NBC Nightly NEWS reports 60,000 kids left alone Parents sent to Iraq

[democrat in Tallahassee]

NBC Nightly NEWS reports 60,000 kids left alone while parents sent to IRAQ because they are in the military.

[TomClash]

1. And what have we gained from this War?

[in_cog_ni_to]

2. How sad.

What happens to the children when they have no immediate family to take care of them when their parents leave to fight this g-dforsaken war? Where do they go?

[DuctapeFatwa]

4. Same place poor kids go when their parents are seized and imprisoned

If they're lucky enough to have relatives willing to take them, they go there. If not, the state warehouses them wherever it chooses until they can be formally subsumed into the criminal justice system.

If they are smart enough to escape that, they go on the street, or with "friends," and fro there, it's anybody's guess. They found one lady's kids starving in an orphanage in Nigeria.

[roguevalley]

3. My niece lived like that a while when she was young, coming home

alone and she only told us recently since becoming thirty. It was hard to hear the fear she still felt about it. I could die for these little kids.

[DemBones DemBones]

5. Did they mean that 60,000 kids have both parents in Iraq?

I grew up in a military family and it was bad enough to have my father sent overseas for long periods of time.

The first time it happened, my mother packed us kids up and took us to live with her parents. After a few months, family relations there were getting strained -- people old enough to be grandparents don't often cope well with three kids, including two toddlers, underfoot -- so we moved again, to live with my dad's mom. That's how I got to go to four different schools in four different cities, three different states in the first grade.

[DELUSIONAL]

10. Parents can come back forever changed

because of the horrors of war. The whole family suffers -- *ushita has no comprehension -- nor does he care.

Mom tells me that when dad was deployed -- we'd spot a sailor in uniform and yell "DADDY". We weren't alone in this response -- a very common story.

How many of the soldiers and their families (with the extended deployment and stop loss) -- believe that their sacrifice for bush is worth it???

[sherilocks]

6. 60,000 kids living in fear that

mom and dad may not come home. How many more kids have one parent over there for this insane war. It wasn't god that told * to go to war, it was the devil made him to do it.

[bigtree]

7. Resources

Marine Corps Community Services One Source
http://www.usmc-mccs.org/MCFTB/OneSource/index.cfm

LIFELines Services Network
http://www.lifelines.usmc.mil/portal/page?_pageid=73,112055&_dad=portal9x&_schema=PORTAL9X

Family advocacy directory with phone#s, and addresses, and program descriptions
http://mfrc.calib.com

National Military Family Association (NMFA)
NMFA is a national organization dedicated to identifying and resolving issues affecting military families.
http://www.nmfa.org/

http://www.cinchouse.com/ An informative and supportive network of women who are "Married to the Military"

Military Children and Youth
http://mfrc.calib.com/MCY/index.htm

Deployment Link - Family Support
http://deploymentlink.osd.mil/deploy/family/family_intro.shtml

Family Support America- Family Resource Information, Education, and a nationwide database of family support programs and networks of family support practitioners across the country.
http://frca.org/

4militaryfamilies.com
http://4militaryfamilies.com/

Woman, Infants, and Children (WIC) Overseas Program
http://www.tricare.osd.mil/wic/default.htm

Army Family Advocacy Program~
http://child.cornell.edu/army/fap.html

Marine Corps Family Advocacy Program
http://child.cornell.edu/capmusmc/index.html

My site:
http://www.returningsoldiers.us/resources.htm

[Spinzonner]

8. Neocon Family Values

not to be confused with Neocons valuing families

[DemBones DemBones]

12. Very well said. What kind of family values

don't value keeping families together? Separating a child from both parents is a terrible, traumatic experience for the child, if not the parents, even if they are reunited eventually.

[peacetalksforall]

9. Children are at the center of all morality.

To make children hunger for basics is a failure of the advancement of man's humanity; man's soul.

[incapsulated]

11. They are destroying families, it's a disgrace

No child should ever be in this position, and they "promised" after the first Gulf War to change the policy. Until they needed more cannon fodder, that is.

And what about fathers and daughters, husbands and wives together in a war zone? It's bad enough to worry about yourself, I can't imagine having to worry about my kid or my husband getting hurt or killed at the same time. One of the most heartbreaking stories I've read about Iraq was when a female soldier, who's job it was to de-detonate mines, was killed while doing so. Her husband was literally down the street when this happened and she died in his arms.

You won't hear these stories on the news.

[DemBones DemBones]

13. No Child Left Behind?

My kicking ass! :kick: