Quoted:
White house cabana boy?
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Yeah, sure he is. Maybe you could try not being a disrespctful asshole and research who he is.
sja.hqmc.usmc.mil/jal/Misc/report_fullstory.htm
Sylvia Moreno Washington Post Staff Writer
April 12, 2003; Page A21
Twenty-five years a Marine, two wars under his belt and recuperating from life-threatening injuries, Master Gunnery Sgt. Guadalupe Denogean decided this week he was ready. And so he asked. "I'd like to be an American citizen," Denogean recalled writing in a questionnaire given to him at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. "Why not?" he said yesterday. "All they can do is say no." Not only did the federal government say yes, but President Bush and first lady Laura Bush stood by yesterday as Denogean and Marine Lance Cpl. Oj J. Santamaria were sworn in as U.S. citizens by Eduardo Aguirre Jr., director of the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Santamaria, 20, of Daly City, Calif., is a native of the Philippines and is with the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines Regiment, based at Camp Lejeune, N.C. Denogean, 42, who immigrated with his family to Arizona from Mexico when he was 6, is with the 1st Tank Battalion out of Twentynine Palms, Calif. Both were wounded in Iraq; Denogean on March 23 somewhere around Basra, and Santamaria on March 24. No other details were immediately available about Santamaria. Bush called the moment the two were sworn in as U.S. citizens "profound," the highlight of his visits yesterday to see wounded servicemen and women at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District and at the Bethesda medical center. The naturalization ceremony took place in the fifth-floor foyer of the medical center. "You know, we've got an amazing country, where . . . people would be willing to risk their own life and become a citizen after being wounded," Bush said at the end of his visits. "It's an amazing moment. I'm really proud of them." Denogean, taciturn and wearing his "cammies," as the Marines call their camouflage uniforms, called the event "pretty special." His wife, Jeri, who rubbed his head and the back of his neck during the interview, cried all the way through the ceremony. "It's a great honor for us," Denogean said, flanked by his wife and his sister, Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Yolanda Coulter. Bush visited about 34 soldiers at Walter Reed and 64 in Bethesda. He awarded nine Purple Hearts, the military award for wounded military personnel, and stood by for the moving naturalization ceremony. Santamaria, hooked up and receiving a blood transfusion and in obvious pain, managed to stand up from his chair and halfway through taking his oath of allegiance, broke down sobbing from the emotion of the moment. "My fellow American. You're a good man. I'm proud of you," Bush said to him. Bush also hugged Denogean and called him, "my fellow American." He directed a few words of Spanish to him, his wife and his sister: "Gracias a ustedes," he said. "Mucho gusto." Denogean's family, from Cananea, Sonora, arrived in Tucson in 1966. Every summer, the parents and seven children piled into his father's old pickup and traveled the farms of California and Washington state, migrants working the fields. They picked strawberries, cherries, green beans, plums, cucumbers. "If it grew and it was in season, it was picked," he said yesterday. He and his siblings used their pay to buy school clothes and for a bit of spending money. In January 1978, barely 17 and after he dropped out of high school in his sophomore year, Denogean joined the Marine Corps. "They needed warm bodies," Denogean said. "A lot of people didn't want to go into the service because of the Vietnam War." To him, it was the opportunity to do something more with his life. "I looked at my parents, in their fifties, still picking, and this life was a lot easier then working in the fields all the time."
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