For the first 15 years or so after my service (which was clearly mild compared to most of you guys, and involved P3 overwater reconnaissance for shipping in the South China Sea) , I shared many of the views of Steve Sherman and other correspondents on this site. Since then, I have come to believe that the responsible protest (not the Vet abusers) served a purpose and that the lack of the govenment's ability to predict outcome and consequences put our generation in a bad situation - if you didn't go, you weren't true to your peers, if you did, you may very well have been untrue to yourself. While I don't think the government planned at all to do this to our generation, it nonetheless was a great lesson in the law of unintended consequences. The impact of this decision clearly still haunts our generation which is apparent from the intensity of rhetoric at this site.

I am at the point that I do not mind John Kerry's rhetoric and testimony when he was VVAW - he was clearly in my mind not against the Veteran but rather, I believe, admired all of us - saw us all as the leaders of our generation and did want us to be in the position we were in.

I am more troubled by the faulty logic (and perhaps even lies) by the present administration which has us in a real mess in Iraq that may still not have been necessary even if there were WMD - WMD in my view was a red herring anyway because even if Iraq had WMD, they lacked delivery capabilities and therefore were not a threat regardless -and it is hard to believe that this was not known.

God Bless all of you for your service. I am proud to be counted among you.

Jim