limbs lost to lies

In the city you see alot of homeless people...probably in all cities. You get to notice 'regulars'. I saw a guy on the street a few weeks ago, that I cant stop thinking about....I havent seen him since.

He couldnt be more than 20, a young white kid of decent build, but looked like he was hitting a rough time. His nice clothes were filthy and torn. His hair was scraggly, and he was growing a patchy thin beard.

He was sitting against a wall of a building with a cardboard sign that said. "Afghanistan Veteran, now homeless" He was missing a leg and had a crutch next to him.

Can you remember how it was to be 19? To have a constant hard-on, and to get so excited about simple things like "summer" or a girl. I was invinicble when I was 19. This kid probably thought he was too.

How lucky are we...how HONORED are we as a country that these kids are willing to go and lose legs and arms and lives. How lucky are we that they never questioned the orders, they just went. What Hell have we asked of them? Most of us will never know. Most of us dont want to know. I dont want to know.

Now evidence is mounting that Bush knew his claims were false, but insisted that we go to war anyway. That he 'fixed' the data. What does that mean for this boy, who has been damaged? I'll bet his mental trauma is worse than his missing leg....how will he feel when he knows that it was lost for a lie? How about the Parents of the Dead? I imagine I might continue to believe in the war if I had lost one of my sons. It would be too painful to face the truth.

You hear all this clamor about 'Support Our Troops' but what does that really mean? My Mom has one of those yellow ribbon stickers on the back of her Lexus. Is THAT supporting them? You hear about what a hard time these kids are having collecting benefits now too. Bush is cutting VA benefits. Is that supporting them? We owe these people everything...seeing this kid on the street is sickening.

Acouple of Points. We've spent $209 BILLION as of today in Iraq. Alot of that money is paying for roads, and infrastructure and schools. Can you imagine if we had taken that huge $209 BILLION dollar load and invested it our own roads? Our own bridges? Our Trains? Our Students? Our bridges are falling apart, and yet we're building new ones for people who want us dead. It's like we took out a Mortgage on our house to fix up a neighbors.

The other big point is a sick sick irony. Growing up in the 70's & 80's we heard nonstop about the 60's. About Vietnam, about Woodstock, about Love-ins, Peacenics, Hippies and all that other bullshit. We were forced to hear the music for decades after it was new. I figured there would never be another Vietnam as long as these people were alive. They were the ones who had to go there and die, they were the ones who protested and brought it to an end. The sick thing is that it's one of their own that went out and created a new Vietnam, and nobody stopped it. It's just sick....