Brother Russ just sent an e mail about the American soldiers who urinated on Taliban bodies.  Some years back there was a huge brou ha ha about mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.  Who puts those pictures out for the public to see?   In this day and age when everyone has a camera or a phone with a camera there is no privacy.  Do I think these young man should be punished?  No!  Admonished for bad taste? Yes!   Who knows what these soldiers had just been through, maybe 'relieving' themselves was just that - relief.  Did they use good judgement, I don't think so, and in my opinion, that's where their guilt lies.
     I am one of the most peace loving people around  - non combative.   When daddy George Bush proposed the Gulf War,  Vern and I wrote letters to him and to our Senators encouraging them to say no to going overseas.  Vern's theory was that the people in the Middle East were throwing rocks in Jesus' day and they are still throwing rocks, and to stay out of their business. 
     What really makes me angry is when the media or another country tries to find a way to make our Military look bad.  This is the best Armed Service in the World.  Whenever there is trouble, they call in our guys and gals.  It happened in World War I and II, when Europe was failing and they called in the Americans, France had screwed up in Viet nam and  American soldiers took over and look how those young men were treated over there and when they came back.  When Peoria had its first St. Patricks Day Parade, there were Amvets and VFW groups who marched and everyone clapped as they marched by, but when a ragtag group of Vietnam veterans walked by, people where Marge and I were standing stopped clapping.  I was incensed!  These men had served their country too, and I practically wore the skin off my palms clapping for those guys.  One of the soldiers came out of the line and handed me a green carnation.  Thinking about the look on his face still brings tears to my eyes.
      Last February, Mary and I were in Hawaii and visited the Pearl Harbor Memorial.  I can remember when the attack happened and grew up in an era where our movies and newsreels showed the atrocities that our troops were experiencing.  At the Memorial, they show an amazing video of the attack.  There were a lot of Japanese visitors there the day we were there - they have head phones for them to hear the dialogue.  When the program was over, peace loving me, was so angry all over again, that I wanted to take my cane and rap all of those earphone-wearing-Asian heads sitting in front of me.
     I felt that same frustration and anger when Maureen and I visited the Flight 93 Memorial in the middle of a field in Pennsylvania.  Muslim extremists had decided to destroy our Capitol Building and ordinary persons, who knew they were going to die anyway, changed the course of that plane and history.  A huge boulder marks where the nose of the plane hit the ground - upside down.
     Rereading this, it sounds like an incoherent rant  but right now our family has three members still in the military, and brothers and brothers-in-law and other nephews have also served.  Don't mess with my family!  And I see all of today's young warriors as family.  That's when this peace loving grandmother,aunt, sister shows her true colors - red, white and blue!!