Support Our Troops

"You can have all of the yellow ribbons on cars that say 'Support Our Troops' that you want, but it's when they take off the uniform and transition back to civilian life that they need support the most," says Linda Boone, executive director of The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans."

CBSNews has an article on the fact that Iraq veterans are now showing up in homeless shelters and many are homeless and without jobs and with needed medical care. This is sad news specially given the fact that the Bush administrations proposed budget "More than doubles the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using the Veterans health care system" writes David Corn.

Meanwhile, these Yellow Ribbons are all over the place!

To be fair, civilians are having a hard time understanding what the Iraqi vets have experienced. With the total media censorship on images of death, gore, people blown to bits and such, and without any real understanding as to what is being done in our name over there, it is then hard to sympathize with the vet coming home because most shootings are not publicized:The shootings rarely make news -- outside the towns where they occur. The military does not make a practice of publicizing cases of "collateral damage" unless by chance reporters are embedded with units and write about the events they witness. And no one at the Pentagon nor at the U.S. Central Command keeps a comprehensive tally of the incidents, according to senior officials in both locations, who say that all operations in general are periodically reviewed.

So we support our troops... Do we really?