I wish I could put into words the hopelessness and despair felt by miitary families every time they hear the word "surge."

There is so much going on in the military right now that is under the media radar; people never hear about it.  It's like a faraway earthquake registering on a Richter scale that only a few scientists see; they comprehend and fear while the rest of the population goes on about their business.

My son's Marine Corps unit, for example.  They have been promised for two full years that they would not have to return to Iraq for a FOURTH deployment.  During their last deployment, in '06, they were told that the next time they deployed, it would be on a "float," which is Marine-talk for loading them up on a big ship and going around the Pacific to places like Okinawa.

In fact, for months now, since their return from Iraq, they have been training for that, which means, mountain training rather than desert or war training.

I can't describe the liberation and relief the guys (I refer to all men and women in the service as "guys", it's just easier) and their families felt, knowing that another trip to the warzone was off the table.  They'd be gone, yes.  But they would NOT be getting blown up on a daily basis or shot at every time they left their racks.

Then our fearless leader who has of course never known war, announced yet another language-lie, the SURGE.  Even the Democratic Senator Harry Reid said, in the beginning, "Maybe a surge for a month or two wouldn't be so bad."

Military families laughed.  A month or two.  Yeah RIGHT.  We all knew what was going on. 

And the anxiety set in.  But it was okay because OUR guys were going on a float.

Then they started discussing in the media how the number given out, the 21,500, was a fake number anyway because that was COMBAT troops--yet another little Bushie language-game.  Most people don't know the difference, but WE knew.

Next thing you know, like cockroaches fleeing when you turn on the lights, bad guys fled Baghdad and started beating up on towns in the outskirts, and sure enough, Petraeus pulls whole brigades out of Baghdad and sends them up to the Diyala province or down in Basra or wherever, and who's going to replace those guys?

We start hearing more numbers, and then military families everywhere begin to brace, because sure enough, next thing they know, their guys are being sent to war EARLY, and they are being kept in-country LATE, and they're being yanked out of training and shipped over before they're ready, and suddenly they might be doing something for which they are NOT TRAINED, like one ARTILLERY unit I know who are being sent out on INFANTRY patrols even though they have never had a day's training for it, and you hear more and more and some of it makes the papers and some does not and practically none of it makes the evening news.

Then the word came down for my son's unit.

No float for them.

It's back to Iraq.

Again.

And my e-mailbox fills up with despair from fellow Marine parents.  One Marine mom described it perfectly.  She said, "I feel the old slump coming on."

And I know what she means because I feel it too.  The general feeling of dread and anxiety and outright fear.

"I've got a bad feeling this time," she says.

All us moms and dads and wives and husbands and families know what that means, and we know there is no comfort for it.

Our guys, too, they feel it bigtime.  The desperate disappointment, the dread of going back, the fear they try to hide from us because they think we need them to be brave, when really, we're doing all we can to be brave for THEM.

You hear the weight in their voices when they call home.  You don't even have to talk about it.  It's there, like a terrible dark shadow.

They're dying over there now, at twice the rate of any time in the war.  Our voices are raised in one big silent scream but nobody hears us over the arguing, the pontificating and politicizing and patriotic finger-pointing and painful, agonizing delays.

You hear Bush and Rice and all his people talk about how "noble" OUR sacrifices are, and how, as Condoleeza Rice recently said, "The sacrifices have been worth it."

People who have not made any sacrifice at all should not deign to tell those of us who have whether or not it is WORTH IT.  Let me be the judge of that, the next condolence letter I have to write to the mother of one of my son's buddies who didn't make it back.

This isn't an intellectual debate for us.

It is life or death.

THIS is what makes politics personal.