn't consider," said Gary Tonkin, a friend and fellow Vietnam veteran who's been helping Cameron juggle media requests this week.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/13518117.htm

Great idea~!

that it's not "just a number" to any of us. If it was, Scott Cameron wouldn't have bothered with his sign.