No matter what you think about the Iraq war, there is one thing we can all agree on for the next days - we have to salute the courage and bravery of those who are risking their lives to vote and those brave Iraqi and American soldiers fighting to protect their right to vote.
American soldiers wore khaki uniforms during World War II. Men's khaki trousers became fashionable after the war, as homecoming GI's decided to continue wearing the soft, comfortable pants in their civilian capacities.
In the battle of Kunu-ri, more than 5,000 American soldiers were killed, wounded or taken as prisoners of war. Ninety percent of my unit was killed.
Since the enactment of the War Powers Act in 1973, which I supported then and support now, Congress has been reluctant to assert its authority when presidents decide to send American soldiers into harm's way.
A president can start a war under relatively specious circumstances, and once American soldiers are under fire, Americans will support the soldiers and support the president.
If today is anything like the typical day of the past 3 years, three American soldiers will die in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Taliban will get a little stronger in Afghanistan and the civil war will continue to be enhanced in Iraq.
While I was serving in the Florida Senate, American soldiers were being killed in Iraq, a war we should have never started, and often by Iranian proxies and their improvised explosive devices.
There were almost 11,000 American soldiers killed in Germany in April of 1945, the last full month of the war. That's almost as many as died in June, 1944. Right to the very end, it was absolutely brutal.
Desertion is the army's dirty little secret. Since the beginning of the Iraq war, more than 20,000 American soldiers have given up the fight. Most of them disappear while at home on leave, fading into a network of family and friends, and the army does not typically chase them down.
Well, where is the money? Show me the money? Our allies have put up a few billion dollars, but the American taxpayer has been required to shoulder the burden of this war.
Another term for preventive war is aggressive war - starting wars because someday somebody might do something to us. That is not part of the American tradition.
So one important lesson of Vietnam is, the first casualty of an unwise and unjust war are the American troops called on to fight it. Their service should be honored.
Three years into the war, tens of thousands of American troops remain targets of a growing Iraqi insurgency.
Castro always used the boxers as a symbolic war against American values to demonstrate that they fight for something more than money.
It is unconscionable that 10,000 boys have died in Vietnam. If 10,000 American women had mind enough they could end the war, if they were committed to the task, even if it meant going to jail.
The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else - men, guns, ammunition.
I saw clearly that war was upon us when I learned that my young men had been secretly buying ammunition.
When you get billions in aid and your weapons resupplied and your ammunition stock resupplied, you don't learn the lesson that war is bad and nobody wins.
It's ironic that early on in the war with Afghanistan, the Americans and the British were saying, 'We recognise there must be a Palestinian state,' then they rapidly forgot about it. I think history will show that that kind of amnesia will come back to haunt you.
We tend to think of World War II and all the atrocities that happened, and people say, 'Never again.' But these things are still happening. The Amnesty International files are big.
