POW-MIA recovery efforts have fallen by the wayside for too long

To the editor:

When you see an ace of hearts taped face-out in a window or on a door, brass-tacked on a post or a tree, it means an individual nearby is an American with courage and caring enough to respond to the call of duty to protect and defend our U.S. Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic.

Scores of thousands of Montanans, in doing this, gave some and some gave all. Studying the pictures of these aces of hearts in an album on my Facebook page, you will see they ask for nothing except effort by our nation to recover the 1,587 fellow Americans who are still POW-MIA’s. As of Jan. 21, 2020, the obstacles to POW-MIA accounting and recovery include too few intelligence analysts and repeated U.S cancellation of planned operations because of decreased funding.

These actions have sent signals of disinterest to officials in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. If you vote to send me to the U.S. Senate, I will work to increase funding for POW-MIA recovery.

Like those men and women before me, I place our U.S. Constitution above my own well-being, my personal loyalties and my political party. Trust that, as your U.S. Senator, I have the proven capability and mental determination to check and balance our president as the Constitution requires. Republican Abraham Lincoln knew that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.“ If you care enough to keep us together, vote Republican, if only this once, and send me to the Senate.

John Brian Driscoll

Helena