Originally posted at the Tribune of the Booman

That child of virtual sanity Ann Coulter has done it again and I find myself gasp fatigued and rage weary as hell.  Maybe that's a good thing though because instead of reacting I have a moment to think about it!  Coulter affirms her previous statement about bombing "The New York Times" Office only one day after Lee Salem wrote a piece that was published on June 28, 2006 indicating that his client Ann Coulter writes satire and makes satirical comments that aren't to be taken literally, nor would anybody take them literally.

I came across a blog today that stopped me cold.  When I read it I feel a tightness grip my chest, it feels like I'm taking in too much truth and my lungs want to constrict.  I chuckle bitterly and wonder how much of this newly diagnosed asthma that I have is Bush induced from being a military spouse and experiencing over the top long term stress?  How many spouses baled because they couldn't take it and they couldn't take the antidepressants for BushCo?  How many spouses baled because they couldn't take the soldier who came home.......the soldier who fights to survive?  Where are their stories on CNN or is it just too much to handle that the Iraq War has destroyed more than just soldiers and it has also destroyed marriages and parts of the souls of spouses and children and that it has ripped apart families!  For a lot of us who remain with our soldiers, a dark shadow came home with the one we love and pledged our commitment to.  It can be very hard to define what the hell it is too and much of the time our soldiers do not want to believe that what rages within them is reflected in their relationships with those closest to them also.  It can make suicide an even saner act in their minds because perhaps they won't contaminate the people they love any longer if they are gone.

If marriage wasn't already the hardest relationship that any of us would ever attempt to master by having to master ourselves, it is horribly horribly hard when the one you love suffers and has days when self mastery is impossible.  The grief of a war that never needed to be......the wounds that never needed to be inflicted, that is what Iraq really is and no manner of winning will ever change how this war was "created" and was not birthed by any act in nature!  It is a lie of such depth and severity that this nation will never fully recover from it, nor should it!  But I get ahead of myself seeking the "lesson to be learned" as I attempt to avoid the pain!  Reality though is that where we are today concerning the Iraq War, all that is there to take home from it and polish on the mantel, all that we can really hold in our hands and that our five senses can detect and know is PAIN!  And one more dead soldier will never make the one who died before him a soldier who didn't die in vain!  I take this moment to pay homage to my beautiful husband and share a quote from him, "None of my soldiers died in vain, but my government killed them in vain!"