My dear Excellency! I have not gone to war to collect cheese and eggs, but for another purpose.

All the papers contained nothing but fantastic stories about the war. However, for several months we had been accustomed to war talk. We had so often packed our service trunks that the whole thing had become tedious.

We convinced him quickly that the possibility of war was absolutely nil and continued our festivity. On the next day we were ordered to take the field.

War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men.

The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

It has been, after all, 11 years, more than a decade now, of defiance of U.N. resolutions by Saddam Hussein. Every obligation that he signed onto after the Gulf War, so that he would not be a threat to peace and security, he has ignored and flaunted.

We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion.

We need only look to our Navajo Code Talkers during World War II to see the value that Native languages bring not only to their culture, but to the security of all Americans.

A hospital alone shows what war is.

Anyway the war is over so far as they are concerned. But to wait for dysentery is not much of a life either.

I believe that everyone can appreciate the right of a family to grieve the loss of a loved one in peace, regardless of anyone's position on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I believe that the freedom of speech should be protected, but so should a family's right to privacy as they grieve their loss. There is a time and a place for vigorous debate on the War on Terror, but during a family's last goodbye is not it.

We can best honor the memories of those who were killed on September 11 and those who have been killed fighting the war on terrorism, by dedicating ourselves to building a free and peaceful world safe from the threat of terrorism.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.