Because I can't forget no matter how hard I try.
They told us we were taking out advancing Iraqi
forces, but when we went to check out the bodies
they were nothing but women and children
desperately fleeing their homes because
they wanted to get out of the city
before we attacked in the morning...

Because my little brother, who it is my job to protect,
decided to join the California National Guard
to get some money for college and
they promised he wouldn't go to Iraq.
instead three months after enlisting
he was sent to Iraq for one year.

Since he has been home for the last six months,
he refuses to talk to anyone, he lives by himself.
the only person he associates with is a friend of his,
the one other man out of his squad of thirteen men
who made it home alive.

He called me a few weeks ago for the first time
and told me he's having nightmares.
I asked what they were about and
he said they're about picking up the pieces
of his fellow soldiers after a car bomb hit them.

Because every single one of the Marines I served
with, the really brave warriors, even when some friends
and people they looked up to got killed or lost an arm or leg,
they wouldn't cry, they just kept fighting.
They completed their mission.

Every one of them I have spoken to since we got
home has broken down crying in front of me,
saying all they can do since they got back
is bounce from job to job, drink and do drugs,
And contemplate suicide to end the pain.

Because I'm tired of drinking, bouncing from job to job
and contemplating suicide to end the pain.

Because every time I see a child,
I think of the thousands I've slaughtered.
Because every time I see a young soldier,
I think of the thousands Bush has slaughtered.
Because every time I look in the mirror
I see a casualty of the war.

Because I have a lot of lives I have to make up for,
the lives I have taken and
because it's right.
That's why I fight.
Because of soldiers with wounds you can't see.

This poem is one of a series published on the website which has been developed by Tina Richards, the mother of Corporal Cloy Richards.