Bring our children home

At 1 p.m. on Oct. 25, I will be at the Thompson Federal Building at Liberty and South Virginia streets. It will be one of the most important things I will do this month.

I will be there because I am angry. For a long time, the government has not represented the interests of most of the people it is supposed to serve.

Close to $62 billion has gone into a war that was started on false pretenses. In other words, the government lied. And another $87 billion is about to be approved for Iraq and Afghanistan. So instead of spending the money on real needs, such as job development, health care and education (I believe Mr. Bush ran as the “education president"), the money went to fight a war that killed thousands of Iraqi civilians and soldiers, hundreds of Americans and other coalition troops, and tore apart the country’s infrastructure, which we now have to pay to rebuild.

Bush lied to us when he said we were going to Iraq to remove their weapons of mass destruction. None have been found.

Bush lied when he said Iraq was linked to al Qaeda. Well, it wasn’t then, but it sure is now.

My son recently enlisted in the U.S. Army. He will probably go to Iraq. I would like to know if Bush or any of our elected representatives would send their sons or daughters off to Iraq or Afghanistan, knowing that, every day, Americans are being killed there. Like any other mother, I do not want my son coming home in a coffin. Too many families have already lost loved ones to this war.

Bush lied to us when he said the war was over. Americans and Iraqis are still dying. A total of 336 Americans have died since the beginning of the war; 198 of these have died since Bush declared “victory” nearly six months ago. And the only way to stop this is to bring our troops home, now. Alive. Not in body bags.

I am still trying to understand why we went to Iraq. I do not support terrorism. I do not want to see my country attacked again. I did not like Saddam. But I don’t know what we have achieved. And the sad thing is, because Bush and his cronies have been continually lying to us since before this war started, I probably wouldn’t believe a thing they said now.

I will be at the federal building to lift my voice along with others to support our troops by demanding that the war in Iraq really end. By bringing home every one of our troops home.