To the editor:

A recent article in the Journal-World contained the following statements in regard to GI benefits:

“Democrats, with their proposal, plan to put Republicans on the spot – forcing them to either accept their domestic spending plan or go on record as opposing an effort widely endorsed by the nation’s major veterans’ organizations.”

“Meeting the needs of our veterans is a cost of war,” said House Speaker Pelosi, who described the bill as a “thank you” to the troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How long will Americans tolerate veterans and their families being used to posture a political party’s agenda?

My father served in two branches in World War II and Korea and was in the first graduating NROTC class at Kansas University. He will be 81 in June. He and the estimated 2,800 surviving members of the Merchant Marines have never received government benefits. He has never complained. I know that the honor of preserving freedom for his son to write this letter is his thank you. I resent Pelosi for referring to my father as a “cost of war.”

A cost of war is the loss of freedom. Veterans should be taken care of regardless of war or an election cycle. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. Let’s preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, as my father and other vets have done.

This Memorial Day remember to fly your flag at half-staff until noon, and then raise it rapidly. It should always be illuminated at night. God bless America.

Dean W. Penny,
Lawrence