With the economy like it is and has been for a few years now, our fighting veterans are returning to the US and not finding any jobs once out the military. They are drawing unemployment, not for long then what's next. Not all of them are eligible to retire from the service, only the older ones with 20 years of service. Those who lost limbs and desire are medically discharged with some benefits but not like regular retirements work!

The President seem to think they volunteered for service therefore he can not pay them their due! His plan with congress is to cut all our pay to make up the short fall in the spending budget. That is so wrong in my mind and many other peoples minds too! I mentioned this once before, but for our congress giving themselves a huge raise is non sense. These pet projects they have for their state should be cut to save the budget money.

The next few years will have all military personnel losing homes, families and a way of life after giving their lives and years of fighting for this country all because the last President rushed into war looking for weapons Of Mass destruction, he said! They haven't ever been found but he got the man his father should have gotten when he was president and didn't. You have to be here in a military town to feel the pain of these families and their kids. It's only going to get much worse real soon.

The jobs these soldiers had before joining the military services are no longer available to them and the military jobs they were doing are not needed in the civilian world. I wish you could see the number of wheel chairs being used in this city alone. Then the scooters, walkers and those using prosthetic legs and arms/hands!

They are still losing limbs and being killed almost daily in Afghanistan by roadside explosives. Again I ask that you say a prayer each night for our troops and an end to this 10 year war! When we look at ourselves as stroke survivors not walking good or just have one side of our bodies working, we are still ahead of them that lost body parts never to use them again. If you could spend just one day at the veteran hospital looking at the really crippled guys and gals you would not feel sorry for yourself being a stroke survivor any more!

The therapy clinics on the military base and all over the city are packed full of soldiers trying to relearn to see, walk and get by in life as a Veteran!