Senator Richard Lugar
510 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Senator Lugar:

Thank you for your support of humanitarian aid to Africa. We are however, curious.

The first question is, why so little and why so late, when so many are dying of war and hunger there?

The second question is, why is it so easy to spend so much on the war and destruction in Iraq, and so hard for example, to get the l5 billion that Congress pledged in 2003 for the HIV/AIDS pandemic actually put to use?

We believe that there is an urgent need for a Department of Peace in the United States cabinet so that the answers to these questions and the solutions to the causes can be swiftly addressed in the near future.

The war in Iraq is sucking the lifeblood out of our country. We need a shift in priority away from the Mr. Bush/Cheney mentality which has instigated that war.

In the past two weeks, the number of US dead has escalated to almost l700 troops. The number of wounded is about 9 times that. The number of civilian deaths and wounded is many times that of our deaths, but somehow that doesn’t count. The list of the US military dead is found at http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2005.06.htmlhttp://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2005.06.html. Our mailed version of this letter will include the printout from the past two weeks.

Ellyn Stecker and Peter Smith for the Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition