Sample letter to the Editor:

Afghanistan is the world's most heavily mine-infested country, with upwards of 10 million mines sleeping in its soil. These weapons, many of them over two decades old, inflict over 88 casualties a month on Afghan soldiers and civilians alike. As the US armed forces ready for a possible ground assault in Afghanistan, we must also emotionally prepare for the cost in limbs and lives that landmines may take on our own service men and women.

Not since the Vietnam Conflict, where one third of US casualties were caused by antipersonnel landmines, the majority of them American-made or laid, have these insidious weapons posed such a serious threat to our own forces on such a large scale. President Bush has a responsibility to protect our troops, while limiting the suffering this campaign visits on the Afghan people.

He can attain these goals, in part, by refraining to deploy landmines -- a weapon that nine retired senior commanders in the US armed forces recently urged him to give up forever. Our nation's sons and daughters, in this war and all others, should never fall again to the indiscriminate terror our own munitions have wrecked on our troops countless times before. Bush should join the majority of the world's nations, including all our NATO allies save Turkey, and ban this weapon from our arsenal now.

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