Good Morning.

Today is our 4,818th day in Afghanistan, and our 180th day back in Iraq.

We'll start this morning as we always do; with the latest casualty figures from our ongoing wars, courtesy of Antiwar.com:

US Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 2,356
Other Military Deaths - Afghanistan: 1,127
There have been 3 casualties in Iraq.

We find this morning's Cost of War passing through:

$1, 588, 508, 250, 000 .00


We'll spend a little time with Clay Hunt to start our day. Most of you know his story by now. Mr. Hunt was a Marine - he served tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He was wounded by a sniper, got a Purple Heart out of it, and was honourably discharged after his service. He became and advocate with our friends at IAVA, and on one spring day in 2011, he killed himself.

In July of this year, legislation was crafted to try to improve the situation for our veterans in their post-service struggles. Naturally named the "Clay Hunt Act", it was written by a Democrat, and managed to attract true bipartisan support as it made its way along the convoluted path towards law.

There, it faced a slow death in the stagnant, dysfunctional atmosphere perpetrated by the GOP. The bill has languished through the end of this Congress, and after some effort it was finally brought to the floor for a vote during the last hours of the lame-duck session.

There it met Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).

Using whatever sad and evil powers he has left, Mr. Coburn blocked the bill. And there it died.



And there it is.

I want war - I can have it.

I want military hardware - I can have it.

I want guns - I can have it.

I want the police to be militarized - I can have it.

I want to come back from serving my country and have some help adjusting back to civilian life? Sorry, that's "throwing money away".