Best wishes for Molly.  My prayers are for her to find peace knowing she is not alone in either her suffering or in her hatred of this unjust war and this corrupt government.

My concern with the ongoing combat is somewhat politically incorrect, but it must be considered in the big picture.  These people have been continuously at each other's throats since the Sumerians started doing cuneiform records.  Has there ever been anything resembling peace in the middle east?  Our alphabet and higher math are the products of Arab thinkers, and from what I know, Islam instituted a much more humane system of law than the previous systems.  However..... 

While Iran and Iraq and their cultures are the sources of much of our knowledge and were great civilizations, along with this comes a cultural imperative to wreak vengeance on anyone who is not invited into their land, and a fundamental distrust, not only of strangers, but even of each other over issues that would seem trivial to us.  It would be like the Methodists and Baptists killing each other over religious differences.  This is their history and their problem to solve, and our presence there is a constant irritant to that fundamental cultural imperative. 

Diplomatic and political solutions are the only possible paths to peace in the middle east, and from what I am seeing in Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Afghanistan, and other areas, that solution is still a long way off.  We need to clean up the mess we made and get out of there so they can work on their own messes.  It is a lose/lose situation and 'staying the course' as the cowboy in the White House suggests will simply waste more lives and generate more hatred.  King Richard ran one of the last crusades.  Let's stop King George on this one.

                                                                                                                                            Daniel S. Hoy

                                                                                                                                            2635 Druck Valley Rd.

                                                                                                                                            York, Pa. 17406