by Monica Davey, for the NYT: The night before her son left for Kuwait, Ruth Aitken argued with him on the telephone for nearly three hours. From her living room in State College, Pa., she told him that a war with Iraq made no sense, that it was really a scuffle over oil. Her son, an Army captain based at Fort Stewart, Ga., countered that America needed to be protected from terrorists. "Mother," he finally told her, "it's my job." The argument — a "major confrontation" in Ms. Aitken's memory — was by no means their first debate over the war, but it was their last. Capt. Tristan N. Aitken, 31, died on April 4 as American soldiers fought for control of the Baghdad airport. "He was doing his job," Ms. Aitken said. "He had no choice, and I'm proud of who he was. But it makes me mad that this whole war was sold to the American public and to the soldiers as something it wasn't. Our forces have been convinced that Iraqis were responsible for Sept. 11, and that's not true. I told Tristan that he should go to Saudi Arabia for that. All he would come back to was, `Mom, I have to do my job.' " Army Capt. Tristan Aitken Since the start of the war, more than 100 American families, like Ms. Aitken's family, have mourned the loss of a member of the services — a son, a husband, a mother. Ms. Aitken's grief has an added ingredient. She is one of a few military family members who said they opposed the war. That complicates her pain. "It makes me more upset," Ms. Aitken, a job placement consultant, said. "We shouldn't be there. We shouldn't have been there..." More here: