By MFSO Member Dante Zappala. "Not long ago, $250,000 bought you a house, a car, started a college trust fund and still left you with enough for dinner at the Olive Garden. Today, $250,000 gets you a dead soldier."

By Teri Wills Allison. "I am not a pacifist. I am a mother. By nature, the two are incompatible, for even a cottontail rabbit will fight to protect her young. Violent action may well be necessary in defense of one's family or home (and that definition of home can easily be extended to community and beyond); but violence, no matter how warranted, always takes a heavy toll. And violence taken to the extreme -- war -- exacts the most extreme costs. A just war there may be, but there is no such thing as a good war. And the burdens of an unjust war are insufferable. "

By Dexter. " Last night I read Justice Fortas's "Concerning Dissent and Civil Disobedience." He recalled The Nuremberg Doctrine and a person's right not to participate in a war that commits crimes against humanity. I believe that, given what we know today, every American citizen must consider whether the War in Iraq has reached the point that, as a nation, we are participating in crimes against humanity. I believe that we are."

By Unknown. "Although this war was short, it sure took its toll on William, who had just turned 20 at the time the war started. When he returned to me in April of 1991, he just was not the same boy. He told me stories about spending the morning shooting at anything that moved, blowing away dozens and dozens of people. After the Tim McVeigh incident in Oklahoma City, I remember talking to William about it, and him saying 'Mom, my tank killed more people than Tim McVeigh!' His stories about the war, when he told them, were chilling."

By Another angry Mom. "As many times as I had wanted to voice my opinion, I held back because I felt I would be doing an injustice to my son and his courage, so I was torn between what was right, and the life I knew he was living. I knew that war was hell, but I never thought that hell could be made worse by the very people you are trying to protect."

By Alicia S. "My husband is a 21 year old Black male with the First Calvary Division out of Fort Hood. He came from nothing, the ghetto. He dropped out of high school and after many odd jobs going nowhere decided to join the army to "give himself direction." Like, I would venture to say, most of the young men and women in the military right now, he joined because he wanted to get an education, an education he could not afford on his own."

By Unknrown Mother in Puerto Rico. "To this day, the war has cost the American tax payers $118,136,731,012.00. That amount, calculated by the same congressional appropriations, would be sufficient to feed the world population for four years, add an additional 2,250,229 teachers and fund 16,702,554 children in pre-school programs for two years. This amount costs $419 per person and $1679 per household in the United States."

By Kathie. "He left to train at Parris Island without having a realistic concept of what he was about to do. Somehow, all the glossy brochures and videos about the Marines had failed to mention the dehumanization of military training and war."

By MFSO Member Denise Thomas. "I have a daughter who is an American soldier and who recently returned from a year of service in Baghdad. I am married to a 23-year Army veteran. It is likely that he will serve in Iraq soon. I am so fed up with propaganda coming from some Iraq war supporters that I wrote this open letter. I care very much about what affects the American soldier. "

By Monica Benderman. "My husband would not have minded being deployed to finish what we started in Afghanistan, but he cannot find peace with the war in Iraq.... He is a strong believer in doing the right thing, the Ten Commandments, and his responsibility to his family. He cannot find the moral strength to justify his return to Iraq."

By Kristine Hall. "I am struck with the disparity of the news reporting I remember of Vietnam and that of the reports of Iraq. Now they call them sound bites and they’re sanitized. During my adolescence in the late 60s and 70’s, our family would watch the reports of the Vietnam war in great detail. This war sends me small shots of roving tanks and blown up cars, but little of the people. Not much on the children and family injuries; the lives torn apart on both sides."

By Joyce & Kevin Lucey. "Their son, Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey, served in the Marine Reserves in Iraq in 2003. He came home neither safe nor sound. He suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and took his own life on June 22, 2004. His name is not in the Department of Defenses' roster of those who died in this war; yet Cpl. Lucey is a casualty of this war as much as any who has lost his or her life on the battlefield. This is their thoughts after watching President speak at Fort Bragg on June 28, 2005."

By Dante Zappala. " This week, the White House announced, with little fanfare, that the two-year search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had finally ended, and it acknowledged that no such weapons existed there at the time of the U.S. invasion in 2003."

By Unknown. "Thoughts swing from an Army son whose life is in danger every second, to planning nourishing meals that are compatible with a breastfeeding Mom’s diet, to figuring out how to balance the household needs on Greenview with those of the new-baby home on Newcastle."

This is a letter from several military parents in South Florida who are speaking out against the ongoing war in Iraq. The letter was originally written in Spanish. English translation included.

By Anne Bayerkohler. "I will not talk about how David's life has changed since the war started or how different he is now that he came home, how he is someone's son, grandson, brother, uncle, friend, and husband, and how we are all afraid he wouldn't make it back home. I will not tell that story because those stories are everywhere and you have heard them all before. In fact, we are the lucky ones, because at least he came back alive, on an airplane instead of in a body bag."

By Lila Lipscomb. "Feburary 20, 1977 my son came through me into this world, for such a short time, taken away because of "One man's War", on February 20, 2004 for a birthday gift all I could give my son was a grave marker."

By Unknown. "My spouse has been activated in the Air Force reserves since before 9/11, and I myself work as a military contractor. The past couple years have been very emotionally trying for us as we cope with directions of our current administration that are in moral conflict to our personal service in and for our country's military. We find the underlying purpose of our United States Military, our Department of Defense, and our men and women in uniform is..."

By Sabrina. "On top of this they try and require families to attend political rallies for the president when he comes to "speak" to the troops. They sent home letters dictating everything from how we should dress to appropriate responses to journalists in the area. When we flat out refused they put my husband on extra duty. He signed up to be a soldier, not a political pawn for a lying tyrant."

By Brandie Lampin. "After several follow ups, the doctor said that my husband's knee has not gotten any better, and that his knee is permanently damaged, and that he recommends that he be medically discharged out of service, and that he is NON DEPLOYABLE."