The Honorable Ms Duckworth

Tammy Duckworth does more for us in a 4 minute reaming of a Small Business Phony than Joe (the deadbeat) Walsh managed to do in his full term.

After Veteran's Day

A different look from a different perspective, only to see the same thing.



hat tip = Wonkette

For Veterans' Day

A quote by PFC Robert Leckie (USMC, Guadalcanal, 1942: [in a letter to Vera Keller - the future Mrs Leckie]

Dear Vera, it seems a lifetime since we met outside Saint Mary's. This great undertaking for God and country has landed us in a tropical paradise, somewhere in what Jack London refers to as "those terrible Solomons." It is a garden of Eden. The jungle holds both beauty and terror in its depths, most terrible of which is man. We have met the enemy and have learned nothing more about him. I have, however, learned some things about myself. There are things men can do to one another that are sobering to the soul. It is one thing to reconcile these things with God, but another to square it with yourself.

There's nothing worse than war.  And nothing with less believable justification.

I refuse to glorify the war or the warrior by waxing poetic about either.  We simply have to find ways to settle our differences that don't include bashing each over the head with sticks and rocks.

Sen Jim Webb, (D-VA)

Those young Marines that I led have grown older now. They’ve lived lives of courage, both in combat and after their return, where many of them were derided by their own peers for having served. That was a long time ago. They are not bitter. They know what they did. But in receiving veterans’ benefits, they are not takers. They were givers, in the ultimate sense of that word. There is a saying among war veterans: “All gave some, some gave all.” This is not a culture of dependency. It is a part of a long tradition that gave this country its freedom and independence. They paid, some with their lives, some through wounds and disabilities, some through their emotional scars, some through the lost opportunities and delayed entry into civilian careers which had already begun for many of their peers who did not serve.

And not only did they pay. They will not say this, so I will say it for them. They are owed, if nothing else, at least a mention, some word of thanks and respect, when a presidential candidate who is their generational peer makes a speech accepting his party’s nomination to be commander-in-chief. And they are owed much more than that — a guarantee that we will never betray the commitment that we made to them and to their loved ones.

Support The Troops

Gosh - when you send people to fight 2 wars over 10 or 12 years, and they have to go thru 2 or 3 or 5 or 8 deployments of 15 - 30 months at a time, some of them will need healthcare for a very long time after they get back, and some of them will need an ever-increasing level of care because their injuries turn out to be progressive or occult or degenerative in nature.

USA Today - A staggering 45% of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21% who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the Associated Press.

What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea just two.

This seems to come as no big surprise to lot of us - you know, the ones who actually think about shit.

But one of the things I probably should've seen coming and didn't was that now the Anti-Entitlements crowd is pissin' and moanin' about "veterans gaming the system".  Well, I'm gonna go with my first reaction on this one: Fuck you. OK, so yeah - some of that's gonna happen.  Big fuckin' deal.  You're the bunch of posturing chickenhawks who wanted all this war shit in the first place; you guys are always screechin' about fallen heroes; and you're the pricks who're always posting all that maudlin shit about what we all owe to the soldiers - well now it's time to pony up, cupcake.  And where are you?  You're nowhere.  You're hiding behind the cutesy little magnetic ribbons on your SUV.  You're pretending to care about what happens to these men and women by spending a good 15 seconds every few days posting some stupidly drippy bumper-sticker sentiment on your facebook page.  But you're out now - it's just too obvious that by balking at the real cost of your war-mongering, you reveal for all to see that you care more about your ideology than you do about the people you claim make this country great.

I'll say it again in case you missed it:  fuck you.

The Costs Of War

Beans, bullets and band-aids is just the beginning. We'll be paying for these wars for a very long time in ways we can scarcely imagine right now.