Military spouses spar with CNN's Starr

Military spouses spar with CNN's Starr
Army Times
By Karen Jowers
Staff Writer
September 6, 2013

Longtime CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr has apologized to two military spouses who were irked by her comments in an Aug. 29 report on possible military action in Syria.

In the report, Starr said there is no question that the military can afford another mission.

“And I don’t think it’s really going to affect military families at all,” she said, according to a transcript. “This is going to be, if it it is ordered, a cruise missile strike, no U.S. troops on the ground, Navy ships out in the eastern Mediterranean that would be on deployment anyhow. So the capability is there. The money is there. Because what we’re talking about is something that will last, we are told, just potentially a couple of days.”

In a letter posted Sept. 4 to the HuffingtonPost.com, military spouses Rebekah Sanderlin and Molly Blake, both journalists, wrote: “There is no such thing as a person-less war. Our military cannot afford for Americans to forget that wars and battles and military strikes are fought by troops, that troops are people, and that those people have families.”

As for being able to afford another mission, the spouses wrote: “In our military communities this summer we couldn’t even afford to pay federal employees for a five-day work week,” referring to the six weeks of one-day-a-week furloughs ordered for most Defense Department civilians.

The spouses described difficulty getting doctor’s appointments and counseling services to deal with problems created by 12 years of war.
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