Joni Ernst claims that US troops are ready and willing to fight a new war in Iraq.

Courtesy of Raw Story:  

“I am not ready to put ground troops in, but I think we are coming to a juncture where we will have to make that hard decision,” Ernst argued. 

“How would you tell those military families, again though, when so many have fought, so many have died, how do you say we’re going to go back again?” Karl wondered. 

“We haven’t made that determination yet, we will have to make a decision at some point,” the Iowa Republican replied. “But having served in the Middle East, I see a need at some point. If we don’t get this situation under control, ISIS will continue to spread.” 

“And I think most of our service members understand that, and I think many of them are ready to go back,” she continued. “If that call comes up, they are going to answer that call.”

Yes our troops will answer the call, but they are certainly not "ready to go back."

Some of our soldiers have endured four and five tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, and if they are not suffering from PTSD yet, than they are only one more tour or so from suffering that fate.

Human beings are not designed to live under constant stress and fear of death without risking the loss of their sanity or their humanity.

As for Jodi Ernst she may have received the combat veteran status since she was deployed to a combat zone, but she herself did not experience any actual combat as her job was to run supply convoys not engage in fire fights.

So for her to make a blanket statement concerning what soldiers are, or are not, ready to do is incredibly disingenuous.

If we send our troops back into Iraq to fight an enemy that once again we helped to create, we will be sending possibly dozens if not hundreds more of our people to die on the sands of a foreign land whose people do not want us there, to end a conflict that has literally been going on, in one form or another, for over a thousand years