Nice job, Bob! (Imagining the Shirelles' voices on it got me to giggling, too.)

Bob - Your parody as a parody was great, your point was not. If I were still in the military I would not hesitate to go there and do my part for my country. I was in during two wars, one popular the other not. Gulf War I and Vietnam. Admitted Vietnam was fairly senseless and I think we learned a great deal from that one, but this current war is being waged to preserve our very way of life. Freedom is not free. Yes I feel for every soldier and their families that I hear about that is coming home in a box. This is the price we pay for our freedom. It's kind of like that old adage, pay me now or pay me later. This country has always had patriots fight and die so the rest of us could enjoy our freedom. War is hell but so is oppression. Just felt I had to expound on this. Thanks for hearing me out.

Nice of you to speak your mind, Bob. We don't like what's going on in Iraq, but If the US left tommorow a far worse chaos would engulf that country.

Guy and Wild Man, I completely respect your points of view and I suspect we are not that far from each other when you get down to it. I'm from a military family too. I hate hearing about all the casualties that our men and women are taking over there. But the point of my parody is that civilian leadership has completely failed our troops, not the other way around. Our armed services are trained for one purpose: to win wars decisively. They appear to lack the training and support systems necessary for peace-keeping. Thus they are sitting ducks for guerrilla warfare. Why? Because the Bush administration failed to win international support for this invasion and occupation, and failed utterly to plan for the contingency of potential resistance. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were overconfident, and our troops are suffering the consequences. I don't know how we are going to get out of this with honor, but I'm pretty confident Bush is not the one to lead us out. He has no political capital left to spend with our European allies or the U.N. I hope that things get better in Iraq, that our troops somehow find a way to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, but I don't see that happening anytime soon, unfortunately. I think it will take a new administration with a missing ingredient-- call it "the vision thing"--to create an international peace-keeping force that can calm down the situation over there. "To the victor belongs the spoils"--and right now the spoils include a whole lot more than we bargained for. Thanks for your feedback and your honesty. Peace.

Bob - It is no ones fault that that the rest of the world does not want to do the right thing and find a solution to that problem over there. I may not be wearing the uniform these days but I still work for the military. The current figures show that the army is about two divisions short of handling this situation comfortably. Why are they short? Well for the past ten to twelve years or so, in the post cold war era, there has been a steady draw-down of troop strength and a steady closure of military bases. The powers to be, mainly the Clinton administration failed to forsee the dangers of too quick a draw-down in a very dangerous world. Now we are paying the price for this. We are experiencing the same things as we did in the early part of World War II when we were dragged into a war on two fronts with a tiny military force that was meagerly equiped. How do I know this? I have either been in the military or working as a civilian for the military since 1970. I watched it happen. This current leadership is dealing with the effects of a rapid draw down imposed my the last administration. This is World War III.

Bob, I thought the song is cute, but I don't know how my grandmother would feel about it. See to make a long story very short about 40 years ago a lady by the name of Annette Popham wrote a song for her husband, W.R. Popham, who was serving in the Army at the time. If I remember the story correctly she wrote the song for her husband on a napkin in a resturant here in Rome, GA in about 15 minutes, then transfered it to paper, and sent it off to Verse Records with the title "Soldier Boy" and The Shirelles made it a top ten hit in 1962. Grandmother was still alive to see the song that she had wrote for her husband make it on to the radio. Unfortunately, my grandmother passed away in 1982 before I had the chance to ever know her really well. I am her oldest grandchild and I think she would get a laugh about it, that someone took the song she wrote and put a "spin" on it.