As a three-year U.S. Army veteran and a longtime high school and middle school teacher, I find the recent deaths of two of our native Maine sons deeply troubling. It is a re-run of the same agony I felt when former students came home in body bags from Vietnam in another decade.

It is time to bring the troops home. The late Sen. George Aiken of Vermont, in talking of Vietnam, said, “Let’s just say we won and bring ’em home.”

Someone asked: “How do we do that?”

He replied as the old Yankee that he was: “By boat.”

Saddam Hussein is deposed. We won the war. It is clear the Iraqis no longer want us in their country.

This is now the wrong war, the wrong time and the wrong place.

Halliburton’s coffers grow richer every day this abomination continues.

The entire nation of Iraq and its oil are not worth the life of one more young American. My fellow Mainers go hungry and cold as we enter the dark days of a Down East winter.

Forty-six million Americans, among them our children, go without health care, a shameful statistic for any developed nation.

I weep for the hungry, abandoned children in the wake of the latest natural disaster in Asia.

I beg Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, and Rep. Michael Michaud to speak out against this horrid war. They voted for it in 2003. The blood of our young troops is on your hands.

A vote to question its direction today would be a giant step toward removing the stain in 2005.

Richard C. Hoyt

Lubec