Oh Bill Bailey
A plea for troops to come home
By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | January 31, 2005
After polls closed on Election Day in Iraq yesterday, war veterans and their families brought the battle to save loved ones in the war to the home front, calling on President Bush to pull out US troops before thousands more die.
The veterans and their families received standing ovations from a crowd of more than 400 people at Faneuil Hall, at the first of a string of unofficial public hearings to be held over the next week in the Boston area.
Testimony came from two groups that favor removing US troops immediately, the 150-member Iraq Veterans Against the War, which was created last summer, and Military Families Speak Out, a 2,000-family organization founded in 2002.
Organizers said they are holding hearings at colleges, churches, and community centers to reveal the war's effect on the military and their families. Yesterday, a 17-year-old Billerica girl whose father is in Iraq wept as she worried about what he will be like when he returns. A former soldier from New York told how his twin brother, also a soldier, returned in a body bag. A Belchertown woman said her family's joy over her brother's return from Iraq melted into grief when he killed himself.