A housewife who just went back to school to study nursing, Moss, a widow, has never before been involved in any kind of activism. She knows only two people in her town who actively oppose the war -- her 84-year-old grandmother and a United Methodist minister. Yet for the past two years, she says, she's had the queasy feeling that Bush is taking the country in a dangerous direction, a feeling that became overwhelming once the march to war began.

When Bush first started to speak about a war in Iraq, Moss would e-mail her son antiwar literature. At first, she says, he told her, "You know, you might be right about this thing, Mom." Within a month, though, he'd put his doubts aside. He asked her to stop sending him articles and told her she should "go live in France."

Moss says she understands her son's feelings. "I know that in order to be in the position he is in, he has to believe in the cause to a degree," she says. Yet she also fears that he'll have to pay for what she sees as his self-delusion later on -- that is, provided he survives.

"I know the emotional and mental scars that the Vietnam veterans returned with, and I don't want to see the same thing happen to our troops," she says. "I think that when history tells the story, not only are there going to be the normal mental and emotional scars, but when these people see the truth [of the war's injustice], the scars are going to be even deeper."

This is an overwhelming worry among these families -- that the men who return to them won't be the men who left. Two weeks ago, Halvorson went to Washington. She'd missed the big protest on March 7, but felt the need to make her own stand, so she stood by herself in front of the White House with a sign that said, "Don't Kill My Husband or Make Him Kill."

Part of what she fears is the fallout that comes from any war, regardless of its legitimacy. "Obviously I want him to come home in one piece, but that's a physical state," she says. "I don't think anyone comes home from war in one piece mentally. Just being whipped up into that kind of aggression and hypervigilance necessary to go to war, it's sort of hard to come off. There are going to be things they might not want to talk about because it won't be viewed by a lot of people as a just act of war. That's why they cling so tightly to this brotherhood that they're a part of, because they're all in it together."

Hansen, the father in Palm Springs, already mourns what the war has done to his only child, Luke, a Navy medic traveling with a Marine unit. He describes his 21-year-old son as a "teddy bear" who was so deeply skeptical of the war that he considered going AWOL. He says Luke told him, "Dad, I would die for my country, but I don't want to die for Bush." Hansen says several of Luke's friends felt the same way before they reached the Middle East.

All that has now changed -- at least for Luke. Recently, Hansen posted an open letter to Bush on his Web site, saying, "I want to personally thank-you for the job you've done turning my once full-of-life son into a defeated stepford drone ... Yesterday I received first word from him. He was living in a tent city near the Iraq border ... He sounded very different. Distant. At first I thought he was lonely. I asked what was wrong. He said nothing. I asked how he was dealing with it. He said okay. Then he peppered some of his talk with anti-Iraq expletives.

"I had never heard that from him. These were not just anti-Saddam but anti-Iraq. He started talking about how there were no women for miles and how they were going to take their frustrations out on Iraq. I asked what happened to his thoughts on Bush and the war he didn't believe in, and I could hear him shrug. He said they taught him how to not think about it. I felt a palpable relief. They were winning him over. My son was being successfully brainwashed, and I was grateful. This would make it easier on him. There is no room for reason or intellect in a war like this."

While Hansen finds a kind of bitter relief in his son's growing callousness, he feels increasingly raw. He encouraged Luke's enlistment and helped talk him out of deserting, telling him to honor the commitment he'd made. Now he says he feels "utter moral agony" about his role in sending his son to war and the possible tension between Luke's safety and that of the Iraqis. "I don't want to sound melodramatic, but I'm having a spiritual meltdown," he says.

And for his pain, and the risk to his child's life, Hansen blames the president. "I'm sick about it. I'm sick in every possible way. I feel like I've lost my kid. I'm just mortified that America is following this man," he says. "It keeps me up at night to know he sleeps well at night."

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