Last month there was an article in our local paper about a young soldier from Torrance (a town very close to us) in Iraq who was rumored to have been killed. His friends and family frantically called around to get information, and finally got through to him...he was, in fact, alive.

At the time, I thought something along the lines of, "I hope that guy makes it home alive--that would be a horrible irony if he actually gets killed in Iraq after all that."

But the war marches on and young people die. And that's what happened to Pfc. Joe Anzack, Jr. This time, there would be no happy call or e-mail from him explaining that he was really alive.

In an article on the front page of the Los Angeles Times today, you can read about the difficulty they had identifying Anzack--they pulled his body from a river, and it had been there for days after Anzack had suffered multiple gunshot wounds to his face, skull, and neck, and had endured beatings, presumably before he was killed.

Anzack is an American hero for volunteering to fight for our country, doing what our country asked of him, and making the ultimate sacrifice.

I am compelled again to ask President Bush (although I have a wild hunch he will not be reading this) "If this is an epic struggle for the future of civilization, as you have intimated so many times, then why aren't you asking the rest of us to sacrifice?" And no, Mr. President, sacrificing our peace of mind by watching war coverage on TV doesn't count.

Life will never be the same for Anzack's family. May God be with them.

Back when John Kerry stood for something and had an un-muddled voice on foreign affairs, he asked congress in April 1971, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" These words are haunting in their clarity and relevance.