by James Glaser
December 29, 2003

The new issue of the Time Magazine has a picture of almost every American that has died in George Bush's War in Iraq. I looked at the faces and thought about what their loss meant to so many of their loved ones.

I thought about their mothers and fathers, wives and children. I thought about all the guys in their units that didn't die, but will feel some sort of guilt for the rest of their lives, even if they don't have any reason to feel guilty.

Some the soldiers that were killed were older and had long term relationships with their children. Others were young and their children will never get to know them. Years from now, all of these children will be looking for answers as to why their parent died. It really bothers me that those kids are going to find out they died for a President's lie, just like so many died in Vietnam for a different President's lie.

Years ago President Johnson told the American people we had to go to war because our troops were attacked by the North Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. That wasn't true, it never happened, and was a lie to get us into a war. The young children of that war have found out about that lie and ask themselves why they lost their parent and what were we fighting for?

Sometime in the future these young children of today's fallen warriors will ask those same questions and find that President Bush claimed that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction and that at any time, they might attack us with atomic bombs. President Bush claimed he couldn't wait to see mushroom shaped clouds over American cities before attacking.

Those young children will find that this President lied too. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction and Iraq couldn't drop atomic bombs on our cities even if they had them. Those children will learn that not only did we have a massive military presence patrolling Iraqi airspace, but Iraq had no Air Force or Navy. They will realize that as in Vietnam, there wasn't any good reason for their parent to fight or to get killed.

Some parents will suffer the loss of their son or daughter for another fifty years, some children for seventy five or more. Our nation will be divided on the question of this war for decades. The more troops we lose and the greater the debate will be. Many of us already know that those that have fallen have died so that this war and the killing of Americans and Iraqis could end. To end the Vietnam War, it took the loss of over 58,000 Americans and a million and a half Vietnamese, before Washington said, "enough."

We are now getting close to 500 Americans and maybe 30,000 Iraqis killed so far in Bush's War. Those of us that have been to other wars hope and pray that this time Washington will stop the killing sooner. Every American that dies gets us closer to the end, but it is such a waste to have the death rolls expand each and every day.

The loved ones of those that have been killed think that enough blood has been given already. They might not know it today, but as the years go by and the grief keeps building, they will start looking for answers. It will not be hard to find out that their loved ones died for a lie. George can't hide it and either can Congress. It costs almost nothing to start a war, but the price we pay in human suffering to end it, is excessive.