THE WAR IS A LIE.

1,350: number of American casualties.
10,000: number of Americans wounded in action.
5,000: number of Americans too badly wounded to return to duty.
150: number of non-American coalition deaths.
100,000: estimated number of Iraqi casualties.
300,000: estimated number of wounded Iraqis.
200,000 to 150,000: the number by which American forces are outnumbered.
400: number of foreign (non-Iraqi) civilian deaths.
0: number of WMDs found.

He says we're not allowed to see the coffins returning from Iraq. We're not allowed to see the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, children come home from a needless war, because "everything is going fine there." We're not allowed to read the names of the soldiers killed on TV - why? Because it might enforce the idea that not everything is rosy?

Abu Ghraib, detaining "insurgents" without proof, and, now, a would-be Attorney General who condones torture and dismisses the Geneva Conventions - because international law is international law, unless you're the Bush administration, right?

The war is over, they say. They scream it to the world, they print "Mission Accomplished" on big banners and their leader plays soldier dress-up and talks of his triumph, while the slaughter across the Atlantic rages on. And he uses the suffering in campaign commercials, but you won't see his face at a son's funeral when his coffin comes home, an American flag draped over it.

Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?

I am an American, and I am a patriot - but no true patriot, though George Bush claims to be one, would send our men and women off to die in a war that seems to have no end. I thank them for their service - and hope that tomorrow does not see more of them killed.