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

Dear Senator Lugar:

We are now 28 months into the Iraq war. Despite your and our disagreements about the need and advantages of going to war, perhaps we could agree that we now need immediate withdrawal for the following reasons:

• Saddam Hussein is in jail.
• There is an Iraqi elected government.
• Security is deteriorating with now the epidemic of suicide bombers increasing.
• Current US military troops are not well trained to be peacekeepers.
• A resistence to occupation by US troops is increasing.
• The more Iraqi's work with US troops, the more vulnerable they and our troops are.
• The Iraqi people are smart enough to work out their government from here on.
• The death toll keeps rising on all sides.
• We cannot afford this war.

We have attached the list of the US dead from the past two weeks. The number of US wounded and the number of civilians killed are each approximately 9 times that number. We obtain these numbers from the website http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/2005.06.html.

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