Thank each and every one of you for your thoughts and words and prayers. JJ I'm going to go online and buy the book you mentioned. And you know, I'm the very mother who also said, if they impose a draft I'll take them away too! But my son is 19 and believes that he can help to bring peace. He does not relish the idea of combat and hopes to have a position that allows him to help his comrades. But I questioned him about the life and death issue and he answers, in typical young man fashion, that he's prepared to do whatever he must. I do not take offense at the response of my boomer friend from Ireland....Ireland has been dealing w/ death and destruction for centuries...my own grandfather came here as a child w/ his father who was escaping "the troubles" as he called them. What sane person wants war and killing? President Bush stood at the podium the day of his election and looked me and the rest of us straight in the eye and said he would be a good and faithful president, he would make sure that we and our children were safe, he vowed, he promised and as far as I'm concerned that is a covenant...a sacred one from a man who claims to be a man of God. I will hold him to his word. My son, who may well be going off to war, said to me that raising a single voice is pointless as no one in Washington listens. He may be right, but how do we, a powerful lobby in our own right if we choose to be, change that. We need a concerted, national effort of women raising their voices, holding congress and the senate accountable. Make them publish every word of every piece of legislation before it is passed. Let's look at the pork attached to these bills....let's take back representative government and make republicans and democrats represent our point of view, not their damned parties. If I want my son and all of the sons and daughters of America to be safe and free, then I have to exercise my responsibility as a citizen, to speak out, to ask others to join me and to demand representation. I think we americans have become sheep who vote every couple of years and remain quiet in between times. Who will speak for our children and grandchildren if not us. I promise you it will not be men like Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld....they are counting on us to be sheep who allow them to lead our children to the slaughter and never question why. I pray w/ my entire being that George Bush is the man he claims to be....my son's life depends on it.
Love you all!!!!!!