n2kaja | Don't worry I haven't gone numb, I'm just keeping quiet, but every now and then I have to scream

Will the troops pull out of Iraq?

So many lives lost, so many others destroyed for life. I read somewhere that kerry called for them to be home by christmas. Don't think it will happen but one can only hope. I was reading this on

americablog I think it sums it up well

Last night on Hardball, Bob Shrum mentioned something to the effect that a Republican criminal enterprise was being run out of the office of Tom DeLay. If Shrum's speculation turns out to be accurate, it's mighty hard to see how DeLay's resignation will make much of a difference in the fate of the Republican Party.</p>
Of all the people that unwittingly facilitated the Republican Culture of corruption for which DeLay has come to represent, and the string of astonishing GOP failures stemming from the White House, perhaps the grass-roots religious-right deserve the most sympathy. I'm talking about the ordinary guys and gals. Most of those hard working folks were expertly handled by religious opportunists and misled into supporting some of the most immoral politicians ever to disgrace the halls of power. Their eyes and hearts were drawn skyward by the smooth political operators while their collective pockets were then picked byneoconservative policy.
They could clean, some have and more will follow. But it takes tremendous courage to question one's very identity. And it is likely humiliating to confront the possibility that trusted comrades in faith have so cleverly played them like a harp,played them with their deepest, personal spiritual beliefs. Even though I oppose a great deal of what the religious right leaders represent,I'm tempted to pity the working class men and women who were conned.Then again:

[Daily Times]BAGHDAD: At least 21 people were killed across Iraq on Tuesday,including 10 in a car bombing in eastern Baghdad, security officials said.
[BostonHerald]Meanwhile, the military reported eight Marines and a sailor were killed in Anbar province Sunday. Five were killed when their truck rolled over in a flash flood near Al Asad Air B
wo Marines and a Navy sailor were missing in that incident. Also Sunday, three Marines and a sailor were killed by hostile fire. No other details were released.
Tens of thousands of Americans, their familles, their friends. We know that over 2,300 will never come home. Another 16,000 or more are physically injured, many severely. Lost limbs, severed spinal cords,massive head trauma, they are blinded, broken, and shattered. And the number of dead and injured Iraqis is possibly ten times greater. Many of these people will undergo more discomfort and hardship for the rest of their lives simply waking up and getting out of bed than most us will encounter in what we call a 'day from hell'.
An estimated fifty-thousand Americans will suffer Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.The sensorium of war will furnish the survivors with a lifetime's supply of guilt, delicately filed between reel after reel of ghastly snapshots recorded by the senses and replayed endlessly in the virtual cinema of the Mind. It may manifest itself as anxiety, chronic depression, substance abuse, or conduct disorders. These lucky survivors will struggle with recurring images, sounds, and smells of dead men, women, and children. Even flashbacks of the living can haunt;the memory of an abandoned toddler spied through a smoking gun turret,bloody and wailing in a bullet chipped alley, too young to understand and too helpless to cope, can break a man or woman years later.
Some will manage, some will stumble and right themselves, some will need help, some will be driven over the edge by these demons. A few may take their own lives, a handful may become monsters and take the lives of others, each tragedy adding more casualties from this war, more lost,whose names will never be listed on a Department of Defense website or inscribed on a bronze plaque next to a memorial.
If the Democrats make even modest gains this November of in '08, yes some of it will be due to the Tom DeLay's of America. And my sympathies for those who were misled, who sold their souls to the Republicans believing they were saving them. But let us not forget the greatest price and the people who will be paying it for decades. And let us not forget, while we consider if we should bother voting this November,that that gruesome tab is still open and growing with each passing day.