Here is the text of a letter I am mailing to officials of the Government and members of congress. The text describes the "technique" that I am using as a new type of protest (I believe). I may have to contend with penalties of $100 fine and 6 months in jail for defacing US legal tender. I considered mailing personal checks and money orders so marked, but decided the "risk" of using money was more appropriate for me. Here's the text of the letter:

"Given the President’s speech some nights ago on the projected, “short-term” cost of about seventy-five-billion dollars for the current Iraqi War effort and the urgency with which I wish to voice my support as a born-and-bred US citizen concerned with my duty, I have chosen to contribute to his Administration in the interest of helping defray that cost. I am enclosing $1 of US legal tender to that end, but I must explain the bill’s “odd” color. I have decided, using a commercial marker, to “color” the bill red in acclamation of the blood that has and will be shed by innocent Iraqis and US and coalition soldiers, whom I honor and appreciate, but with whom you have advocated cynical “use” in an unjust, unprovoked attack and war on Iraq. Thus, my nation’s honor is now rightly besmirched with the aggressor label, the result of the adoption of the policy of "preemptive attack" (Administration’s term) by a nation that was victimized by the Japanese military government of Hideki Tojo with the preemptive attack on Pearl Harbor of December 7 of 1941. I have noticed that this is a point not lost on veterans of WWII (some of whom have joined protests that I have been associated with) even though many Americans have either forgotten or are ignorant of that history, and who do not understand the implications of the adoption of such a policy by the current Bush Administration. I am sure that these veterans appreciate the irony(!) that you and your like-thinkers have brought liberty to Iraqi citizens through your contrived war and yet work to undermine it here."

The "reddening" of the bill that is enclosed (taped to the letter) is made to look as if it had been splattered and partly soaked in blood with a child-safe, "commercial" marker.
Rick Blakley