Bring Soldiers Home

To the editor,
   In coordination with a nationwide vigil hosted by MoveOn.Org, there was a gathering of 300-plus people on the south steps of the Texas state Capitol building Thursday evening [Sept. 9]. The purpose of this vigil was to bring attention to the more than 1,000 members of our armed services that have been killed needlessly in the war in Iraq. They were put in harm's way by a commander in chief who said, "No thanks!" and was AWOL when it was his turn to go. This is a war started under the false pretenses that 1) Iraq was in some way responsible for the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, and 2) Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction that were an imminent danger to the United States of America and the rest of the world. Both of these allegations have been proven to be false and were used by the Bush administration to further its own agenda of controlling the flow of oil in the Middle East. Day in and day out our brave men and women are facing death in a war that should have never been and one we seem to be bogged down in with no realistic exit plan. We want to bring attention to the fact that these aren't just numbers in a Pentagon news release but were actual living human beings. Those who have died were someone's father, someone's mother, someone's son or daughter, someone's brother or sister, someone's husband or wife. These are real people dying for nothing more than a political agenda. If this war is so important to our president and his family, why aren't Jenna and Barbara Bush over there fighting alongside our troops? I hope you will give coverage to this vigil in hopes of bringing our troops home soon, before the death toll rises to 1,500 or 2,000 or 2,500. Who knows where this will end?