Free calls home to end for soldiers

[Contrary1]

Jim Robertson posed for an unsual birthday photo Thursday. He wrapped his arm around the television in the His youngest son the Marine was on the tube - grinning live from the frontlines in Iraq. It was a birthday party across the miles.

"It's great to see y'all," said Cpl Jason Robertson, a Gwinnett County cop, from his camp in Fallujah. "It's great to see the house. I feel like I'm in the room."

<snip>

Thursday's birthday call home may be the last one the Freedom Call Foundation can cover, however. Officials with the national charity have Officials with the national charity have announced that they have run out of money to cover the expenses associated with the calls. The Morristown, N.J.-based charity has been providing the service for military families for free since 2004.

"We do about 2,000 of these a month," said John Harlow, executive director and founder of Freedom Calls. The calls can get very expensive, Harlow said. "We have to maintain these satellite links which costs tens of thousands of dollars a month."

More: http://www.ajc.com/gwinnett/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/2007/07/12/birthday_0713.html

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

1. Support The Troops....Put A Yellow Ribbon Sticker On Your SUV. nt

[alfredo]

2. That really sucks, the money for those stickers goes to china.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KmsOIjzQ1V8

[napi21]

3. That's sad. I wonder if they could get some free pubicity on CNN,

MSNBC, even the local news to get some donations? I live just outside of Atlanta, this was in the Atlanta paper, but I never heard of it before this article.

[peacetalksforall]

4. Well, I'm all teared up - how really sad - our taxpayers money is

stolen by our leaders - our leaders made secret deals with the telephone companies to pay for the companies to steal our privacy - the taxpayers paid for the satellites - and we can't get our leaders to pay for this. For all we know, satellite calls will soon be privatized so some friend of Cheney can make some money. All the inequities - the cost of calls should not have to be carried by a charitable assn - it should be the least we can spend taxpayer money on.

[Az]

5. Its not about money

Not this time anyway. Its about the fact that kids are calling home and telling people it sucks over there. Can't have them spoiling their pretty little war.

[Swamp Rat]

6. They don't want their families to know what is happening to their children.

Bastards!