O ver the last few years, we as a nation have been asked time and again to remain silent in criticizing the Iraq war so that we may "support our troops." We have been asked to endure many things so that the nation could prevail. Many of our service men and women have given their all to accomplish their mission. What does it say about our government's appreciation of those efforts when we refuse them the very best that we have to offer when they need it?

It's time that Americans stop being asked what they can do for their country and start asking what their country is doing to them. In particular, to those who are held up as ones who are willing to give their all to protect the many freedoms that we all enjoy.

On January 31, CBS broadcasted a story focusing on the life and untimely death of Marine Sergeant Carmelo Rodriguez III.

The reason Sgt. Rodriguez contacted the network was that he was dying — not from a wound he received in battle, but from a tragic case of medical malpractice. In the footage shown on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, a powerful, handsome man turns into a heartbreaking, skeletal creature who died within minutes of the news crew arriving to speak with him and his family.

Rodriguez, an Ellenville High School graduate as well as an aspiring artist and actor, was also a father, friend and Marine. After graduating from EHS in 1997, Sgt. Rodriguez attended SUNY Cobleskill for a time before financial concerns took him to the military.

When he was admitted to the Marines, the doctor who oversaw his physical made a notation regarding the discovery of a melanoma but no follow up action was ever taken. Eight years passed until, in 2005, another military doctor told Sgt. Rodriguez that he had a "wart" and that he should follow up in five months after he left the service. When Rodriguez went to a civilian doctor, he was given a death sentence for a diagnosis — Stage III melanoma.

Over the next 18 months, Rodriguez underwent chemotherapy as he tried to carry on a normal life by returning to school, helping raise his son and being a part of the lives of his friends and family. In addition to that, he began contacting government officials and advocating for service men and women like himself who have been the victims of medical malpractice.

Sgt. Carmelo Rodriguez III is dead at 29 because he trusted the answers that the United States Military's medical personnel gave him about his health. And now Sgt. Rodriguez's son must grow up without a father and his family has no hope for restitution for his death because a law on the books says that military personnel and their families cannot sue military doctors for malpractice.

It is not the people that need to stand behind their government but their government that needs to stand behind its people.

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