But Colin Powell said there was danger and I convinced myself that he wouldn't lie to me.  I trusted nobody else though.  I watched the protests in Colorado Springs, one was very big and shut down Academy Blvd....a major artery.  I stood on the outskirts scared and uncertain.  I marched in a downtown march to support our troops though, and the guy with the megaphone was leading chants and he tried to change the chant to "We support our President" and nobody would follow him.  It was the most amazing thing.  The soldiers had not left yet, and already people were saying they supported the troops but choked before they could scream out to the world that they supported the President.  That was wild to experience.

But there were no WMDs.  I slept with the television on....terrified my children's father would be killed.  I saved all the extra pay too, they made the soldiers tax free...I saved it all.  I was too petrified to even think about wanting something from a shopping mall anyhow.  And if the kids did lose their dad I figured we would need all the extra we could come by.

After losing my whole family when I was little, it was the worst experience in my life.  And while going through all that Tricare kept denying Joshua the Titanium Rib surgery that eventually saved his life.

The top floor of Evans Army Hospital on Fort Carson had been closed prior to Iraq.  They had to reopen it though because the whole facility was packed with spouses having a nervous breakdown.  I sat at a birthday party with one evil unmarried nurse next to me laughing about the women packed into the facility.  She said they were all pretending in order that their husband could be sent home on hardship.  I remember peering back at her, and I'm a very tough woman, and thinking to myself that I was barely clinging to sanity on my good days and this person was one of the most evil people I had ever met.