Your mean-spirited treason that was the May 19 IDS staff editorial, “The GI Bill Battle,” is a slap in the face of every brave American man and woman that continues to pay the price for your freedom in some natural-resource-rich nation halfway across the globe.\nErnie Pyle Hall must seem a cozy safe place to declare “bleeding the armed forces to death in the name of veteran benefits is not the way to solve the debate.” What debate? Ending the War in Iraq?\nYou cite no significant source of opposition to the “Post-9/11 Veterans’ Educational Assistance Act of 2007” that will help veterans afford state universities like IU, yet you support your own critical one-sided Fox News endorsed claim that “this bill is an underhanded attempt to end the war in Iraq by overextending the military’s budget to the point where it cannot continue to fight overseas.” That’s hilarious.\nAccording to a May 8, 2008, U.S. Congressional Budget Office assessment, Democratic Virginia Senator Jim Webb’s bill would cost $51.8 billion from 2008 through 2018. That modest attempt to pay back our war heroes would offer tour-of-duty veterans who have given us 36 months of patriotic duty an affordable college education for the next 10 years. \nOffering America’s Afghanistan and Iraq War veterans an equal opportunity to succeed at life beyond the war zone is worth any cost, especially if they are lucky enough to arrive home alive and not within a wooden box draped with an American flag made in China.\nThe War in Iraq will live on whether or not our soldiers are edumacated when they get home. How many months of combat duty is enough to warrant your mercy?\n48? 60? 72? Why not 12? Why not 24?\nWhat’s bleeding our armed forces to death is extended tours of occupation duty in Baghdad, and an American public too willing to stand by while more children die because too many Iraqi children are already dead.
David Nosko\nFormer IDS Staff
