Isn't one too many?

I hope you can find the time today to look at a few of the links that follow. Open your heart and search it when you are done.

I am not only non political but politically ignorant. I vote, but usually in a state of despair that there are no candidates worth the paper we punch the hole in, and choose what I hope are the lesser of the evil weasels that are running for office. I claim no concept of the larger picture - I do, however, have an OPINION.

Pulling up extra tall, heavy duty soap box, clambering up to stand on top. Reaches in pocket for wireless microphone. "Testing....Test. Can you hear me now? OK."

Support our Troops! Yes , we do that. How? Putting a cute magnet on the vehicle? By keeping in touch with the ones we know?At least until we kinda forget them in the flow of everyday life. Then we send a joke or a chain email and the letters and boxes from home stop. Then the jokes stop. The calls stop. They are too busy, broke and far from home to call us. They don't want to be an imposition or extra cost to strapped families so they won't call collect. They're tough, they're soldiers, nothing can stop them.

Except a bullet, a car bomb, a hundred other ways to kill a human or, in our case a motar round.

Dear Jewel, eldest daughter of mate's youngest brother and favorite niece,

We have just received word that you have been wounded and are being evacuated to Germany.

Your Dad got the email that says you had many surface wounds from flying schrapnel and pieces embedded near your spine and liver. The second email detailed the leg, broken near the knee that has been set in a cast and a knee brace. They also said you have a slash cut in your face from the lip to the cheek. The third one said you had been treated, the schrapnel removed and wounds treated and would be evacuated to Germany. Your Dad told your Uncle Bill and Grampa Ron. Uncle called me at work. We are letting the rest of the family know.

I called your Dad. After your Uncle left he got a call from you, praise God! He was so happy to hear your voice! He told me you had to hang up to get on the transport that is taking you away from that place on your first step home. He wishes he could be in Germany to meet you and be with you but we will all have to wait till you are in the States again. He gave me your TRACES tracking number but there is no place on line I can find to get info on you with it. I guess we have to call the hospital when you arrive.

I hope this letter finds you. We all want you to know we are praying for you and will do whatever we can to help. Call collect our time in the evening to let us know what you need. ***********. If you need someone to contact your fiance who is still over in Iraq, let me know.

I know how much surgury takes out of you so don't expect to just hop up and party for a while. It's ok to be too tired to even talk or read a book. Just rest and let your body and heart heal.

We love you and will join you when we can.

Your Dad and family,
Grampa R and Grama A
Uncle B and Aunt V
Grama W and Grama P (my mom)
Cousins D, A and their families
All the other W's that love you

P.S. Sending a copy to the hospital as well as your email.

And we are among the lucky ones. There are others, families that are getting a special notice about their boys and girls - the ones that will not be home - EVER.

And what about the previously wounded? Here's great news! low-cost “traumatic injury” insurance for members of America’s armed forces. Now, explain to me, why a country that was EMARRASSED into sending a LARGER donation to tsunami victims has soldiers that need INSURANCE related to their war injuries? We can't take care of our own?

We can't take care of our own. Chairities are making sure our wounded have backpacks to transport belonging, personal care and hygine items, a way to call home. Charities are providing military families with help while the soldier heals.

Why are there no photos of the action in Iraq? Read This, PLEASE. Where are the films of 6 soldiers being blown up by land mines, the children crippled and bloody from car bomb fragments? The images that would make us sick, that we won't let children watch because we are bombing other children? Where is the photo of the truth of war; the things that we refuse to picture, even in our minds as we read them? Is it just me? I don't read a lot of real papers, I get my new online. I checked google for iraq, soldier wounded. Not many links to real news places.

"DR. GENE BOLLES: The average American has not really witnessed the horrifying aspects of war, except from a distance, except from reading, except from what they may see on television. And we aren't showing very much here." Why not? Because we would have to take a stand against it. It's out there - on the web! In blogs and dot orgs. Check it out.

Can anyone show me how blowing up one more person is going to bring us closer to peace? Why is our fearless leadership sitting in it's cushioned office chairs (at 1500.00 a pop) on it's soft, lazy butts while our children are killed? Why are the 300,000 or so Great High Kabunga's telling the remaining 6,529,357,000 people to beat each other up from the comfort of their limos?

BECAUSE we let them. You let them. I let them. We grant permission by our SILENCE! As an adult citizen of the United States of America if you do not TELL them to stop, if you do not mail one letter to Washington saying War is the Wrong Way to solve disputes, then you are joining them as a warmonger .

If the people of the world can't stomach the destruction we can now cause with our hi tech, remote control weapons then the people of the world have to say ENOUGH. STOP. Stop the fighting and the bickering and butchering NOW.

Ask one mom if she would sacrifice her son or daughter for world peace. A few will say yes. I might even sacrifice ME for world peace. But isn't even one more life too many dead?

Ok, it is a rant. I have no grand plan to make the US quit wasting our money overseas an concentrate on making the section of the planet we have last longer. I turn off the lights, the faucets, drive to work and back as often as I can on the least fuel eating machine I have. I don't have room for a windmill and not enough money for thermal heating. I do what I can.

But I don't see how the US can fix anything anywhere until it fixes what is wrong at home. Stop the wars. Bring the kids home. Fix the infrastructure, feed the hungry, find all of us that want to work jobs so that we don't have to move to Mexico to work, get our kids in GOOD schools, let us disipline our children to teach them not to fight and bully but to share and compromise.

Share and compromise. Make Peace. Don't be so greedy. Get by with what you have. Share what you have too much of. Be kind to each other.

I love this world, the wilderness, the animals, the beaches and trees. I want it to last and I want to be proud to be an American again.