The Cost Of War.

The Rocky Mountain News has a detailed profile on the sole survivor of a squad of Marines whose other members were killed by a massive roadside bomb in Anbar Province in Iraq. It puts face to face the mission that they died for and the costs that were paid in pursuit of that mission. This one particularly caught my eye because of a paragraph at the very end of the story.

Of Cifuentes, 25, from Oxford, Ohio. He was enrolled in graduate school in mathematics education and had been working as a substitute teacher when he was deployed.

This is where I grew up. I know his professors personally. My mother earned her PhD in the same education school at Miami University. It hits home. The deaths in Iraq are not just statistics. Of course, neither are the Iraqi lives that may be cut short if a full scale civil war goes on for decades. The choices aren't easy.