Dear Senator Bayh, We hope that this letter finds you, your staff, and your
family well.

We are in a time of great budget deficits and ask that you look carefully at
military spending. The war in Iraq and Afghanistan is wasteful, duplicative
and inefficient. While we appreciate your concern for Indiana workers, we
note that your website shows how you are using the war to get jobs for
Indiana workers. These jobs can only last at the expense of many lives and
much deficit. We would like to see more efforts on your part to move
Indiana to a non-military based economy.

We are attaching a copy of the last week's US killed. It is estimated that
9 times that number of US troops will be seriously wounded and an equal
number of civilians killed or wounded. Why should there be more???? And
whose son/daughter/spouse/parent should die for this fiasco?

We are asking that you initiate a viable resolution in the Senate to end the
war immediately before more death and destruction occur.

Lugar:
We want you to accelerate our troop withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan.
We are not going to do more good with military endeavors there. The
situation has become less secure, with now over 2100 US troops killed, many
more Iraqi troops also killed, and uncounted numbers of civilians dead.

Meanwhile, many of our own citizens are not secure, due to the difficulties
and horrors of the many natural disasters that struck us this past year. As
you well know, the tasks of rebuilding after tornados in Indiana are great.
That of the cleanup and rebuilding in the south is even more daunting. In
addition there is the aftermath of the tsunami and the earthquakes in Asia,
a situation with sorely unmet needs.
There is no military solution in Iraq at this point. The solution there
needs much more than the US has to give at this point. Etc.......

Chocola:
We would like you to increase your efforts to curb deficit spending. The
war in Afghanistan and Iraq is costing Indiana billions of dollars. It is
wasteful, duplicative and inefficient. We want you to end it.

Etc.....

Sincerely yours,

Ellyn Stecker for the Michiana Peace and Justice Coalition