 My name is Lennox Yearwood Jr. Revenue Yearwood and I am currently president of an organization called the Hip Hop Caucus. But for many years before that I was in the U.S. Air Force Reserves as an officer and in that capacity was able to see both sides of the cost of the Iraq war. From being an Air Force officer I saw the toll that it took on those who were enlisted through deployment, those who have loved ones and partners who did not see their spouses or the children and also the human toll of them coming back and being a part of a war that many felt was unjust. And so in that capacity seeing them and then going from that to being a part of an amazing organization called the Iraq Vets Against the War, which I was very honored to work with them as we, many of us who were veterans, came together to speak out against the war. But on the other side, the toll, I also saw that in my organizational capacity. Being a part of the organization with Hip Hop Caucus, I also would work with young people of color throughout the country. And we actually did a tour that was called Make Hip Hop, Not War. And in that, we actually would talk to people who would say that this war and the amount of resources that was going into this war could actually go back into the infrastructure at home. That was for me a double impact, not only going around this country but also being from Louisiana and right around 2005 seeing the effects of Hurricane Katrina and the lack of the levies and the lack of the support, particularly from the Army Corps of Engineers and what happened there knowing that money was going overseas and not coming home. But the one personal thing that touched me the most with the cost, with the loss of life and the cost of this war was when I went over to Jordan to visit with Iraqi refugees and to hear their stories. And there was one story in particular in which I was allowed to go to the hospital and as an American to go and see a mother whose house was bombed wrong. And in that capacity, she had lost many of her limbs and she was sitting in the hospital bed with the Iraqi, with the Muslim custom, mostly not wearing a man to come in there because she was that covered. She wanted me because she knew I was an American and she wanted me in particular to come into her hospital room. She wanted me to see that even though the U.S. government had sent her a letter apologizing to her, this young Iraqi mother, she wanted me to see her with no limbs, missing arms, missing her legs and to see her and to say that this is what I look like. This is what has been done to me. I have done nothing to your country. I have done nothing to you. I have just tried to raise my children and instead I now sit here for the rest of my life because losing arms and limbs because of a mistake, holding up a piece of paper from our government saying, we apologize. For me, we could never as a country go back and put back on this woman's limbs, never go back to this woman and give her back her house, what she lost, never go back to her and give her back her sanity that we have taken from her in the spirit of a war that should have never taken place in the first place. This is the cost of war. This is what I now have to remember every time I think about this war. That young mother who I don't know where she is today, but I know the cost of war on her was too much and too much on those who I work with in the Air Force, too much who I work with in urban communities, my organization and much too much on the Iraqi people and all I could do now with my life is say to my country, we not only must do better, but we must be held accountable to the crimes and the injustice that we committed in our name as Americans.