I read about Cpl. Blair Emery from Lee and my heart cries out. How much more pain must people continue to endure from losing the best and finest, the sons and daughters, brothers and sissters, mothers and fathers, for a cause that has no resolution. Just like the Middle East conflict that has been going on for hundreds of years, the mess in Iraq has no end, unless the people there all kill themselves and take our soldiers with them.

“The Wisdom That We Gained,” the song I wrote 30 years ago, says “Our kids must never see a Vietnam,” and we’re living it all over again. Didn’t we learn anything from the deaths of 58,480 of the nation’s very best?

I would thank President Bush for not inviting me to his next Republican fundraiser.

Al Pelletier, Norway