While the veterans community throughout the United States and Florida get ready to hold Memorial Day services and in our own Sarasota County we will dedicate a new national cemetery to honor those who gave the last full measure of devotion, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune decides to run a story on a dysfunctional, dishonorably discharged Iraqi war veteran who is a felon.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune should be ashamed of themselves for publishing "The spoils of Iraq war". It is one thing to be against the war against Radical Islam. It is another thing to, at this haloed time with malice and forethought, present a story of a dysfunctional former soldier who has a bone to pick with our military.

This smacks of the infamous 1971 Winter Soldier Conference in Detroit hosted by Senator John Kerry. The purpose of the conference was not only to discredit the war against communism in Vietnam but to discredit America's soldiers. It was highly successful. At the conference Vietnam veterans were called baby killers, murders of civilians, guilty of war crimes, portrayed as dysfunctional drug users and psychologically damaged because of PTSD.

All of these false accusations have been proved wrong. But the myths persist even to today.

This article is the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's Winter Soldier Conference part two. Here they are trying to paint soldiers who have served honorably as dysfunctional and shamefully use Private Earl Coffey to do so.

We have hundreds of Iraqi veterans in our community who have not stolen money while on active duty, have never been court-martialed, are still serving or were honorably discharged, came back to the United States and began a life working hard, supporting loving families and raising children.

As a Vietnam Veteran, I know how these brave soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who served honorably in Iraq and Afghanistan must feel when they read this story. I felt it in the 1970s.

The anger that wells up and disbelief that any newspaper would want to highlight the dysfunctional over the true heroes. The heroes that they and we left behind in Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, WW II, WWI, the Civil War and the American Revolution.

We will continue to recognize our local Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who gave the last full measure of devotion on Memorial Day, May 26th. We will dedicate our new national cemetery on June 1st. We will recognize those that serve and all veterans as the heroes that they are.

We will continue to support our military, our veterans, their families and their orphaned children.

As Abraham Lincoln said on November 19, 1863 a cold winters day in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania when he dedicated a new national cemetery, "But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow - this ground...It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that theses dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

God Bless our military, our veterans, their families and orphaned children.