Obama Bringing Troops Home: Are We Ready to Welcome Them?

Paul Rieckhoff
Exec. Director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA)
Posted February 27, 2009 10:20 AM (EST)

Obama Bringing Troops Home: Are We Ready to Welcome Them?


President Obama traveled to Camp Lejeune today to announce the eventual drawdown of combat troops in Iraq. There's sure to be a lot of discussion about the details of the timeline, and a lot of politics getting in the way of any coherent military analysis.

But whether it is 16 months or 19 months or 23 months, whether the residual force is 10,000 or 50,000 troops, the president's new plan will create a surge of new veterans coming home in 2009 and 2010. We need to be ready.

Our duty to these brave men and women doesn't end when they leave the battlefield. Military families have borne a tremendous strain through more than eight years of conflict, and our troops are returning to the worst economy we've seen in decades. No veteran's 'welcome home' should come in the form of an unemployment check.
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The answer is, no. Not even close.

Tomorrow I'll be off line most of the day. The dedication for the memorial at the Nam Knights is tomorrow. Glad this day is finally here because I've been making beads for the last couple of months instead of posting most of the day,,,,just not enough hours in the day to do it all. I'll have plenty of pictures to post and will have a lot of information to share. Check back on Sunday or late tomorrow, depending on when we finally get back home.