Patrick Kennedy: “As the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon) mentioned, there are over 100,000 veterans living in my State of Rhode Island…”

“As the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Cannon) mentioned, there are over 100,000 veterans living in my State of Rhode Island; and we are proud to support a few veterans from World War I and almost 40,000 from World War II. Rhode Island has close to 30,000 from Vietnam and roughly 20,000 from the Korean War. And more recently, Rhode Island is home to 4,000 veterans from the Persian Gulf War. Just a few weeks ago, 300 soldiers from Rhode Island's Military Police returned from Iraq. These men and women come from different backgrounds and they live in different cities and towns and many of them are still working and also many of them are retired. But the one thing that they have in common is they have fought for this country to preserve the freedom of our Nation. They have all put their lives on the line in the name of democracy, and if they were not standing post in the front lines, they signed up and they could well have been put on the front lines. So all veterans, whether serving stateside or overseas, deserve our recognition.”