"I know in my heart we're doing the right thing over there," Paul bravely told FOX News' Tony Snow from his wheelchair.  Referring to his missing legs, Schmidt added, "if it wasn't such a moral thing we're doing over there in Iraq, then I lost these in vain.  I can't accept that."

Marine Corporal Steve Stack of Anchorage, Alaska, agrees.  "I lost my right arm below the elbow.  So I know we did the right thing by going in there.  Sudama bin Hussein was a bad guy, and if anything, these ends justify these means."  Stack's father, Wilbur, calls his son a hero.  "He lost an arm.  If (the war in Iraq) wasn't the right thing to do, we might be upset about it.  But we're not.  Our son lost his arm for a noble cause."

But not everyone sees it that way.  The looney left has to chime in from time to time, and their analysis isn't so rosy.  Antiwar scum the world over think these young heroes have been fooled, and are in fact manifesting ego defense mechanisms.  These phenomena, say the wacked-out crazies on the left, are a way the mind protects the ego from accepting ugly realities, like the stark fact that one has been relegated to nothing more than a disposable pawn in an unjust war.  "Of course they think their sacrifice was a noble one," says Dr. Mary White of the Johns Hopkins psychiatry ward in Bethesda, Maryland.  "If not, they'd have to face the reality they're unfortunate victims of a lunatic's senseless act of religious stereotyping."

But Marcia Butterbaum of St. Louis knows better.  A mother of five boys, one of whom has just returned from Fallujah, she chokes up every time she talks about her son's injuries.  He didn't lose any limbs, but Phil Butterbaum suffered third degree burns over 45% of his body, including his entire face and most of his neck.  And he couldn't be prouder.

"From now on," he boasts, I'll carry this war on my face.  No matter where I go, the U.S.A.'s victory against evil will be written all over my face.  Literally."

"It's just what I suspected," warned McLellan.  "Just when things were going really, really good, an arm of the vast, left-wing, liberal media conspiracy reaches out and damages our image abroad like this."

But not to worry, assures McLellan.  "Certain security caution protocols are in place for any event that might require for the deployment of specific protocols designed to disable any security concerns and cautionary actions not prepared by those unaware of our double-sided security protocols ," the fancy-speaking White House spokesman assured us.