I think we all need to step back and take a breath. In the past several days I have seen many of us veterans playing the blame game on what is going on with respect to Afghanistan, me definitely included. We as brothers and sisters are missing the boat here. Bottom line is that as veterans we are all hurting, no matter what you believe to who is at fault. We have many Vietnam/Korea veterans who this has opened old wounds. This happened to them and the only difference it hat they weren’t taken as good of care of as we were. They set the standard and got things fixed for our generation so we didn’t have to endure what they did…nonetheless they are hurting right now. Pretty much all of us that have served in the desert or supported those operations and have given most if not all of our adult life to it and lost friends and comrades along the way. Some of us suffer from Physical wounds but most of us if we are honest with ourselves suffer from painful memories of our time there. BUT we did our job and came home proudly and some of us went multiple times. We served with honor and dignity and kept our homeland safe. We answered our nations call and did what we were supposed to do. For that I am proud to call all of you my brothers and sisters in arms and will serve beside any of you anytime. I am writing this because my soul breaks when we fight among ourselves and lose sight of the big picture that events like cause great mental damage to our fellow comrades in arms and times like these we need to be lifting each other up and checking in on each other instead of looking for blame. At this point it doesn’t matter who shot John…what matters is that we look out for each other and take care of one another. I am going to stop responding or replying to any posts that are arguing about any blame as I should have days ago. Please join me in that and lets let it ride and help our folks to heal. Please share with your contacts...this has to stop and we have to recenter right now.

Maj Marty Hogan Lt Col Charlie Brown SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth Lt Col John (Jack) Christensen MSgt Stephen Council 1SG Steven Imerman SMSgt Lawrence McCarter PO1 H Gene Lawrence COL Mikel J. Burroughs SrA John Monette @