[NormsRevenge]

US Marines of the 1st Division bow their heads during a prayer at their base outside Fallujah, Iraq (news - web sites), Saturday, Nov. 6 , 2004. More than 10,000 U.S. troops have taken positions around the rebel-controlled city of Fallujah, bolstering the U.S. Marine units expected to lead a joint Army-Marine assault on the city. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

[river rat]

O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells;
help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead;
help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain;
help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire;
help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;
help us to turn them out roofless with their little children
to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags
and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer
and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail,
imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it.

Mark Twain