A military mom's message: 'Bring the troops home' 6.3.07
By Monica Yant Kinney
Inquirer Columnist

JOSEPH KACZMAREK / Philadelphia Daily News
Sue Niederer in 2004 a few months after her son, Army Second Lt. Seth Dvorin, was killed in Iraq.
Sue Niederer will cringe when she reads this, but she has something in common with President Bush.
Both Niederer, a maverick military mom whose son was killed in Iraq, and Bush, the man she blames for his
death, are famously on message.

The president keeps on chirping about staying in it to win it, even after May went down as the third-bloodiest
month in the four-year war.

Niederer, a nationally known antiwar activist, allows me to drop by her place in Pennington, N.J., for a Diet Pepsi
so she can disabuse me of the idea that she'll take over for Cindy Sheehan as the face of the fight.

Sheehan is a friend, so Niederer feels comfortable saying the Bush-bashing media queen blew it.

"She became the icon," Niederer sniffs. "There is no icon. We're all suffering the same."

There never should have been a "Camp Casey," since it turned the focus to one dead soldier instead of all of
them. And what in the world was a Gold Star mother doing hanging out with Venezuela's America-hating leader,
Hugo Chavez?

"This is not a Cindy story," Niederer says. " 'Bring the troops home. Support them when they come home.' That's
it. That's all it's ever been."


Considering the news
I'm early for our interview, so I keep cool in the car listening to All Things Considered on the radio.
The top story is the bloodshed in Iraq, where improvised explosive devices cause 80 percent of troop deaths.

Then, just as Niederer drives up, the show airs a piece about Fort Drum's ending the tradition of a memorial
service for each soldier killed in combat. From now on, the fallen will be honored monthly in groups.

In the garage, I tell Niederer about both stories.

Her only son, Army Second Lt. Seth Dvorin, was killed in 2004 by an IED outside Baghdad. The 24-year-old
newlywed and Rutgers University grad had been stationed at Fort Drum, which is in New York.

Niederer, a 58-year-old real estate agent/substitute teacher/vending entrepreneur, scowls and continues
transferring boxes of Devil Dogs from her car to the fridge.

"I don't like thinking anymore," she tells me. "It's not good for my health."

She'd rather talk.

Just so long as we're clear that she's just one outraged mom of many in Gold Star Families Speak Out
(www.gsfso.org/), a group unaffiliated with celebrity or Sheehan.

"I don't want credit," Niederer says, sipping soda on a swivel chair at a kitchen island. "I don't want the limelight.
Just bring the troops home."


Pointedly on point
Niederer on the moment she became an activist: Feb. 3, 2004 - the day Seth was killed. "Why the @#$**! are we
there?" the unvarnished Brooklyn native barked at any reporter who called. "Mission accomplished? My kid is
dead."
On Freedom of Information Act follies: Seth was either the 526th, 527th, 528th or 529th casualty on a list fast
approaching 3,500. "We still don't know," she says, angrily. "Try getting any information out of our government."

On being arrested at a Bush campaign rally after asking Laura Bush why her girls weren't serving. "The part I
really resented was that they shot the images back to my son's platoon in Baghdad, like 'Here's your leader's
crazy mother.' "

On having no love for Democrats, either: "A bunch of cowards kowtowing to a dictator," she declares.

On military recruiters: "The things they tell these kids to get them there and keep them there," Niederer says,
firing off another round of expletives.

It may be hard to believe, but Niederer has softened a bit since the birth of her grandson, Seth Aiden, 14 months
ago. Still, like Bush, she remains on point on all points.

"I want these kids home. And I want them to be respected and taken care of when they're home.

"And I don't want anyone to forget the fallen. Don't tell me $100,000 [the death benefit] is all a fallen soldier's life
is worth."

Niederer missed a chance to protest last week when Bush was at a legislative fund-raiser in Edison, N.J.

She can't make them all - even activists have to work - but that's OK. After all this time in a war of words over the
war, he already knows what she'd say.



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Contact Monica Yant Kinney at 215-854-4670 or myant@phillynews.com. Read her recent work at
http://go.philly.com/yantkinney
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A military mom's message: 'Bring the troops home'