To me, this is one of our greatest failings and disgraces as a country. We send these boys out there to fight, to see things and do things nobody wants to have to see or do, to die....and then abandon them when they return. Don't get me wrong, there have been improvements, I won't even go into what was done to the Vietman vets, but obviously we aren't doing NEARLY enough; not when our veterans are committing suicide at 3 to 4 times the rate of the civilian population.

Not only that, Kim, but how many times do they have to rotate back into the war zone before it's enough?

I guess Halliburton - Cheney's company - hasn't made enough blood money yet.

Please God let this war be over and the megalomaniac be out of the White House before my boy is old enough to be drafted.

Not only that, Kim, but how many times do they have to rotate back into the war zone before it's enough?

My cousin's husband just came home and he's been to Iraq four times. Something else of note...he told me that most of them volunteer to go back because they can't stand leaving their brothers in arms behind. I can think of few things more admirable and selfless. And then you look at how they're abandoned when they return. Like I said....disgraceful.

I just read an appalling here: http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/bookclub...exisms_revival

It's an article by Susan Faludi, who says among other things,

. Re: the contention that firefighters inspired simply because they saved women:
But there were, in fact, very few examples of anyone saving anyone on 9/11. Thanks to the catastrophic nature of the attacks, most people in the Twin Towers either were killed or walked out on their own two feet, and on the planes, needless to say, no one remained to be rescued. And in 343 cases, it was the firefighters who were the victims, through no fault of their own (but very much due to the fault of reckless and negligent policies of department brass and city leaders). Media pundits hailed “all those photos” of strapping men carrying women out of the towers—as one commentator put it in early 2002, “the brawny young man in his helmet carrying the wounded young woman in his arms”--but when I went back and searched the media files from those weeks, I could find no such cornucopia of images. Newsweek did run a picture after 9/11 of a firefighter carrying a child, captioned “Horror at Home,” but it was a photo from the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. My point is, in the absence of traditional male heroes saving helpless female victims, our media and political culture created arbitrary designations, by sex. The “heroes” were, by and large, the men who died in the towers or survived their collapse, especially firefighters, and the “victims” became the 9/11 widows, who were fawned over by the press as long as they stuck to the role of helpless homemaker victim and didn’t (ala, the Jersey Girls) demand an accounting from the government of the missteps and protection failures that led up to 9/11.

I was thinking, wow, what a nutjob. Then I read the comments. Someone was complaining that feminist activism is all the more important now, and a very nice rebuttal was submitted:

On November 7, 2007 - 4:08am kozmik said:
Yeah, activism is great when it's substantial and justified. Otherwise it's just rabble rousing and fear mongering perhaps for the paycheck.
Faluti claims, and you seem to agree her, that:
Newsweek did run a picture after 9/11 of a firefighter carrying a child, captioned “Horror at Home,” but it was a photo from the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. My point is, in the absence of traditional male heroes saving helpless female victims, our media and political culture created arbitrary designations, by sex.
Some facts for consideration:
* I checked photos and names on the NY Times of all the firefighters killed on 9/11. Unless I missed some, they're all 343 men. I couldn't find statistics by gender.
* Of the 23 NYPD killed, 2 were women.
* Of the 8 EMT killed on 9/11, all were men. Of the 3 EMT who later died as a result, 2 were men, 1 woman.
* Of the 37 port authority police killed, 1 woman.
That's over 99% male.
http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/091101rescuers.html
http://nypdrant64609.yuku.com/topic/4064?page=1
http://www.our.homewithgod.com/mkcat...authority.html
So, there's the facts. Faludi's claims of "arbitrary designations, by sex" seems factually lacking to say the least. (She was a reporter for the WSJ? What happened to fact checking?)
Many civilians were killed and families terrified on 9/11. People looked for heroes and a firefighter is an obvious choice, as protecting families is what they do and many died on 9/11.
A photo can be a) asexual or faceless and impersonal, b) a female firefighter to be less statistically accurate and more PC, c) a male firefighter since all of the dead 9/11 firefighters were male.
No paranoia required to understand. Just common sense. But that's too obvious to sell books I guess.

I was all, Yeah! Take THAT femmies! Then this moron posted:

On November 7, 2007 - 10:14am KingElvis said:
It's not whether men died. It's whether they were valiantly rescuing anyone. Turns out they shouldn't have really tried.
In fact the firefighters were actually hindering the escape of those walking down the stairs because the stairway was so narrow.
It actually proves the point that 'valor' is largley vainglory.
It's simply not efficacious...kind of like the Iraq war...kind of like the idea of throwing an army at villains who, by their very definition, sidestep armies - that's what 'terrorism' is.
It seems to prove the point of the book we're discussing.

I don't know what book they're discussing. I don't really care. I felt physically ill after I read this last one.

It seems there's a theme lately in the news about sexism - against women - rearing its ugly head. I'm working on a blog entry about it. Some of what I posted here may be in it, but it just fits so closely to what we're discussing in this thread I wanted to post it now. How many of the soldiers going back time and again are women? Is it because women aren't allowed to serve? Yeah, right.

We live in a loony bin.

It ain't easy coming home after war because a vets whole perception changes on what is important and what isn't and for many of us the things that were important to us when we left are no longer important at all. And things we took for granted become of supreme importance. And on top of what we have seen on the battlefield when we get home we here what pigs we are because we are men when you add that to the guilt and doubt about ourselves it opens old wounds and creates fresh ones as well. I am not saying that vets are guilty of anything but many of us feel that way for being able to take a life. There is more to it than that but I just don't know how to explain it. I know I felt as if I was no longer human.

Quote from KellyMac

Not only that, Kim, but how many times do they have to rotate back into the war zone before it's enough?

I guess Halliburton - Cheney's company - hasn't made enough blood money yet.

Please God let this war be over and the megalomaniac be out of the White House before my boy is old enough to be drafted.

If the US was fighting a war like World War 2 I would disagree with you. In fact, I would be honored to serve myself if the US was fighting a war that was actually worth fighting in.

However, the war in Iraq? Let's be honest. If we lose the war in Iraq there is no reason Americans couldn't have the same freedoms we always had. The war in Iraq is an unjust, stupid war.

Having said that, if the war in Iraq is still continuing by the time your son is old enough to join or be drafted (which is HIGHLY LIKELY). I would do whatever you can, including lying to the government, to keep your son out of that stupid war.

As evidence that the war in Iraq is likely to go on for a long time, consider what has happened in Korea. The Korean war occurred 50 years ago and we still have US troops there.