Cartoons & realities.

Having just finished reading "Comic Strip Calls Attention to Plight of Disabled Veterans" in the November/ December issue of DAV Magazine, I would like for you to know that I do not share your praise of the Doonesbury comic strip or Garry Trudeau. I do not agree with Garry Trudeau's overall political platform. I have been a life member of DAV for many years, and have read every issue of the magazine. I am appalled that you would devote a full page article and cover of a facet of such a controversial comic strip and person in an otherwise magnificent magazine as DAV. Bob Grimes, U.S. Army Disabled Veteran

The wounds our forces in Iraq suffered were more terrible than usual in November due to the fierce fighting that month, the month the Doonesbury cartoon character, B.D., appeared on the cover of DAV Magazine. In taking Fallujah and other terrorist hotbeds back from insurgents, our soldiers and Marines ran into a lot of close-range explosions that tore off arms and legs, forever deprived them of sight and hearing, and caused other devastating disabilities.

As the fighting raged, journalists counted the dead on both sides, but very few spoke of the severely injured who were patched up in field hospitals and flown to military hospitals in Germany and the States. This silence does not serve our youngest disabled veterans well. It serves none of our disabled veterans well. Our nation is in the middle of an excessively brutal war, yet the only veterans issue that seemed to matter in last year's election was the behavior of the candidates during a war that occurred three and a half decades ago. This was appalling.

I thank Garry Trudeau for a serious and sustained attempt to bring the American people back to their senses, trying to help them to realize the terrific cost that's being paid every day by the men and women of our armed forces. When we see his character, B.D., in Doonesbury, the term "disabled veteran" is no longer just another generic phrase. Those words take on the reality and humanity of American heroes-tomorrow's veterans--in Iraq and Afghanistan. Tom Keller Past Department Commander, Ohio