THE TROOPS

I was a GI for 3 and 1/2 years during the Vietnam war. I joined because I wanted to. At the time I supported the war. I also came from a military family with six kids living on an enlisted man's pay. We lived paycheck to paycheck. So I was not going to have my family pay my way to college. The military, at the time, seemed like my only option.

The truth is that most of the kids in the "all volunteer" military today come from poor and working class families. They have few other choices. For many of them there are not any jobs in their communities nor any hope for college money.

I'm tired of all the politicians talking bullshit games about how they support the troops. I'm flat out sick and tired of politicians telling us that they support the troops and then send them off to die for the benefit of the oil corporations and the likes of Bechtel and Halliburton. I'm sick of the politicians talking about exit strategies in late 2007 or two years later or more from Iraq. They don't care. Their kids are not in Iraq. Their kids are safely tucked into prep schools and fine colleges that working class kids can only dream about attending.

The troops are being left out to dry in this war and when they get home they will be abandoned like all the other troops that have fought in America's imperial wars.

You support the troops you say? Then bring them home now. And don't vote for politicians who keep telling us we need to stay in Iraq for another year or more? Ask those politicians if they are planning on sending their blood relatives to guard convoys full of cheesecake for Halliburton. Wise up. You are playing mind games with other people's lives.