Do you have what it takes?

An open letter from a Gold Star Mom
by Amy Branham

For the last couple of weeks or so various news outlets have been reporting more and more about how we were lied to by our administration about the reasons for going to war in Iraq.  Every day I hear the talking heads, with self-righteous indignation, verbally pummel the Bush administration for their lies.  This began to happen right about the time that Scooter Libby was indicted by a grand jury.   

While I am glad that the media has *finally* caught on and began reporting what so many of us knew long before now, I have to wonder what took them so long?  The evidence was right in front of them a long time ago!  The Downing Street Minutes came out and have been available for at least a couple of years now.  Initially, these documents were completely ignored by the main stream media of America because they simply weren’t considered newsworthy at the time. 

And what about the leaders of this country, the politicians that the American people elected to serve them?  Why didn’t they pay more attention to the Downing Street Minutes and do something about it?  Where were all those Congressmen and Women, where were the Senators who had heard about and read these documents?  Why didn’t they step up to the plate and say something?  More importantly, why didn’t they DO something?   All of a sudden they are now…

coming out publicly in droves, tripping over one another as they rush to give interviews and state for the world to hear that they believe that the American people were lied to and that they were lied to as well. 

I submit that they, too, have had this information available for the same period of time and they did absolutely nothing about it.  Sure, there were a few Senators and Congressmen and women here and there that spoke up, but a vast majority remained silent. 

All of this brings some pretty strong emotion to the surface within me and many other families who have lost sons and daughters, husbands, wives, fathers and mothers to this war.  We are now hearing what we have known all along, that we were lied to.  We are now hearing that our loved ones gave their lives for nothing more than the lies of greedy people in Washington who don’t care about them. 

Let me tell you, even for those of us who have been doing our best to call attention to the lies we were told, the absolute wrongness of this war, for those of us who have known the truth from the beginning, this is a hard pill to swallow.  No one ever wants to believe that someone they love died needlessly.  And now, finally after all this time, the media and the political leaders of this country are validating what we have been saying for months, even years.   

I have to wonder, what took the American main stream media and politicians so long?  Maybe if they had acted sooner we wouldn’t have over 2060 dead American soldiers or over 15,000 wounded.  Maybe the innocent civilians in Iraq, numbering on the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, would be alive today if you had only listened to us and done your job sooner.  They had the power to stop this, to call attention to this terrible injustice done to Iraq and to our country, but they didn’t do it.  

Maybe, just maybe, my son wouldn’t have died an early and needless death. 

So now we are beginning to hear the truth from the media and from the elected leaders of this country.  What are they going to do about the war?  What are they going to do about the veterans coming back injured and permanently disabled?  Our elected leaders cut funds to the Veterans Administration during war time.  What about the innocent civilians of Iraq?  We have done so much damage there, not only to their homes, but to the very infrastructure of their country.  Civil unrest and anger brews, begetting new terrorists every day and making the world a much, much less safe place to be for all of us. 

So, dear leaders of this great country, what are you going to do now?  Where do we, as a country, go from here?  Are any of you ready to step up to the plate and show some courage?  Because that is exactly what this country needs right now, the courage to take charge and turn this country around.  The people of America are telling you it’s time for change.  We are telling you we want this war to end.  We are telling you that George Bush and his administration need to be taken from their seats of power. 

Do you have it what it takes?