What the troops need is not more funding for the war in Iraq but a large show of force by the American people in order to show them who really cares about them.

Sometimes however some tough love is in order. If some of the troops and the American Legion don't know what's good for them an overwhelming mass of the American people do, and a large outpouring of Americans into the streets on Memorial Day is an apt show of respect and the will of the American people to end a war that has only shown contempt and disrespect for those who serve in our armed forces.

So let George Bush and his band of butchers see who really supports the troops. March, protest and try to convince democrats in the congress and the senate that we've had enough.

How can we honor our servicemen and women from the past, as well we should, and sit idly by while casualties mount daily in a botched and bungled bloodbath in Iraq? I intend to honor history, including my own insignificant 4 years during the Vietnam War, and also protest, in every legal way, the thuggery and incompetence of the government that purports to represent me.

On Memorial Day 2007, I am going to pin those medals and awards on my shirt that pertain to my service as a Combat Infantryman during the Vietnam War. I am going to attend services at Ft. Bliss National Cemetary. I am going there to pay homage to the fallen warriors of all our wars.

On that day, I will care not for others opinions about our current wars in Iraq and Afganistan. I will care only for souls of the honored dead.

Yesterday, seven more Americans died for nothing in Bush's Personal War. And John Edwards is insensitive. bull shit. We should flood the streets until this madness stops. Joe is 180 degrees out on this one. I mean, really. "Oh no, don't wattle the cage and make all those widdle middle americans angwy." Grow a pair, Joe. Stop the war, now.

Well, i think Joe Conason is wrong here, doing what ‘liberal’ columnists (and so-called 'liberal' media in general) have done far too much of, worrying about right-wing or jingoistic backlash to the point of pulling punches and advocating a Democratic response to war (and more) that winds up looking namby-pamby ...

I have had my own history of such concerns (about backlash) but surely the knee-jerk response Conason is so worried about is now also a widespread public response, even (and one would hope especially) among veterans, of realizing that George Bush has gratuitously put MORE soldiers in their graves for the nation to memorialize and thus he has made it a ‘holiday’ warranting protest, not John Edwards.

[Granted, my one concern is that Edwards might be taking such initiative a bit out of guilt, to compensate for his own naive 2002 vote for allowing this war to happen, but that potential guilt also shouldn’t hamstring him from doing what seems quite legitimate here, and he has long since publicly apologized for that naiveté. It's time he is judged now for what he is saying and doing now and no candidate has been more pro-active in seeking to right the wrongs of that lamentable Senate vote. ]

Mourning veterans and seeking an end to the daily addition to their numbers for a foolhardy and profiteering-at-national-expense White House strike me as being appropriately, not insensitively, linked.

As a Vietnam Veteran, I think you are wrong in your view that Memorial Day is the wrong time to protest this and all unneccessary Wars. I feel those that fought and died for our Freedom and Liberty, would want those that start Wars for other reasons, to be exposed as the Criminals that they are; and what more fitting time than Memorial Day??

The present "War" in Iraq is a poorly disquised, multi-trillion dollar theft of oil rescources and taxpayer financed giveaway to the Military Industrial Complex. It was concocted by those that have never served, and those that openly dodged service. They are not concerned with the deaths of thousands of American Military members, not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Until the War Criminals of the Bush/Cheney Crime Cartel, including those members of Congress and Senate that rubber-stamped their agenda, are held to account for their Treason and War Profiteering, no Veteran will be honored on any day.

Joe's article seems more about fearing the Right and not upsetting some peoples' image of a holiday than whether protests are correct. Count me as fed up with progressives cowering to the bully of the "Right Wing Bloggers" and I think one of the prime reasons the Bushies were able to get us in this mess is because American's lives were purposely not "upset" by sacrifice (certainly not a draft) or the ugliness of visible dissent.

People need to be upset. If the protests get people talking in outrage at least they will be talking instead of planning thier next picnic.

Re the Right Wing media, the best way to deal with a bully is to confront him in force. Why aren't we protesting these sycophantic idiots that pompously lie for the President? Let the Fox News "personalities" have to enter work through 1000 angry protester. And Sean, Bill and Michelle, fuck you too!

If the Right Wingers love War so much, let's give them a bit of it.

So tell me, what does that imply? Does it imply that we can do whatever we want with them? Does it imply that we can send them back to a pointless war year after year after year until they all die or are permanently impaired or go crazy? Does it imply that we don't have to care what happens to them?

When someone volunteers to do a job, that doesn't mean they signed away their rights or their humanity. If your mother signs up to bake cookies for the church society, that doesn't give the church society the right to keep her under lock and key until she drops dead from baking cookies.

Remember, without these volunteers, we'd have to have a draft. Only libertarian pinheads think it's OK to just dimiss whatever happens to volunteers--because without them, it might well happen to you.