My high school friend was in the Marines. He told me of going into villages and killing everything including the pigs and chickens. Babies on the trail? Blow them away, they're booby trapped! Remember Lt. Calley? He went to jail for doing the same thing.

Towards the end of the Tet offensive, '68, he tired of junior officers sending him out to fight with 42 men and returning with maybe 3 or 4. He told of "FRAGGING" several of them, so they could survive to come home. Come home he did, and was such a mess. He drank and drank until my then-husband had to help him to his feet so he could DRIVE to the all-night club in order to drink some more.

I stayed up the rest of the night, remembering the sweet guy that I had known in h.s., who would blush (he was light-skinned black) if someone cursed or used the "n" word. He had been so innocent, and was so hurt and wounded by trying to help his young recruits survive. That war was terrible, and that experience brought it home to me.

Now we have Iraq. History is kind of repeating itself. We are involved in what is really a civil war, one exacerbated by the fact of warring religious factions, and religious fanatacism, but a Vietnam all the same. DON'T WE EVER LEARN? War is not ever the answer!