Well Welcome Brother and Sister Vets!!

DOD Identifies Army Casualties

November 02, 2010 - The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Nov. 1 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked their unit with an improvised explosive device. They were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), Fort Campbell, Ky.

Killed were:

Spc. Jonathan M. Curtis, 24, of Belmont, Mass., and

Pfc. Andrew N. Meari, 21, of Plainfield, Ill.

Think you'll hear any mention today or the next couple of much of anything related to the conflicts, don't count on it!!

What the Country thinks as to those who Help, and some are, Veterans, even as the (R)'s two Wars continue, while if an obstructionist on same, Burr, get re-elected!!

Democrats with military ties lose re-election bids

{Joseph Kaczmarek / The Associated Press Rep. Patrick Murphy D-Pa., gives his concession speech to supporters at his campaign headquarters in Bristol Pa., with wife, Jenni Murphy, and children Jack and Maggie by his side.}

Nov 3, 2010 - Tuesday’s elections swept some key Democrats from House of Representatives, including the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and the first Iraq war veteran elected to Congress.

Also gone is a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee who was one of the key proponents of improvement in military family housing and barracks, the House Budget Committee chairman who made sure there was money for improvement in military pay and benefits, and chairman of the veterans’ disability assistance subcommittee who have been pushing to eliminate the backlog of veterans’ benefits claims while trying to reduce the number of errors.

The lawmakers were defeated in an election that will result in control of the House of Representatives shifting in January to Republicans.

One of the biggest Democratic bulls to fall in the election is Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the House Armed Services Committee chairman and a 17-term lawmaker. He had shown unusual concern during his career about the professional education of people in the military, and he played a key role in the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act that gave combatant commands more power and forced joint-service education and cooperation on a reluctant Defense Department. A self-taught military historian, Skelton believed that young military officers could learn lessons from the past, and created a list of books he felt every officer should read. {read rest}