and I'm angry about Bush-bashing and protesting and pacifists using this and ALL other media to bludgeon the morale of anyone connected with the military. It would be difficult enough to keep up a good attitude if everyone were united in this war, what with people on both sides dying, and families without their fathers for months and years during the conflict. However, with all the anti anti anti everything, I don't know how the families of soldiers stand to wake up and face this world.

In honor of Veteran's Day, here is a copy of a response to an anti-Bush (anti-Veteran?) post I read today:

My husband proudly presented my daddy with a signed book about the liberation of Dachau today written by a WWII veteran named Sacco: Where the Birds Never Sing: The True Story of the 92nd Signal Battalion and the Liberation of Dachau (Hardcover)
by Jack Sacco
The author signed it for my daddy, "to another veteran." He made another insignia, "thanks for serving your country." My daddy was liberating concentration camps in Europe after watching atrocity videos to help motivate the soldiers in their task and he had just turned 18. My father's worst, most horrifying moments all took place during that time marching through Europe in the infantry. He called himself a "trained killer" because it was a more real title than "soldier." Daddy is a very tenderhearted man, and I've never heard details of the hand-to-hand combat he experienced, nor the horrors he witnessed. Except he did talk about the concentration camps where they were freeing starving and mistreated Jews, and giving proper burial to the dead ones.

Few people in the general population of our country knew about the holocaust during WWII, and some didn't believe it even after the war was over and done. Our government knew, and they sent soldiers like my daddy, and with the government's planning, strategy, and financing, and soldiers like my daddy: they stopped it.

Today especially, remember that emotions run very high. We do not have all the information in our hands, nor will we until it's all said and done. However, if we are going to bash presidents and administrations, Billy Boy had 8 years of freedom to deal with Osama and Saddam and he kept his "peace-minded" little liberal intellectual self firmly seated on the left and did absolutely nothing. Yes, the disgusting, vile vomit of war has been spilled out, but the gagging and wretching has been going on long before Mr. Bush was elected.

Nobody is FOR war. Nobody. Please respect those who have been willing to do their duty to purchase this incredible freedom of speech I'm enjoying right now, and who continue to purchase it through their service as politicians and as soldiers.

Daddy brought home a German General's helmet. Daddy never told anyone the story of how he got it, but his brother told me that the German General didn't give it willingly. My husband and I are so proud of my father, Master Sergeant Charles Richard Owens, and so is his wife of 55 years, his three sons, their wives, his twelve grandchildren, his two sisters, and his brother. The 25 of us support this country, this president, our military, and this war, and I am proud of my family.