Tears, fears as U.S. family sees son off to war
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LAWRENCE, Kansas  - They gathered to send Aaron Emerson off to war. His father cursed, his grandmother cried, his mother was just numb.
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TORONTO -- An American war dodger who willingly joined the US army because it would pay for his university education testified yesterday the birth of his son was the final step in his realization that he didn&#39;t want to be a killer.
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Jeff Hubbard fought back tears as he talked about his boy -- a "great, great young man" who was killed last week in Iraq in a helicopter crash. It's the second time he's had to bury a son killed in the Iraq war.
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With longer deployments, continued chaos in Iraq and a growing death toll, a weariness has set in among many military families.
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BELLE CHASSE, La. -- Relatives sobbed yesterday at the sight of flag-draped caskets containing the bodies of six Louisiana National Guardsmen killed by a bomb in Iraq.
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Rose Lage swears it is true: Suddenly, in the midst of a fitful night of sleep last June, she knew that her son had been injured in Iraq.
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THEY have been riven with terror as the world watches the plight of Ken Bigley. But yesterday his family came together to reach out to his captors with emotional pleas for mercy.
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One Najaf family's shifting view of the fierce fighting that surrounds them.
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Mitt Romney's eyes filled with tears Monday as the Republican presidential contender recalled watching the casket of a soldier killed in Iraq return to the United States and imagined if it were one of his five sons.
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For many soldiers and family members, the repercussions of wartime deployments are one of the toughest, least discussed byproducts of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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After his son's life was ended by an American bullet, an Iraqi insurgent undertook a harrowing escape to a lonely exile in Baghdad, where he waits to fight another day.
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Army Staff Sgt. Dustin Williams was supposed to be home on this day -- Father's Day -- to feel the embrace of his four young children, but he couldn't. Like so many fathers fighting in Iraq, the essence of home has been boiled down to the basics. "I get photos and videos in boxes and trinkets in boxes," says Williams. "That lets me know they're there and they care. That's something I can hold on to."
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In a network linked by sorrow and empathy, one issue divides the parents of American soldiers who have died in Iraq: the wisdom of the war.
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Relatives of the Black Watch soldier who died in an accident during a controversial redeployment of troops in Iraq have said they are &quot;devastated&quot;.
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News that the Pentagon wants to double death benefits for families of U.S. troops killed in Iraq reminded Tracy Miller, whose son, Marine Cpl. Nicholas Lee Ziolkowski, died there in November, of an old summer-camp yarn:
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By Donna Borak Associated Press  WASHINGTON - For every generation in this country there has been a war. And with wars come millions of records that can shed light on family history, detailing everything from the color of soldiers' eyes to what their neighbors may have said about them.
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Najia Hamad watches as medical personnel treat her son Jassim today after he was injured by shrapnel during a clash between US troops and insurgents in the Iraqi town of Ramadi.