I wouldn’t have been nearly as nice as Mrs. Slocum. We all know the war would have been long over had any of them had kids come home in that condition and be sent back. Fucking over privledged congress that we have…….. they are so far removed from the average citizen. Until it’s election time again. Then they want to act like they care about us. Riggghhhtt!

BRUNSWICK, Maine The woman stood waiting amid the lunch counter clatter at the Grand City Variety Store to confront Olympia J. Snowe.

“We need to get out,” Stephanie Slocum told Snowe, one of Congress’s most conflicted members over the war in Iraq. It was the Maine Republican’s first week of her summer break, and Slocum was among the first of many constituents who would tell her the time to act is now.

The self-described “proud mother of an Army cavalry scout,” Slocum is taking Iraq personally. She told Snowe in a matter-of-fact voice about her 27-year-old son, who is now home but shouts angrily at her, whose body trembles, who at times feels he is still in Iraq and who, if Congress does not begin to redeploy troops by September, will be sent back. She spoke of her son’s leave that never came, the goggles to protect him that she had to buy herself and the mental health treatment he has just given up. Because, he told his mom, “what’s the sense” if he has to go back.

“Outrageous,” Snowe said of the problems. “I would encourage him to continue to get his care.”

“I do, but you know how it is,” Slocum said. “In the Army . . . if you get the therapy, it’s shame on you.”

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