Washington Grapples With Price of War

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 12, 2007 — -- Her comments are now notorious, at least among conservatives, but Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., insisted she did not mean anything personal when she spoke about the price of war to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"I'm not going to pay a personal price" for the war in Iraq, Boxer told Rice during Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. "My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."

As Boxer reacted to President Bush's decision to send more troops to Iraq, the White House implied the California senator was trying to focus attention on Rice's unmarried and childless status. Today White House spokesman Tony Snow said Boxer's comments were a "great leap backward for feminism." And on Fox News Channel, Rice said, "I thought single women had come further than that."

In an exclusive interview with ABC news, Boxer said she was trying to "find common ground with Secretary Rice that I didn't have any family in the war and neither did she. That was the whole purpose," she said.

"We need to focus on who's making the sacrifices, and if we lose sight of this horrific sacrifice these young people are making, maybe it's easier to make these sacrifices," Boxer said.

She said the Bush administration doesn't seem to "consider the results of what they're doing."

Beyond that controversy, many with loved ones in harm's way agree with Boxer's larger point, including Patricia Simpson, the mother of a lance corporal Marine in Iraq.

"If they had children over there, their opinion would be different," Simpson said. "They wouldn't be so quick to send more troops."

Four senators, including Tim Johnson, D-S.D., and Jim Bunning, R-Ky., and nine members of the House, including Reps. Todd Akin, R-Mo., Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., Ike Skelton, D-Mo., John Kline, R-Minn., Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., and Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., have children who have served in the military during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that's 2.5 percent of Congress.