AAFES turns away Prince Harry at register

The prince, who made an unannounced visit to the home of the 48th Fighter Wing last Sunday, was part of a contingent of British troops turned away from the register for failure to have a proper American identification card to shop at an AAFES facility.

“As soon as the first soldier got turned away, the prince and the other soldier left the line,” said AAFES spokesman Lt. Col. Dave Konop.

A local British paper reported that Prince Harry was trying to buy an iPod, Apple’s popular music player.

Under normal circumstances, British citizens aren’t allowed to shop at AAFES stores, Konop said. However, the store would have made an exception had it known the camouflaged soldier was, in fact, third in line to the English throne.

“If we had known it was him, we would have called the commander and gotten permission for him to shop there,” Konop said. “The cashier didn’t know it was the prince.”

http://www.estripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=44197

Retirees’ care also needs look

Now that medical facilities and care for those wounded veterans are high and on the agenda, what about the health care promised to those who served the military for 20-plus years and are now retired? Retirees are treated as third-class citizens in the eyes of all health care providers, beginning from the person you have to talk to in order to get an appointment to the actual practitioner.

Enemy overwhelmingly Sunni

This brings us back to Sept. 11, where most of the supposed hijackers were backed financially by Saudi Arabia. It’s public knowledge that the Bush family has deep business ties to the Saudi royal family, but can this relationship steer our foreign policy? So far the answer is yes. The credibility-challenged Bush administration is trying to use again what has worked so beautifully over the past six years — Words of Mass Deception.

Everything this administration has said about how the Iraq war will be fought, how much it will cost, how long it will take, etc. has been false. So why would anyone in their right mind believe them now? Don’t be fooled again!