Even long-time Republicans have noticed Obama's dedication to veterans

The following is a really great article that needed to be written and I suggest you go to the link to read the whole thing. For right now, this is a great point for you to see because it is what I do every day.

Even long-time Republicans have noticed Obama's dedication to veterans.

Larry Pressler, a Vietnam veteran with 22 years of service as a Republican member of the Senate and the House of Representatives, recently endorsed President Obama and his commitment to our troops in The Huffington Post.

It is tempting, in light of the above, to believe that President Obama is just much more committed to the concerns of our veterans than President Bush was and have that be the end of the story. But the stark differences between the Democratic and Republican parties' commitment to our veterans extend far beyond the last two presidential administrations. Instead, these differences were most recently on display during last month's Senate vote on the Veterans Job Corps Act of 2012.

I track the reality. Real news reports from reporters all over the country including parts of it you've never heard of before. Why? Because veterans may serve this one nation but they all go back to different parts of it.

In Massachusetts, veterans there know which politician is full of (in the recent words of President Obama) bullshitters and which ones actually care about them. That is why they won't be voting for Romney. They know him. They know how he treated them when he was the Governor and had a chance to prove if they mattered or not.

Go to other parts of the country and you end up with veterans simply voting on party lines because they think it is the right thing to do and that is exactly how we ended up in the mess we've been in for the last ten years. Actually, cancel that. We've been in a mess for too many years going back a lot further than ten. Ask Vietnam veterans what it was like for them to file claims, fight the system, get treated and get what they paid for when we sent them to Vietnam and you'll know none of this is new and Congress is still playing games with their lives.

Here in Florida I talk to veterans all the time and usually I walk away stunned by what I hear them say. It is nothing I've read in real news reports. It has all come from people playing political games that end up making veterans pay for believing in the people they supported.

The Mystifying Misperception
Joseph Graziano
Attorney
Huffington Post

Two months after September 11, 2001 my father, the severely injured, sole survivor of Engine 22 Ladder 13, sought help in securing disability benefits from the New York City Fire Commissioner's Office. The Office responded that the government of New York believed he was dead and refused to help him. A deserving public servant, my father's struggle to obtain benefits from the state following 9/11 is not unlike that of the millions of veterans who struggle to secure disability benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs after they return home from duty. My father's experience sensitized me to this enduring injustice, and subsequently, I have spent the last decade committed to serving those who have served.

Traditionally, veterans have been dependable supporters of the Republican Party. Although veterans are no longer a homogenous voting group, this continues to ring true. According to recent polling by Politico, Governor Romney has a commanding 20 point lead over President Obama in the veteran vote. This unhealthy pairing can be explained by the existence of a persistent and complexing misperception that hawkish republicans, those most likely to send our soldiers off to war, are the same people most likely to stand beside and serve our veterans when they return home. Nothing is further from the truth.

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