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05/27/2004: "Operation Cool Our Troops"

Yesterday, my Internet connection was down so I started reading John McCain’s new book Why Courage Matters. While I disagree with Senator McCain voting record 99% of the time, he is 100% on the mark with this book and it’s amazing stories of courage.
In talking about 9/11 and the Iraq War he says, “The majority of us will stay at home, going about our business with or without a heightened sense of alertness, keeping the old home fires burning, the economy functioning, and, we hope, our morale up.” This is not a suggestion list of what we civilians might do in wartime; it’s the civilian’s job description during wartime. We have a job to do in this war also and one of our most important duties is supporting our troops.

When you live in Phoenix, you know something about surviving the heat and how debilitating it can be. It's difficult to get outside work done and not wind up with heat exhaustion or heat stroke, when the mercury hovers around 120 degrees and nighttime lows are in the mid 90's. We've learned to adjust our schedules and do our outside work in the coolest part of the day. And when there is no shade left to work in, we hit the pool or air conditioning because it just gets too darn hot. If only it could be that way for our soldiers serving over in the Middle East. Summer is coming once again to them and they don't have the luxury of jumping into the pool instead of making that patrol.

You may not know it but we did lose soldiers last year to heat stroke. Let’s make sure we don’t this year. They have enough obstacles to overcome already. Operation Cool Our Troops is gearing up to send 50,000 more misters to our service men and women to give a little comfort and preventive medicine to them once again. This year the manufacturer of the misters has tooled a special model just for them. Desert camouflage, instead of the usual festive, bright colors that would draw unwanted attention to them. Please check out this site and help these two terrific women keep our troops cool through a donation. If you can’t afford a donation, use their send message to the troops link to say thank you and keep up the good work. (The site has not been updated yet but the bank account numbers to donate to are the ones they are still using.)

(Hat tip to Bruce Jacobs at KFYI for bringing this project some awareness. Until his show yesterday, I didn't know it existed.)