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The Saratoga-Wilton Elks Lodge 161 is refusing to allow the local Veterans for Peace chapter to march in the Saratoga Springs Flag Day parade if they carry the organization's flag or wear VFP T-shirts ("Vets for Peace say the flag is theirs, too," June 5.) They can march, incognito, under flags of other veterans organizations, such as Veterans of Foreign Wars or the American Legion.
It seems to me that parade organizer Kenneth Tubbs regards the American Legion and VFW as bonafide patriotic organizations because both gave their unquestioning support to former President George W. Bush's misbegotten wars.The war in Iraq is in its seventh year; the war in Afghanistan is in its ninth. According to the National Priorities Project, U.S. taxpayers have spent more than $1 trillion on these wars. A May 29 posting on the Veterans for Common Sense website listed 90,955 documented U.S. troop casualties -- 4,378 troops died, 37,280 were wounded in action and 48,272 were medically evacuated because of injury or disease. The number of U.S. servicemen and women killed in Afghanistan doubled in the first quarter of 2010, and U.S. casualties are expected to soar because of President Barack Obama's troop surge. Meanwhile Congress is preparing to waste another $37 billion -- and yet to be tallied lives -- on a deadly exercise in futility. Veterans for Peace had the gall to question the necessity of both wars, which puts them in league with retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, retired Lt. Gen. William Odom, and retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of the Central Command, who also spoke out against the Iraq War. It seems to me that's why Kenneth Tubbs doesn't want VFP raining on his supposedly patriotic parade. Walter F. Wouk Cobleskill walter.wouk@gmail.com The writer is a Vietnam veteran and director of the Thomas Paine Project.
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