WAR PROTESTERS ANGER WIFE OF SOLDIER

COLUMBIA -- Teresa Cobb is angry and frustrated with anti-war protesters.

The native of Scott City is currently a student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, but her mind isn't on her studies.

Married last March, Cobb, 20, has seen little of her husband, Donald, of Chaffee, who is a medic with the 101st Airborne, out of Fort Campbell, Ky. Donald Cobb's Army unit was deployed to Saudi Arabia last September.

With the U.S. now at war with Iraq, Teresa Cobb has been spending a lot of time listening to the news. But she's tired of listening to anti-war protesters.

On Wednesday, 250 anti-war protesters marched through Columbia.

"I was really angry about the protesters," she recalled Thursday night when reached by telephone at her Columbia residence.

Cobb said she ran up to some of the protesters, pleading for them to stop their protest.

"When I got there, they were chanting so I had to yell at them because I wanted them to hear me," said Cobb.

"I guess it was an emotional outburst," she added.

"There are so many demonstrations up here," she noted.

Thursday, about 100 protesters marched from a mall near the University of Missouri to Columbia's post office, where they sang Vietnam-era anti-war songs and cheered speeches by peace activists.

The protests, however, were not confined to Columbia.

In St. Louis, 23 demonstrators were charged with trespassing Thursday for blocking doors to a federal building that houses military recruiters.

In Kansas City, about 125 protesters gathered for a peace demonstration.

Cobb said she thinks Americans should support President Bush and the U.S. troops in the war against Iraq.

"I am proud of my husband and my Dad who was in Vietnam," she pointed out.

While protesters say they have nothing against the individual soldiers, Cobb said that she's concerned the anti-war demonstrations could politically undermine U.S. efforts in the Persian Gulf.

"I just don't want it to be like another Vietnam," she said.

She said she's concerned that the protests could tie the hands of the military and ultimately put U.S. troops in even more jeopardy.

"If they can do it (military action) and get it over with, that would be better," she said.

"They (the protesters) told me that they were for the troops, they were just not for the war.

"I said, `What is my husband going to think when he sees that on television?'"

Cobb said she hopes the war ends quickly. "It's been a waiting game up until now."

Cobb said she wrote a letter to her husband Wednesday night while watching news accounts of the U.S.-led air attack on Iraqi military installations.

She said she expressed hope that her husband would soon be able to come home. "My exact words were `Now, you can come home.'"