on this Saturday, Sept. 9, 2006 file picture, U.S. soldiers adjust an American flag over the coffin carrying the body of Staff Sgt. Angel D. Mercado Velazquez, minutes after arriving from Iraq, inside a hangar at Muniz Air National Guard Base, in Carolina, Puerto Rico. The 24-year-old Velazquez had been a squad leader and paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division serving in Yusifiyah, Iraq, where he and two other members of his unit died last week from wounds sustained from mortar fire. Puerto Rico has been under U.S. jurisdiction since 1898, and its people citizens 1917. The island is home to 150,000 military veterans, and three-quarters of its National Guard troops have been deployed overseas since the Sept. 11 attacks. Yet Puerto Ricans can't vote for president, and their representative in Congress can't vote either. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley) I have a personal connection to Puerto Rico, otherwise no particular occasion for this. -- C
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