Our Finest Citizens

In honor of our fallen heros and to pay tribute to our current servicemen, President Bush in his Veteran Day speech yesterday praised our brave soldiers serving all over the world as 'our finest citizens.' Certainly no one would argue with his commendation. The armed forces are asked to pay the highest price, and their moral principles and courageous actions exemplify the very best part that humanity has to offer. When a soldier is brought into a combat hospital he or she wants nothing more than to be patched up as quickly as possible so they can be sent back to be with their company. Senior officers have been known to collaspe after collecting the fragmented appendages and brain matter of one of their men. But to have our most valient and trusted men and women praised by a president and by an administration that has so carelessly and recklessly sent our sons and daughters, husbands, wives, sisters and brothers into harm's way is a travesty to our nation's conscious.

As an American citizen I cannot be more proud of the men and women who serve overseas. Knowing how dangerous their job is and recognizing the horrific fact that their lives are being threatened every single second, of every single minute, of every single hour, of every single day they serve in Iraq and Afganistan is more frightening to imagine that anything else I can conjure up in my anxiety ridden mind. Every step they take could be their end. Every person that comes into their radius could be their executor. Every road trip they take could be their last. Their heart thumping guard can never be down. The stress level these men and women live with is constantly held at the highest alert. If they survive their tour of duty their mindset in civilian life will never be the same again. The numbers of returning veterans who have lost limbs and eyes, faces and hands have reached staggering proportions and as I write these words I know the number climbs.

Evidence has shown that our president's national reserve duty was no hardship by any stretch of republican fantasy. And as for our war hawk VP, apart from his short tours of hunting duty, and his 'friendly fire' event, Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas. Cheney sprayed Whittington, 78, with shotgun pellets on Saturday at the Armstrong Ranch in south Texas, said property owner Katharine Armstrong. he should be humiliated for how many times he managed to escape serving in the military at all. And yet these men show no remorse or regret for taking away lives and loved ones for an unjustified 'war'. Right after 9-11 our troops belonged in Afganistan. Had they sent in enough troops and stayed the course there, the course of our country's history might have been better served, plus the military morale code of our Department of Defense might have been preserved.

But everyone says it is too late to change what has happened. It is too late to correct what was done wrong. And unfortunately they are right. All we can do at this most unforgiving point is to move forward and plan what our next step should be. Well, while we are speculating on what strategy will best serve our fighting forces, the ravaged country of Iraq, and the people left behind to fight there are highby serving only one purpose - they act as a gold mine for corporate greed and capitalistic theives. Real blood is being shed to bring in those dollars to feed Haliburton. Real people are terrified to leave their homes and go about their business in Iraq. Real people are suffering with the loss of their home, their livelihood and their family members.

The terror that Bush has wrought upon Iraq has turned into a debacle of enormous proportions for both our country as well as Iraq, and Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter and all the rest of the media savvy, bleached blonde bitch bimbos who have steadfastly supported the war in Iraq from day one, and continue to support it even when the man behind the curtain has been shown to be a man without a country behind him, should finally enlist in whatever branch of the military they see fit to serve in. How dare these nazi feminist bullys (colloquial credit goes to Rush Limbaugh) demand someone else perform the ultimate scarifice if they don't have the courage and the guts to do it themselves.

Doesn't anyone else question why the Republican presidential candidate who was a coke head and alcoholic and got regularly wasted got voted in, not once but twice, and gets to salute the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the same time his closest staff members have ridiculed and demeaned the service of Congressman John Murtha and Senator Max Cleland, as well as the last two Democratic presidential candidates who both volunteered for active duty during a time of war? I understand and accept the merits of advertising and marketing and hype and spin, but I will never understand or accept how the kind and gentle people of this great nation permitted Republican myth to trump Democratic might.