"Join The Army? Shuh-yeah..I'm Running For Office, Man..."

Most of the time, I make a conscious effort to resist preaching.

And if, by making my point, preaching seems inevitable, I try to dress it up with some laughs and other distractions, so as not to seem like I'm rubbing anyone's face in my opinion.

Not this time.

(CNN) -- When Iraq war veteran Angela Peacock is in the shower, she sometimes closes her eyes and can't help reliving the day in Baghdad in 2003 that pushed her closer to the edge.

While pulling security detail for an Army convoy stuck in gridlocked traffic, Peacock's vehicle came alongside a van full of Iraqi men who "began shouting that they were going to kill us," she said.

One man in the vehicle was particularly threatening. "I can remember his eyes looking at me," she said. "I put my finger on the trigger and aimed my weapon at the guy, and my driver is screaming at me to stop."

"I was really close to shooting at them, but I didn't."

Now back home in Missouri, Peacock, 30, is unemployed -- squatting without a lease in a tiny house in a North St. Louis County neighborhood.

She points to the Baghdad confrontation as a major contributor to her struggles with drug abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. She says she's one step away from living on the street. See details on vets, including homeless »

Shortly after her discharge in 2004, Peacock said, she developed an addiction to pain pills. After her husband left her, she was evicted from her apartment, which she said made it impossible for her to obtain a lease or a mortgage.

She spent the next few years "couch surfing" from friend to friend, relative to relative. Watch how Los Angeles helps its 15,000 homeless vets »

"I could be kicked out of this house at any time," she said.

Experts say that Peacock's profile is similar to that of many female veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the rate of female homeless vets is increasing in the United States, according to the federal government and groups that advocate for homeless people.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs defines PTSD as a type of anxiety that affects people who've experienced a particularly traumatic event that creates intense fear, helplessness or horror.

"You're sitting on your couch and you hear a car go down the street, and you think it's going to come through your house -- so you kind of catastrophize things automatically," Peacock said. "That's stuff normal people don't do, but if you're in a combat zone on convoys all the time, you can't help but do that."

People in Peacock's life "just don't get it," she said, "so you just isolate."

PTSD can trigger depression, experts say, leading to job loss and a rapid downward spiral toward homelessness. Many times, these newly homeless women also have children to care for, advocates say.

Making matters worse, Peacock and other returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan have been hammered by a struggling economy and skyrocketing unemployment rates.

The jobless rate for post-9/11 veterans is higher than the overall U.S. rate and has nearly doubled in the past year to 11.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In addition, about 1.5 million veterans -- 6.3 percent -- had incomes below the federal poverty line, according to a 2005 congressional analysis of census figures.

With the U.S. Army now at 15 percent female, and more women providing supporting roles in combat zones, female vets are becoming homeless at a faster rate than men, said Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman Pete Dougherty.

Conservative estimates count about 131,000 homeless veterans in the United States, most of them from the Vietnam War era. The VA has pinpointed 3,717 homeless veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, but the nationwide total could be as many as twice that -- about 7,400, he said.

The VA estimates about 10 percent of all homeless veterans are women, making the estimated number of homeless Iraq-Afghanistan female veterans about 740. Dougherty said that number is rising.


Now, check this out:

The current salary (2009) for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $174,000 per year

Congress: Leadership Members' Salary (2009)
Leaders of the House and Senate are paid a higher salary than rank-and-file members.

Senate Leadership
Majority Party Leader - $193,400
Minority Party Leader - $193,400

House Leadership
Speaker of the House - $223,500
Majority Leader - $193,400
Minority Leader - $193,400

A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes effect annually unless Congress votes to not accept it.


Here's the preachy part, short and sweet.

I dont, for a single second, think that throwing money at a problem is the be all and end all solution to that, or any other, problem.

But...

The people who serve this country in the military should NEVER have to worry about money again.

Ever.

Here endeth the sermon.