Yeah, Right, Whatever

Many of you may remember my Letters To The Troops campaign.

I had the opportunity to ensure that the letters I received were personally hand carried to the troops in Iraq.

In the end more than 30 bloggers participated and more than 320 letters were received.

I know we can do better.

A close personal friend of mine is on his way to Iraq. He is replacing another person who was injured in a mortar attack recently.

This friend and I go way back. We attended Basic Military Training (Boot Camp) together at Lackland AFB, TX. We then went on to attend the Security Police Academy together. We went further still and attended Air Base Defense School Level 1 together as well. We have been deployed to various locations at the same time and have occasionally run into one another at various Air Force Training venues. While time and distance have come between us we still manage to stay in contact.

Now he is being called up to once again head off to the conflict in Iraq. He is tentatively scheduled to depart on 24 December. That's right he will leave for the litter box the night before Christmas. His departure on Christmas eve will be only 4.5 weeks after the birth of his fourth child.

He is a frequent reader of my site so this effort will not be a surprise like it was during the first campaign. He saw what we accomplished before and has challenged me to do it again. He is eager to be able to deliver hundreds of letters of support to the troops on the ground!

He is willing to hand carry any letters that I can generate and print to Tallil, Iraq and he will make every effort to forward them on from there.

So here is what we need to do. Bloggers, I urge each and every one of you to write your own letter to the troops overseas. Make it a general open letter to any Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine. Keep in mind that the people reading this letters will be both male and female of all ages, ethnic origins and religions. Once your letter is posted, please trackback to this post so that I may find and print your letter. Please direct your readers to this effort as well. Non-bloggers, please leave your open letter of support in the comment section of this post. While it is possible for you to email me your letters, I'd like to see them in the comments so that troops overseas can access and read them online.

Our deadline for this endeavor will be the 17th of December. That will give me the time necessary to print all of the letters and have them ready to go. I will also be printing a sheet with the URL's of all bloggers who participate.

Please forward the link to this post to as many people as you can, both Bloggers and non-bloggers.