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Yesterday a young sailor who lives not far from us was deployed for the second time in a few months to the Persian Gulf. This is actually his fourth deployment. He and his wife are great people. Kind of quiet and apparently rather conservative, people who would never say an unkind word about anyone. When I said I thought Bush was abusing the military, he began to say what he really thought. He is angry about going back after just a few months at home. He sees this as an endless cycle and he said that "everyone" in the fleet knows this is wrong. It makes no sense to his fellow sailors. They see no reason for the war in Iraq and they resent what it is doing to them and their families. This corresponds with what I am hearing from some sources in the active duty army and with what I have heard from veterans of the Iraq war who are now in the VA system. The military command is even beginning to speak out publicly about what the pace of deployment is doing to military.

Vanished into thin air is the old fashioned notion of taking care of the troops who perform the mission. The Pentagon could care less about the ordinary people who make up the military. As one friend of mine, a retired navy captain, said recently. They use them like "windup toy soldiers" and keep sending them back.

This flagrant abuse of the military is but one instance of the total lack of concern for ordinary people on the part of the administration and the Congress. It is now abundantly clear that the government is being run only for the corporate interests which now have their way completely. This is only one instance, but it is one that enrages me. If they had tried to do to us during the Vietnam war what they are doing to these people, there would have been open revolt.

Support our troops. End this insane deployment pace. Bring them home. And get Bush and his ilk out of office.