Doug R- It's great to cheer the troops and all, but you are living in a fantasy of your own making. Let me explain in a way bankers would understand: the United States is a very poor credit risk.

We are failing to keep our "rebuilding" commitments to Afghanistan. Even Turkey wants it's bribe money to let us use Turkey as a staging ground UP FRONT, not promises of future help. Yet the Bush administration promises we can rebuild Iraq.

Wake up, Doug. We're barely able to keep our own infrastructure afloat. Our highways are shit and our airlines are failing. For most American families, access to health insurance costs as much as housing. Yet Bush is promising to rebuild the Iraqi health care system. I don't think anyone believes it. Bush is full of promises, but if he delivers, there will be hell to pay. As an American I think my family's health care should take priority over Iraq's.

At the same time, Bush is fanatical about big tax breaks which will throw our country deeper into debt, and will in truth benefit a very few.

But Doug, you know what is the saddest thing of all? While all you true-blooded conservatives are chanting "Support our Troops", the fact is that when these injured veterans return to the United States, the support will have disappeared. They will either be thrown into the same health care morass as the rest of us, (the preferred Republican route), or they will be subjected to trying to get help from the Veterans Administration, which is currently struggling to meet the needs of WWII vets. Either way, these kids are fucked.

I think I'm paraphrasing someone when I say, "A society can be judged by the way it treats it's veterans". In our case, it's pretty poor. But at least after Vietnam, things were handled fairly promptly, as far as I know. I have a friend whose right leg was blown off by a land mine, and he had a prosthetic limb within a few months after coming home, at no cost to him.

The first gulf war vets didn't fare as well. Our "support the troops" government denies benefits for the "Gulf War Syndrome", though many of our troops are ill after having fought in that war. I wonder what those guys think of all the "support our troops" bullshit.

So Doug, I'll be watching to see how your good friend Bush handles our returning veterans. My guess is that few of our veterans will be doing as well as Halliburton once the war on Iraq is over.

I'll be watching to see how Bush handles our veterans, some of whom are already returning with injuries. I am not optimistic. Thanks, BlueJay.