America's veterans deserve much better than being used for political football - or for financial profit.
But in this silly season of campaigning, they have not only been used, but also abused.
Earlier this week, news reports exposed that the Wounded Warrior Project, the country's largest and fastest-growing veterans charity, raked off about 40 percent of donations in 2014 - or about $124 million - for executive salaries and other "overhead," according to philanthropic watchdog groups such as Charity Navigator.
By comparison, the Semper Fi Fund, another wounded-veterans group, spent just 8 percent of its donations on overhead. As a result, some have criticized the Wounded Warrior Project for spending too heavily on itself.
Wounded Warrior, according to The New York Times, spent $34 million on fund-raising in 2014 alone, and another $7.5 million on travel. The expenses ratcheted up after the group's 2003 founder, Marine veteran John Melia, was pushed out in 2009 by a non-veteran he hired to help raise money and broaden the group's programs. That fund-raiser, Steven Nardizzi, is now the group's chief executive, and he was given $473,000 in compensation in 2014.
"People could spend money on the most ridiculous thing and no one batted an eye," said Connie Chapman, who was in charge of the charity's Seattle office for two years. "I would fly to New York for less than a day to report to my supervisor," she was quoted as saying in the New York paper.
Nardizzi fired Chapman, an Iraq veteran with PTSD, in 2012 as part of a "management restructuring," she said.
On Wednesday, veterans took a slam again when the GOP's most petty presidential candidate said he would take his ball to another playground rather than answer debate stage questions from a very bright reporter, Megyn Kelly of Fox News.
He called her a "bimbo" and he called Fox News "childish," (look who's talking), then announced that since Fox wouldn't bow to his demand of removing her as a moderator, he would boycott the debate and instead hold a competing event to benefit veterans, giving "100% of the proceeds" to veterans and the Wounded Warriors.
This is from the guy who doesn't think Sen. John McCain, a former prisoner of war, is a war hero.
But veterans understand the difference between being used and being respected.
Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, tweeted that his group would decline such a donation.
"We need strong policies from candidates, not to be used for political stunts," Rieckhoff wrote.
On Thursday, he was tweeting again, this time at Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose super PAC offered to donate $1.5 million to veterans if the world's pettiest politician would accept a one-on-one debate challenge with Cruz.
"Now it's Cruz yanking vets into the nastiness of the presidential fights before Iowa. This is not what vets need," Rieckhoff wrote.
The Wounded Warrior Project told CNN it was not aware of candidates' fundraising on its behalf.
And VoteVets.org issued a statement titled: "Don't hide from Megyn Kelly behind us."
This morning, the GOP debate and any other one-night-stand political grandstanding will be over. All of yesterday's candidate whining will be history.
But our veterans won't be history. They will still have real needs, and real feelings.
Bypass the politics, and remember veterans with your own ways of helping.