On Fox News' DaySide, co-host Mike Jerrick asked Gold Star Mothers for Peace founding member Celeste Zappala whether recent anti-war protests were “just giving the terrorists in Iraq and the insurgents in Iraq more hope that possibly we're losing will in the United States to continue to battle,” a question interrupted by applause from the studio audience. When Zappala responded that the soldiers were not being “well supported” by the administration, giving the example of the slow supply of body armor to soldiers, Jerrick quickly responded that “the Pentagon is really trying to resolve that issue.”
From the interview of Zappala by Jerrick and co-host Juliet Huddy on the September 27 edition of Fox News' DaySide:
HUDDY: I understand you feel that Cindy Sheehan is right, and you say the administration is totally morally bankrupt. So, why are you a supporter of Cindy Sheehan? Go ahead and explain that.
ZAPPALA: Well, I'm Cindy's friend, and I'm a supporter of peace. I'm in Philadelphia. My son, Sergeant Sherwood Baker, was killed in Iraq while protecting the Iraq Survey Group, the people who were still looking for the weapons of mass destruction last April. He was Pennsylvania National Guard. And when we buried Sherwood, I made a vow to him that I would tell the truth about the war as best I could to everybody who would listen. And my whole family has made this promise. And so, we have joined with Cindy and many, many other families, Gold Star families and families who are still active-duty, and pray that they never become us.
JERRICK: Celeste, let me just jump in quickly here --
ZAPPALA: Sure.
JERRICK: -- because we've had so many people respond to us at DaySide with their emails and phone calls saying that don't you feel like the people who are protesting this war, especially the people we saw down there in D.C. over the weekend, are just giving the terrorists in Iraq and the insurgents in Iraq more hope -- [applause] -- that possibly we're losing will in the United States to continue to battle?
ZAPPALA: Are we losing will because the mission we're trying to accomplish is ill-led, because the soldiers are not well supported, because the information --
HUDDY: When you say “not well supported,” what do you mean by that?
ZAPPALA: I mean that we families have had to buy equipment for our young people because they are told you need to go but you're not being supplied with a global positioning device, or you're not being supplied with phones, or you may or may not get a flak jacket.
JERRICK: But the Pentagon is really trying to resolve that issue, Celeste. The Pentagon is really trying to resolve that problem.
ZAPPALA: In two and a half years, a billion dollars a week? Someone is profiting quite mightily from all this --
HUDDY: Celeste, we have a studio audience --
ZAPPALA: -- and support for the troops would mean that some of these issues would have been dealt with long ago. They would have been an absolute priority.