I just spent the better part of three hours with a Vietnam veteran ...

[LittleClarkie]

... at the bar tonight. All I did was listen, but he kept telling me what angel eyes I had and what a good heart I had and how beautiful I was. He also talked about being a ticking time bomb, about trying to kill himself when he was 23, about how none of it will go away. I'm glad if I was able to help him by listening, but I kept thinking about the boys we have in Iraq, and how they'll come back with stories they can't tell, and bitterness they can't get rid of, and how we're putting them through all that for no good reason. Years from now, they'll still be harboring the hate, and the current administration doesn't even have a clue as to what that means.

They're doing irreparable damage that they don't even fathom. Neither, from the looks of things in NY, with a boy who lost an arm and yet they he owes them, will they or even really care. They put little ribbons on their cars and think they're done. Yep, we support the troops alright. But don't let them ask for anything for the future. Twenty years from now some of them will look like the guy I met tonight.

He was very intense. He was very complimentary. I had the feeling he'd lived about three lifetimes in one. And all he really wanted to do was go ahead and die to end the pain. I don't even know how he ended up telling me all this, as he had shied away from it earlier in the evening. But he needed to talk I guess. And I was a compassionate ear and a beer that he kept filling. I hope I helped.

And I hope we can find a way not to create people like him for no good reason. He kept saying he was nothing. The real heros in his eyes were the ones left on the field. His best buddies killed. Marines with their heads cut off and sitting on fence posts. Was there any wondering why he was bitter he said, why he can't even look at an asian person still without wanting to snap their heads off for killing the best friends he had in the world.

I fear for the kids coming back from Iraq. They will need help that this administration isn't prepared to give.

[henslee]

1. Sounds like it meant a lot that you listened to him. Sometimes thats all

you have to do. Took me a long time to learn that one and I even forget to do it sometimes.