Today's Stripes letters (families of the 1AD are PISSED)

Extension is absurd

My husband has been in the Army for 17 years, and I’ve been proud of that
because we’ve done a lot of good things in many ways. We never regretted
any place that Army life has taken us because we knew our job and our place
in the Army world. My husband has been in many other places, and we’ve
always stood side by side. But the extension of the deployment of 1st
Armored Division soldiers in Iraq is absurd.

I cried for an entire day after getting the news of the extension of the soldiers
in Iraq. Now I have to laugh knowing that everywhere we look, we don’t see
any welcome home banners anymore. Now we see crisis and anger
management banners. Everything was supposed to be happiness. Now it’s
sadness, and still they pretend we are calm, happy families, like what just
happened is nothing but part of the soldiers’ jobs. They forget that these same
soldiers are fathers, mothers, sons, brothers and sisters, and have done their
jobs in Iraq. Now it’s time for them to come home!

There’s not going to be any sweet, beautiful answer that anyone can give my
two children to make them understand why. Why is daddy not coming home?
My kids are going to think that their daddy is not coming home because they
did something bad. That’s what a lot of other children will be thinking while
they are crying at night.

For a year my children and many other kids all marked off each day on the
calender, hoping that each day that went by would be one day sooner that
their fathers would be home. A lot of people’s dreams and plans were
shattered once again.

As a proud Army wife, I think there’s no fairness in any of this. I don’t
expect miracles to happen. But if a lot of we spouses raise our voices
together, maybe we can do something to bring ours husbands, fathers,
mothers, sons and brothers back home where they belong after a yearlong
deployment. I am a very proud and angry wife and mother.

Lorna I. Soto
Baumholder, Germany

Bring ‘Old Ironsides’ home

I’ve been following, with great interest and for very personal reasons, the
recent “possible extension” of 1st Armored Division soldiers in Iraq. My
husband is in Company B, 1st Battalion, 37th Armored Regiment, and is
currently attached to the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment. He has not
been home during his entire deployment. He left on May 10, 2003, and I’ve
only seen him since then via Webcam or pictures.

I’m sick and tired of the lies and deceptions slathered over everyone who is
even remotely connected to this division. In the story “Dempsey: Logical for
1st AD to stay in Iraq” (April 9), Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey said,
“Moreover, the division’s soldiers and their families have invested too much,
made too many personal sacrifices in support of this mission, to see it risked at
such a critical time.” Well excuse me, Maj. Gen. Dempsey, but I’d prefer you
not speak for me in the future!

Dempsey got one thing right: my husband and I have invested too much during
this deployment. Now I want to cash in that investment and reap the benefits.
I want my husband home now. I don’t want to hear about how logical
Dempsey or the Army may think it is to keep the 1st AD in Iraq. Logic hasn’t
been part of the equation since day one. Let’s not break tradition. For that
matter, how “logical” can it be to push soldiers to their absolute limit and then
expect them to be at peak performance? And don’t give me that line about
these soldiers being trained for this. I’m a veteran myself.

In my opinion, Dempsey has not exercised much logic at all. He prematurely
ended the rest and recuperation program, and now he’s trying to insinuate that
the 1st AD can contribute more than, say, the 101st Airborne Division, whose
troops have been allowed to redeploy back to their families. The 3rd Infantry
Division wasn’t even kept in Iraq for more than a year. As a matter of fact,
tours in Vietnam weren’t even more than 12 months. Even back then the
Army knew it would be detrimental to GIs’ mental stability to be in a combat
environment for more than a year.

I don’t care that President Bush has called an end to major combat. Any one
of the wives of 1st AD soldiers knows otherwise. Our spouses have almost
done their “365 days boots on the ground.” This is not now nor has it ever
been a tank war. It’s time to bring “Old Ironsides” home.

Katheryn Chavarria
Bad Nauheim, Germany

Enough is enough

I have a son who joined the Army a year ago and a husband who’s been in
for 17 years, and both of them are in Iraq with the 1st Armored Division. I
also have a 7-year-old daughter, and she can’t understand why she has to
keep waiting for her brother and father to come home.

I understand very well my husband’s responsibilities. But enough is enough.
This is not about our freedom or terrorism. It’s about politics. I know that
there are a lot of spouses who feel the same way I do, but they’re afraid to
speak up. But you know what? I’m very proud of my son and my husband,
and I’ll do whatever it takes to bring them back home.

Ermelinda Navarro
Baumholder, Germany



http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=21575

So the letters are'nt all bad. From the same link.

Thanks, Secretary Rumsfeld

I’d like to extend a hearty thank you to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for the pending 120-day extension of our troops in Iraq. After all, what’s 120 days, really? For our family, it’s four birthdays (again), Mother’s Day and Father’s Day (again), our wedding anniversary (again), and the Fourth of July, which is what service is all about for a lot of military families.

I thank Secretary Rumsfeld for all of his talk about not overburdening families and soldiers. One year of their lives on the line, worrying daily about their safety, couldn’t possibly be enough to “overburden” us.

Thanks from our children, who apparently don’t need a father present, who cry when Mommy’s time is not enough for the four of them, who were counting the days until Daddy could hold them on his lap.

Thanks for betraying our trust by telling us one year “boots on the ground” and changing it at your discretion. Thanks for making the small percentage who agree with this sound like the majority. Thanks for not sending help in the form of more troops last spring when soldiers were dying, but keeping our soldiers there for extra time this spring.

Thanks for the lies you spew about how things are not so bad and we don’t need more troops, all the while keeping 1st Armored Division troops there. You’re obviously saying one thing and doing another. Thanks for using the excuse of these troops’ experience to do so. When they kept control last year, they went in with the same experience as the new units have now. Thanks for not bothering to come to Germany, face the family members, answer our questions and put faces with your numbers.

The next thank you should come from President Bush this November, when John Kerry is elected president because of the lies Secretary Rumsfeld told. The final thanks will be from whoever has to rebuild our Army’s strength when my husband and many others refuse to re-enlist.

I support our troops. I love my husband. We should not have to choose the Army or family. We should be able to trust that we can have Army and family.

Jessica Moretz
Giessen, Germany

more of the same in that batch, which I posted yesterday here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x45070


These letters represent an ever-growing crescendo of discontent with the * administration on the military side of the fence.

Just a silly question.

I'll vote for Kerry this year.

My Bad :spank:

but we can't assume they make up the vast majority.

* is about to return the 1AD to Iraq which had just redeployed home~.

That is the definitive nail in this administration's coffin. The 1AD will bring * down. The families are not going to wait around for stateside voters to play "catch-up" with the military family's plight.