Surge and Destroy

This is from a story in my local paper this morning:

With all the debate about the increase of American troops in Iraq, Lila Harmon of Winter Haven has a surge of her own going on with a son, a daughter and a son-in-law all soldiers and all notified they will be going to Iraq.

Her son, Coy Bope, both an Army infantry soldier and truck driver, who left the Army in June 2005 after five years of active duty, was called up in January for a fourth tour in Iraq. He is temporarily back home in Winter Haven until he can have surgery at MacDill Air Force base and then will be sent over after he recovers.

Here's something we should be talking about:

In his five years in the Army, Bope had three deployments to Iraq and one to Kuwait where he was driving a truck into Iraq on a regular basis. Not all of his tours were for the standard 12-month deployments. Some were shorter.

Despite the fact that he and his wife, Brooke, are expecting their first child, he said he is willing to answer the call.

What he does mind, however, is the treatment of veterans when they are first called back to duty.

"We were called to Fort Benning to prepare for deployment. Every one of the 174 of us were combat veterans. Yet we were treated like basic training recruits, confined to base, not allowed to bring our wives or even to call them. We willingly showed up. Some who were called did not," he said.

"I don't think a lot of people know how they are treating the combat veterans who show up and are ready to serve again," he said.

We are treating our soldiers like detainees. We send them over without adequate equipment. And we have a Congress who cannot get it together to vote on a non-binding resolution. There's something very wrong here. If they wouldn't listen to what the people said in 2006 because we didn't get rid of enough Republicans it's time to take to the streets. And to vote all of them out in 2008. The red herring of not supporting the troops needs to be thrown right back in their faces.