The Johnsons were never able to go to Sadr City, the rough-and-tumble Baghdad neighborhood where Justin Johnson was killed by a roadside bomb in April 2004.

Far from the strife of Baghdad and other violent regions, the group's members said they nevertheless found a cause worth fighting for in Arbil.

There, they said, their sons were treated as liberators and the parents welcomed as heroes.

As guests of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the parents visited a parade of politicians and government ministers who thanked them for their visit ¡ª and their sacrifice.

Many told the families their sons were martyrs, a term that at first seemed offensive to some.

"Until I understood the meaning of what a martyr was, it was kind of a slap in the face," Jan said. "But they weren't comparing them to suicide bombers. I realized they were comparing them to heroes."

They traveled to outlying villages and were invited to sip tea with Kurdish dignitaries. One told them of his painstaking efforts to find mass graves and evidence of Iraqi abuse. Another took them on a tour of a prison camp that was transformed into a rose garden after Hussein's grip on the region waned.

Wherever they traveled, fellow mother Debra Argel Bastian of Lompoc, Calif., handed out wallet-sized photos of her son, Derek Argel, who was killed in a May 2005 plane crash near the Iranian border.

One mother tucked the photo into a framed picture of her two sons and husband, who had also been killed during Saddam's rule. "Now your son is my son," the woman told Bastian.

She broke down crying.

"I needed to make that trip," said Bastian, who traveled with her husband, Todd. "All of us were very, very disappointed in the media coverage over the war. I had so many avenues that were telling me different, that there were good things happening in Iraq, that they were just reporting the bomb of the day."

Jan Johnson said she was touched by an unexpected meeting with a soldier who was part of the team that tried to rescue her son. "It brought Justin closer to me," she said.

The group returned home 10 days later, in time for some to attend Veterans Day parades.

Jan says she hopes to help lead another trip, possibly to Baghdad, with a larger contingent of families.

"We're crazy. We suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder," Jan said. "We're allowed to do stupid things. "

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