To the editor:

As of the 10th day of the 12th month of our year 2004 we have lost 1,277 of our servicemen and women in Iraq. God bless them and the families and friends who are now and forever mourning their loss. May the loss of these men and women weigh a heavy burden on the souls of those responsible for their deaths. It’s not the person that shot them, blew them up or wore a bomb to take their own life plus the lives of our soldiers, but the men in suits and ties in our nation’s capital who are responsible.

These so-called politicians must think there is something to gain in the deployment of troops in an area of the world that has been war-torn for centuries. Maybe they just thought it was time for Americans to kill and get killed along with the brothers of Islam. When we leave, if we leave, nothing will have changed; they will still fight one another for the sand at their feet and the oil underneath that sand. The world is laughing at what in the past has been a great country to admire, lean on and call an ally.

We have lost our luster to the rest of the world. Now it must seem we are just the bully on the block that must hit somebody just to let them know he is still there.

There are 1,277 of us who will never bully anyone ever again.

Guy Drum,

Baldwin