BUSH'S WAR not America's War

"The Butcher's Bill:
5,000 U.S. soldiers dead, 25,000 wounded, 4,000 bereaved children. A look at the future of the war in Iraq

'I don't want to be a daddy because daddies die,' said Jack Shanaberger, age four, following the death in Iraq of his father, Staff Sergeant Wentz 'Baron' Shanaberger, a military policeman from Louisiana. With his four brothers and sisters, Jack is among the nearly 900 American children who have lost a parent in Iraq. According to experts cited by Lisa Hoffman and Annette Rainville in a moving story for the Scripps Howard News Service, 'The proportionally higher number of American children left bereaved by the Iraq war is unprecedented.' Past U.S. wars were mainly fought by single men, but 40 percent of the 1,256 GIs killed in Iraq as of November were married, and 459, including six women, had children. Shana Corey tells her children that while '[you] might forget what your daddy looks like ... [you should] always remember his hugs, always remember his kisses, always remember his love.' They have felt their father's touch. Not so the children of the forty men who died while their wives were pregnant."

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