So now their quarterbacks are a rookie with a painful injury and two veterans new to the team.

Many new veterans say they are often left waiting for months or years, wondering if they will be taken care of.

They also built a new veterans' center on the Navajo reservation.

President Bush's bellicose approach to world politics has generated thousands of new veterans in need of medical care.

Army officials admit that they have no way to gauge yet how these new veterans and their families will cope with life after Iraq.

Some of the new veterans' groups are openly political and show an aggressive intention to do something.

But new veterans typically want to get deeply lost again in civilian life, not organize and beg for their rights.

"Our main purpose now is to fight those who would make war, so that perhaps in 20 years, we will not meet new veterans."

He noted plans for new veterans' hospitals and cemeteries.

His generation had faced difficulties after Vietnam with the oil embargo, he said, but for these new veterans it was different.