A telling extract fromt he letter written by a nurse in Germany who tends to US soldiers wounded in Iraq:

"My `Bush Thanksgiving' was a little different . . . I spent it at the hospital taking care of a young West Point lieutenant wounded in Iraq. He had stabilization of his injuries in Iraq and then two long surgeries here for multiple injuries; he's just now stable enough to send back to the USA. After a few bites of dinner I let him sleep, and then cried with him as he woke up from a nightmare. When he pressed his fists into his eyes and rocked his head back and forth he looked like a little boy. They all do, all 19 on the ward that day, some missing limbs, eyes, or worse.

"There are two more long wards just like this one. The ICU has been receiving soldiers for many months now, often unconscious young men on ventilators with wives and parents (our age) bending over the beds, stroking whatever part isn't bandaged, pinned, or burned. It requires a deep breath and strong heart anymore to walk through those swinging doors; I know the photo IDs outside the rooms will bear little resemblance to the men in the rooms.

"It's too bad Mr. Bush didn't add us to his holiday agenda. The men said the same, but you'll never read that in the paper. Mr. President would rather lift fake turkeys for photo ops, it seems. Maybe because my patients wouldn't make very pleasant photos . . . most don't look all that great, and the ones with facial wounds and external fixation devices look downright scary. And a heck of a lot of them can't talk, anyway, and some never will talk again. . . Well, this is probably more than you want to know, but there's no spin on this one. It's pure carnage . . . Like all wars, the "shock and awe" eventually trickles down to blood and death. But you won't see that. I do, every single day."

War is hell. That is not news. Young men and women die. Some lucky ones suffer dreadful injuries but survive. Proponents of this war say it is the cost of defending freedom, fighting terrorism, keeping power in our hands and out of our enemies'. Opponents believe the country was drawn into it by lies and misrepresentations and now stands alienated from the rest of the world with no clear way out. The arguments go around and around, on television, radio, and newspaper opinion pages.

As the country argues, Americans die, soldier by soldier; others are horribly injured, pool of blood by pool of blood. This nurse sees what we do not. She reminds us all, attention should be paid, from the top down, from the president to the people. It took physical courage for Bush to go to Baghdad on Thanksgiving Day. It takes courage of another kind to look into the eyes of the soldiers described by this nurse, even more courage to look into the eyes of family members who have lost a loved one. "...

Regards,

A