We are discharging vets and providing no support services for mental health, no "decompression zones" for the transition to "peaceful" civilian life. We are perpetrators by proxy of a startling continuum of abuse to our own soldiers and to their friends, families, co-workers, neighbors.

While I agree with you completely here I just want to make the point that a huge percentage of the "troops" were droolingly eager to "go kick some sand ni**er butt".

I would have a lot more sympathy if these guys were draftees that didn't want to go in the first place. Anyone who did fifteen minutes of research would know that troops are almost always treated like crap once the war is over.

Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy how's yer soul?"

But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,

The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,

O it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll.

-Rudyard Kipling

Yes, I'm a vet..

I mean, yes, technically, black people are more likely to be involved in drug crap than other races.

Thrasher is correct and you are dead wrong. Blacks do indeed have a slightly lower involvement rate with "drugs" than do whites.

And the argument is not about whether or not Obama did "drugs" but whether or not the Clinton campaign was trying to make covert references to that drug use and then denying they did so.

That the Clinton campaign got caught I think is most illuminating.

I guess I'm getting old, but it wasn't all that long ago by my standards that we had the top three officials in the US all self admitted "drug" users. Clinton, Gore and Gingrich.

But even if they had been, why less sympathy for troops who are eager to do their job? Why put “troops” in scare quotes?

I'm reminded of the old motto of SAC: Peace is our profession.

I'm also reminded of the quote by a Brit officer in one of the World Wars when his troops were cheering a huge barrage delivered to the enemy: Don't cheer lads, the poor bastards are dying over there.

People who are eager to kill scare me, and they ought to scare you too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

An ad hominem argument, also known as argumentum ad hominem (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claim is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.

Aych: There is a lack of full disclosure in the recruiting process, youthful idealism & enthusiasm, and other complicating factors accompanying your correct observation of recruits' responsibility for their own destiny. Our nation owes anyone willing to serve more than we give them.

Believe me, I know all that, I was once a recruit myself.

Why do you think I quoted "Tommy"?

Some things never change and Kipling's observations are as valid today as when he wrote them.

I got on a local bulletin board that leans pretty hard to the right a while back.. When I observed that all the "support the troops" magnets were gone from the cars I was snippily told that the only ones they supported were the ones making the magnets.

Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan.

I have to tell you though that the local American Legion post has been doing right by those injured troops that come back to us. Just a month or so ago they bought a house for an injured vet and his mother..

When I asked why the Legion had to do this and the government couldn't be bothered no one would answer. A common reaction to a lot of my questions it seems. A lot of the Legion members lean to the right politically and I go out of my way to tweak them sometimes. The disaster they and their leaders have wrought just angers me to the point where I don't care how they feel.

A kid my daughter went to middle school with came back without a leg.. He was lucky, the RPG that took it off didn't explode. He still lives in our neighborhood and my eyes get wet whenever I see him out playing with his little daughter.

What do you figure the odds are that King would have taken or returned Glenn's call?

When a disgusting plate of food comes to you in a restaurant, do you call to ask the chef why it tastes so bad and whether he has done better in the past or do you just send it back and demand another (or walk out like me since I know someone is going to spit in the food)?

Glenn is a critic, critics judge the product as produced, not as the person producing wished it had been produced.

If John King were a chef and Glenn had been a food critic who returned the plate, do you think King could have kept himself from spitting in the food?