What have we done to these children of ours? We sent them to war based on a lie. There were not any WMDs in Iraq. We have lost some 530 of our own young men and women. We have sent them to battle with old equipment and canvas-covered Humvees. More than 6,000 of our soldiers have received life-altering injuries and many are amputees. Many thousands have been sent home due to psychological stress and 22 have committed suicide.

What have we done to the children of Iraq? They started to die by the thousands after the U.S. Air Force destroyed the power generating stations and the water purification systems in the first Gulf War, and they continue to do so. Disabling vital services was a war strategy designed to cripple a defeated country. Children dying from water-borne diseases could not be saved in hospitals without heat, electricity and medicine.

And what of the bombs? A young soldier interviewed by Jay Shaft of the Coalition for Free Thought in Media after his return home said: “I was near a hospital for a few weeks after the ground war ended. I saw hundreds of dead kids, and kids dying from gangrene and infection.”

God forgive us. We are more outraged by a bared breast.

Jenny Orr, West Paris