Veterans do just fine. If you can survive the training and the deployments, civilian life is a piece of cake. The only things that gall me as a veteran are the portrayals of vets as losers in need of nanny-state mother-love care. If you read "We Were Soldiers" or "Band of Brothers" or "A Bridge Too Far" or "Blackhawk Down" or any other history of past wars, go to the back to the "where are they now" section. You will find that 95-99 percent of the veterans went on to successful meaningful and productive lives. It's a much higher percentage than the civilian world.

If the world deals me a bad hand, I'm not freezing in the sub zero cold on the DMZ or sweltering in the desert heat. I've had worse. I'll bounce back.

When a certain politician who was booted out of the service and had to get his discharge upgraded later, who nearly flunked out of college, who never held a real job, and who owes his wealth to trading up on rich widows basically said we're all stupid, I have to laugh. We have the best educated, best trained, and most dedicated service members in the world. If we replaced congress with the least smart and worst educated active duty military folks of today, we'd more than double the IQ average and education level on Capitol Hill. My GPA was twice this politician's and my SAT score was a good 200 points higher. And I earn my own living - no sugar momma needed.

Of my Dad's generation, I didn't know anyone who WASN'T a vet. Even my Mother served in the Navy in the Fleet Post Office to "free a man to fight." Today where I work, me and my boss are the only two vets in the company.

We do just fine. If you have a kid that's screwing up or doesn't appreciate what he has going for him, there is always a friendly Sergeant with a round hat ready to straighten him out and set him on the path to future success.