I wish I had the short memory to forget the way returning veterans were treated after Vietnam. I wish I didn’t have to remember how soldier’s pay was made paltry, how living conditions were dreary beyond anything the Washington Post discovered recently.

I wish I could afford the confidence in the government to treat the military like they deserve, but unfortunately I lived through the post-Vietnam Era as a soldier, and I remember how Democrats treated me and my family - and then issued us colorful bedspreads to make up for it all.

I remember how any sleight to the fighting forces just preceded more and deeper cuts - in budgets and treatment. I don’t enjoy the luxury of brushing small carelessly worded statements aside because my memory is one of the few things that still work on this old body.

The report that the FBI issued last year at least had the decency to call the chance that veterans would join terrorist organizations “minuscule”. This administration sees no need to assuage the feelings and fears of veterans - their attempt to make the troops pay for their own service-connected treatment should have been evidence enough for a rational person.

The DHS report mentioned McVeigh and Napolitano brought up his military experience on Fox News yesterday - even though nothing McVeigh did in Oklahoma City had anything to do with McVeigh’s military job training. I was in his division and I never learned how to build a bomb. The fact that they even mentioned McVeigh is evidence that they’re out to smear veterans and set us against the police in some perverse remake of the first Rambo movie.

Yes, Charles, there is a possibility that the FBI and DHS have cause to be alarmed about veterans, but, there’s also a possibility that veterans have cause to be alarmed about the FBI and DHS.