[bvw]

• Civilian employment require you to miss your children growing up for years at a time

  Yes, some jobs do. Ask any Merchant Mariner, or wage-earner assigned overseas.

• How many times have you pulled 24 hours of continuous duty in a war zone while you wife, son or daughter had a birth, birthday or anniversary?

  Get me a crying towel, Marge. Bath size. Hugest we have.

• When was the last time you put on 80 pounds or restrictive protective equipment and worked outside in the 115 degree heat for days on end where people were actively trying to end you life?

  Let's ask any fireman (most are volunteer, btw) shall we? Or any logger, or deep diver, or miner. Or tree trimmer, or mason. YOU TRY DOING A STONE MASON'S JOB IN THE HEAT OF AUGUST, BOYO.

• How many times has someone tried to blow up the vehicle you are driving as a part of your employment?

  That is a hard reality, and it is something all of us need to work on solving and minimizing. But every job carries it's peculiar risks, and some are quite substantial. We work, as individuals and as a society, to solve those problems.

  Many of the improvements to safety and to those IED come out of all of us non-military folks who work in regular jobs inventing and producing them. Thank us!

• Do you work regularly overtime for free ? Weekends, Holidays, National Emergencies?

  You're joking right? You can't be that out of it to realize that an awful lot of folks still holding jobs or who have their own businesses are working very long hours, including weekends and holidays. Most of us are NOT government workers.

No more. I can't take your dang whining.

[MSF BU]

Do you imply that we should pay our naval personnel on par with merchant mariners. What civilian occupation would correspond with somebody deployed with an infantry brigade to Afghanistan? What is the average workday for that profession. When you compare masons to infantryman you simply reveal ignorance of both trades.