Military Families Take Iraq Personally

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9, 2006 — -- As pressure builds on the Bush administration to withdraw from Iraq, few Americans have more at stake than the families of the nearly 3,000 American troops who have died there.

Leaders in the incoming Congress, to be controlled by Democrats, are calling for hearings into an exit strategy from Iraq. The November election that put them in charge of Capitol Hill was widely viewed as a rejection of the president's management of the war. Increasingly, Americans want their troops out.

Some families of fallen soldiers have joined the call to pull out troops. However, many others fear that if an American pullout leads to an all-out civil war, the deaths of their husbands, wives, sons and daughters will have served no purpose.

Sgt. Patrick Tainsh was hit in the throat by shrapnel from a roadside bomb during an insurgent attack in Baghdad. But the gunner fired 400 rounds from the top of his Humvee, saving his entire convoy. He died in the commander's arms.

His mother grows angry when she hears calls for a withdrawal from Iraq.

"It's absolutely bloodcurdling," said Deborah Tainsh of Georgia. "The bottom line is we can't be pulling out of there with this undone. It would dishonor all of us who have given blood out there."

John Holley's 21-year-old son, Matthew, was killed after just five weeks in Iraq last year. The San Diego father successfully lobbied Congress to send slain soldiers home with more dignity. A few weeks ago, Holley, a former soldier himself, flew to Erbil, Iraq, to see the land where his son died.

All the recent talk of withdrawal infuriates him.

"It's a knee-jerk hysteria," he said. "For us to retreat, basically, in the face of the enemy, is unconscionable."

That sentiment is by no means universal.

Celeste Zappala doesn't want another American mother to hear that her son died on Iraqi soil. Zappala's son, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, became the first Pennsylvania National Guardsman killed in combat since World War II. He was protecting members of the Iraq Survey Group as they searched a warehouse for weapons of mass destruction two years ago. He was killed by a bomb.