I want you to make each and everyone of them a person. Make them your brother, your sister, your son, your daughter, your niece, your nephew, your cousin and your friend. I would like you to do this because as a veteran these are not numbers to me. These are my brothers and sisters in arms. As far as I’m concerned our flag should be flown at half mast till it has been that way for one week for each death. At this point in time our flag would be at half mast for almost 78 years just for our current Iraq War deaths.

These men and women have been forgotten. Our pocketbooks have become more of a priority than the pool of blood that stains the hands of the Bush administration. So I have some questions to ask America. Why aren’t these men and women a priority? Why do we not think about them? Where does this endless supply of courageous men and women come from? Why do they join the military in the first place?

Well I think I know some answers to these questions. The majority of these men and women come from places that America’s elite rarely ever visit. These places are the rural communities where “rough necks” keep this country going by the sweat of their brows; the ghettos filled with crime where an individual has to fight to even survive; the broken towns full of unemployed Americans that lost their jobs to a foreign country with workers that will do it for 1/100th of what they were paid. That’s where these Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen come from.

Much of America’s elite only know how to find these places when it’s time to campaign or when the armchair warriors are looking for more bullet sponges to be killed by enemy weapons bought and paid for with American tax dollars. While our leaders state that they can’t afford to provide proper armor to our troops. These people are second and third rate citizens to most of America’s elite and especially the GOP leaders who, for the most part, never even served their country, with the exception of a few men like John McCain.

Too often the middle and upper class of this nation looks down on these people as criminals and lazy welfare abusers. Yet, those who are the last to be taken care of by this nation are the first to volunteer to die for it. Many times they see the military as their only chance to honorably make a success of their life. Ironically, for those coming from the ghettos, this is nothing more than a more noble carry over of a theme popular with the thugs in their neighborhood, “get rich or die trying”.