Thanks, P4B. I was in the process of writing my own request asking for the same courtesy when I saw yours pop up after DropDeadFred's apology.

DropDeadFred, thank you, first of all, for your courageous service. I stand in awe of the fact that you served this country, and I personally know and love a number of young men (and one young woman) who have served or are currently serving in the military. As much as I love and support you guys, however, I have a hard time forgiving my country's leadership for sending y'all into harm's way based on bad intelligence. That's what much of our very understandable objection to this war is about. We see the casualty counts, both military and civilian, grow by the day. We see you young men and women coming back, often wounded for life, and, as a mother of a 20-year-old, I find that impossible to support. Certainly deep down you can see why others may feel differently from you. I certainly see why you feel the way you do.

About the deaths of little girls, I did a little research real quickly and found widely varying tallies of civilian casualties as a result of our military action. They ranged from 30,000 civilian deaths (our DoD estimate) up to 100,000+ depending on whose tally you read. The one thing that all the tally sources agreed on, however, is the fact that that figure comprises a large amount (about 3/4) of women and children. The Pentagon and our top military officials don't dispute this fact, by the way. I've heard both Rumsfeld and Cheney talk about this very fact on the Sunday news shows on more than one occasion. So, as much as I may be risking setting off another tirade of all-caps profanity, Hamlet's information was quite accurate, and pictures of such victims do exist.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Oct28.html