What am I missing here?

Yet another story is published about a soldier who's being sent back to Iraq even though he's completed a tour of duty there. This guy happens to be a 20 year old sergeant. The fact that he's 20 and a sergeant means either the Army thinks he's talented or they're desperate or the reporter got something wrong. Add this to the myriad of news reports about complaints of reservists being sent over, tours of duty extended, and the complaints roll on.

My father was a Master Gunnery Sergeant in the Marine Corps who lost a leg to friendly fire in the South Pacific. He loved to joke that he'd be one of the few people to be buried in two places, thousands of miles apart. He also told me not to go into the military during Vietnam. He'd fought in the jungle, he knew we were in error. His advice: "they'll screw you like the screwed me."

I knew what he meant. I'd gone with him to the "limb shop" in Buffalo to get his artificial leg reconditioned. It was made of willow and steel, not the most forgiving piece of equipment but an example of real craftsmanship (now done with high tech materials by equally skilled and caring people). The Veteran's Administration only allowed him so many trips and rationed the number of "stump socks" he got – a covering designed to cushion your skin from the wooden leg. If moths wrecked one of the wool stump socks, it could provoke real problems, since money was tight and the socks were expensive. So too if they shrank in the wash.

Just when I was about to enter college, the VA decided to lower my dad's disability rating, which meant they wouldn't pay for my or my two brother's tuitions. That event was followed by the first of my dad's two trips to a VA hospital.

I remember finding him on the road. The factory he worked at called, saying he'd walked off the job. I found a ride to the plant, got the family car and went after him. He was walking to another town, trying to find the personnel manager who'd left the factory, a guy my father related to. He was hobbling when I got him into the car. When we got to our house, he went down to the basement and cried. I never saw my father cry before, not at funerals, never. We took him to the Veteran's Hospital in Buffalo where he was admitted with a "nervious collapse." They did electroconvulsive treatments and sent him home, trembling.

Eventually my father recovered. I won scholarships that made college affordable for me, so I could pay my way, as did my brothers. I refused to go into the military, with my father's blessing. Vietnam ended and life went on.

Fast forward to today. Kids who've grown up playing video war games are now at real war with house to house combat. The draft is long gone and one wonders what they though they were volunteering for when they signed up: the chance to play with real weapons for a couple of years then a guaranteed good career when they left? Being in the military prepares you for being in the military, despite all the fanciful business writings comparing ancient combat strategies to contemporary capitalism. Battle trained and ready to sell plastic wrap.

So along comes Rummy with his "you go to war with the army you have" retort and introduces some reality into the whole thing. Folks get upset. What did you think you were signing up for? Since the military is strongly Republican and voted for this, should they gripe? This is one of your leaders speaking, one of the authors of the fix you're in. Sorry to be crass folks but if you talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk. When you signed on to the Bush agenda, you get the Bush agenda. Reality bites.

I am pained whenever I read that anyone is killed or maimed in Iraq. My mother, age 90, cries when she hears the deaths announced. I opposed this war before it started and I oppose it now. It's a lesson I learned from my father. Maybe it's time we stopped screwing our troops. Rumsfeld and Company should leave and we should provide them with the best protection: an end to the war.