Last December, my sister and I decided to send a holiday package to a random soldier using AnySoldier.com. We looked through some listings and eliminated any obvious freeps or those deluded into bragging about being 'liberators'. Most of them seemed like nice kids and they didn't want much.

We picked out a nice young woman from Nebraska who wanted Christmas candy for her unit. She didn't seem like a blood 'n guts type and seemed normal. We loaded up a big box with candy, snacks, books and such and mailed it off. She'd asked for email addresses in her listing so she could thank people so we signed a card with our names and email addys and stuck it in the box.

She wrote a couple of weeks later and told me how much they'd all enjoyed the stuff. She mentioned that she was 20 years old and enlisted in the Army for college money - pretty normal reason. When I wrote her back I was very honest and said that I don't support the war but being from a military family I have sympathy for those who are there. She was good about this and responded that she sometimes thinks the war protestors are the ones who are *really* supporting them. So far, normal (yes, we have a 'good kid gone bad' ending coming up).

She put my email addy on her mailing list and unfortunately has the bad habit of doing mass emails of dumb jokes - I really hate that. Usually I just delete them unread but a couple of days ago I was taken aback to find one from her with the subject "Raghead". I opened it and the mailing was a tasteless racist joke about Arabs that she had added her approving bloodthirsty comments to. Great - we wreck the country and the only people capable of defending the civilian population consider them 'ragheads'.

I have a cousin who's just returned from his second tour of Iraq and he too spouts this hatred of Arabs - and he was never like that before. He was actually a gentle lad who now thinks we should 'bomb Iraq into glass'.

What George Bush is doing to our young people (and yes, to the people of Iraq) is unforgiveable. What the Republican party with their easy hatreds and scapegoating and racism is doing is just as responsible. What a sick culture this 'family values' bunch has brought us!