Soldier, Call Home
By Natalie Schultz

All around the country we hear pleas for donations of calling cards to send to our troops so that they can call home during the holidays. That is very nice; sure I’d love to send calling cards to our troops; I want them to be able to call their loved ones.

Hold on a minute. Our troops put their lives on the line everyday for our country, yet they aren’t even given the chance to pick up a phone to call home? Give me a break. I mean, come on now, how much can it cost our government (oh, I mean us – the tax-payers) to let our troops make a phone call? Gee, do you think that when Rumsfeld is visiting our troops that he has to use a phone card to call home? I doubt it; I’m sure that he can go into a nice cushy office somewhere, set up by our troops in the desert, and talk on the phone all he wants.

Give me a break. The military should let every single soldier call home for free during the holidays. Call it a Christmas bonus if you must. But don’t call us philanthropic Americans stupid – we know that the US controls all of the infrastructure in Iraq, including the phone lines. So let them use the phone to call home, and let the fees fly to the wind. Hey, there will even be a nice bonus in it for the military – the morale of the troops will go up.


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