Sun, Mar 16, 2008 (2 a.m.)

Washington — Stan Stavinski, a board member of the Nevada chapter of the Paralyzed Veterans of America, wheeled himself out of Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley’s office and into the hallway of the Cannon House Office Building.

He seemed to be satisfied after a 15-minute meeting during a busy week of meetings to lobby for increased vets funding on Capitol Hill.

Veterans groups by the hundreds descended on the Hill this month, pressing for $3 billion more in funding than President Bush allocated for fiscal 2009.

They want to reverse new medical fees and higher prescription drug co-pays and reinstate money that was cut from prosthetics research. Younger vets from Iraq and Afghanistan have their sights set on a new GI Bill to make college more affordable for troops returning home.

The one thing the vets will tell you, after walking and wheeling through the corridors, is that the war has made their job a lot easier.

“We have more than anecdotal proof that there are vets in need,” said Raymond Kelley, legislative director for AMVETS, a co-developer of The Independent Budget, a version of the budget needed at Veterans Affairs produced each year by a collection of vets service organizations.

War has ebbed and flowed as the top issue on Americans’ minds since the campaign in Iraq got under way five years ago this week.

Most of us watched the shock-and-awe mission light up the Baghdad sky, then we sometimes tuned out as the rebuilding got under way; we watched again as the insurgency spread, then channel-flipped.

After last year’s troop surge, Americans began shifting their focus closer to home, as neighborhoods started getting boarded up by the foreclosure crisis.

But last week Bush reminded us that the war continues, and may do so for some time to come.

Bush has never easily swayed from his Iraq policy, and reminded listeners at a speech in Tennessee that he is not likely to do so now.

Neither politics nor presidential campaigns will turn him from his commitment to succeed in the war that will become his legacy.

“As a return on our success,” he told the audience of religious broadcasters, resurrecting a key phrase from his 2007 State of the Union speech, “as we get more successful, troops are able to come home.”

A few lines later the transcript makes a note about what happened next. It reads: “(Applause).”

Later that day it was announced that Adm. William Fallon, the head of Central Command, which oversees the military region that includes Iraq, would be stepping down next month. Reports said Fallon had veered off-point from official policy on Iran, as expressed in a magazine interview, and that even though the admiral denied he was at odds with the Bush administration, he thought the comments had become a distraction.

But Fallon’s departure will come just as the top commander in Baghdad, Army Gen. David Petraeus, returns to Capitol Hill in April to discuss next steps in the war.

Americans still overwhelmingly want the troops to come home, but Petraeus and the Pentagon have indicated an interest in pausing the drawdown once the surge forces are out this summer.

An East Coast transplant, Stavinski is a Korean War vet who explains, as he probably did multiple times on his trip to Washington, that his paralysis is not combat-related but stems from a childhood illness.

He supports the war and believes the troops are stopping al-Qaida from coming back to the United States “and doing something.”

At 73, he is retired now, and spends his free time at the Las Vegas card tables, low-end stuff, a little blackjack, and confesses, “I’m a good poker player.”

“We’re trying to take care of the vets coming home from Iraq,” he explained to Berkley, who knows the issues well, having served on the veterans committee for years.

“That’s why we’re trying to up the budget. Figure there’s going to be a lot of money going for them.”