"Praise bravery, seek forgiveness"

A year ago, on Memorial Day, the Minneapolis Star Tribune published Memorial Day: Praise bravery, seek forgiveness, to honor the troops in Iraq. The editorial appeared shortly after the infamous Downing Street Memo, but today, the Strib's words remain timely as ever.
In exchange for our uniformed young people's willingness to offer the gift of their lives, civilian Americans owe them something important: It is our duty to ensure that they never are called to make that sacrifice unless it is truly necessary for the security of the country. In the case of Iraq, the American public has failed them; we did not prevent the Bush administration from spending their blood in an unnecessary war based on contrived concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

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