Almost a year ago, Tom Engelhardt, the editor of tomdispatch.com, began a correspondence with Teri Wills Allison, a mother from Texas whose son is in the military in Iraq. Out of that grew an invitation to Allison to write about how the situation personally affected her as a parent. The resulting essay, published in mid-October at tomdispatch.com, brought a flood of e-mail, selections from which Engelhardt also published at the site. "One thing struck me," Engelhardt said in introducing the letters. "Amid all the pundits opining and journalists reporting on the state of the nation, we almost never hear the voices of Americans who, like Teri Allison, have to deal with the fallout from the mess this Administration has created." Engelhardt said he was also struck by the offers of help directed to Allison and some of the people she wrote about. In their generosity of spirit, he wrote, the responses "offer a kind of hope and renewal all their own." With the permission of all those involved, and with thanks to tomdispatch.com, a project of The Nation Institute, we offer Allison's letter and a sampling of the responses.   --The Editors

Yes, my son is alive and, as far as I know, well. I wish I could say the same for some of his friends.

One young man who was involved in heavy fighting during the invasion is now so debilitated by post-traumatic stress disorder that he routinely has flashbacks in which he smells burning flesh; he can't close his eyes without seeing people's heads squashed like frogs in the middle of the road, or dead and dying women and children, burned, bleeding and dismembered. Sometimes he hears the sounds of battle raging around him, and he has been hospitalized twice for suicidal tendencies. When he was home on leave, this 27-year-old man would crawl into his mother's room at night and sob in her lap for hours. Instead of getting treatment for PTSD, he has just received a "less than honorable" discharge from the Army. The rest of his unit redeploys to Iraq in February.

Another friend of Nick's was horrifically wounded when his Humvee stopped on an IED [improvised explosive device]. He didn't even have time to instinctively raise his arm and protect his face. Shrapnel ripped through his right eye, obliterating it to gooey shreds, and penetrated his brain. He has been in a coma since March. His mother spends every day with him in the hospital; his wife is devastated and their 112-year-old daughter doesn't know her daddy. But my son's friend is a fighter and so is making steady, incremental progress toward consciousness. He has a long hard struggle ahead of him, one that he need never have faced--and his family has had to fight every step of the way to get him the treatment he needs. So much for supporting the troops.

I go visit him every week, and it breaks my heart to see the burned faces, the missing limbs, the limps, the vacant stares one encounters in an acute-care military hospital. In front of the hospital there is a cannon, and every afternoon they blast that sucker off. You should see all the poor guys hit the pavement. Though many requests have been made to discontinue the practice for the sake of the returning wounded, the general in charge refuses. Boom.

Then there is Nick's 24-year-old Kurdish friend, the college-educated son of teachers, multilingual and highly intelligent. He works as a translator for the US Army for $600 a month and lives on base, where he is relatively safe. (Translators for private contractors, also living on base, make $7,200 a month.) He wants to travel to the States to continue his education, but no visas are now being issued from Iraq. Once the Army is through with him, will they just send him back into the streets, a virtual dead man for having worked with the Americans? My son places a high premium on loyalty to family and friends, and he has been raised to walk his talk. This must be a harsh and embittering lesson on just how unprincipled the rest of the world can be. My heart aches for his Iraqi friend as well as for him.

A year ago in January, when Nick left for Iraq, I granted myself permission to be stark-raving mad for the length of his deployment. By god, I've done a good job of it, without apology or excuse. And I dare say there are at least 139,999 other moms who have done the same--though taking troop rotations into consideration to maintain that magical number of 140,000 in the sand could put the number of crazed military moms as high as 300,000, maybe more. Right now, you might want to be careful about cutting in line in front of a middle-aged woman.

I know there are military moms who view the war in Iraq through different ideological lenses than mine. Sometimes I envy them. God, how much easier it must be to believe one's son or daughter is fighting for a just and noble cause! But no matter how hard I scrutinize the invasion and occupation of Iraq, all I see are lies, corruption and greed fueled by a powerful addiction to oil. Real soldiers get blown to tatters in their "Hummers," so that well-heeled American suburbanites can play in theirs.

For my family and me, the costs of this war are real and not abstract. By day, I fight my demons of dreaded possibility, beat them back into the shadows, into the dark recesses of my mind. Every night, they hiss and whisper a vile prognosis of gloom and desolation. I order the voices into silence, but too often they laugh at and mock my commands.

I wonder if George Bush ever hears these voices.

And I wonder, too...just how much are we willing to pay for a gallon of gas?

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