The widow of a U.S. Army Ranger who committed suicide was removed from a book-signing event for Donald Rumsfeld over the weekend after she confronted the former Secretary of Defense about her husband’s death. Ashley Joppa-Hagemann introduced herself to Rumsfeld by handing him a copy of her husband’s funeral program at a base south of Tacoma, Washington, on Saturday. She then said her husband joined the military based on lies Rumsfeld told during his tenure in the Bush administration. Joppa-Hagemann also complained about Rumsfeld’s response to her account of her husband’s repeated deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Roughly a half-dozen security and military police officers then removed Joppa-Hagemann from the signing, along with the executive director of Coffee Strong, an antiwar group that links soldiers with benefits and counseling. During a recent event, Ashley Joppa-Hagemann accused the military of abandoning her husband.

Ashley Joppa-Hagemann, widow of deceased Army Ranger: "All I’m asking is that, as a community, that everybody gets together and stands up for these men, because the military’s not going to do it. They took what they could from these men, and they won’t let them go."