There is no secret about it, our soldiers are not treated with the dignity they deserve. The shoddy treatment includes deployment extensions and stop-loss orders that add both length to and uncertainty in dwell times. Extensions and stop-loss are tools that the Administration chose for executing Bush’s Big Military Adventure.
Sober planning for the war and, especially, the post-war period should have dictated a national sacrifice: taxes to fund the war (and the right equipment), a draft to put the required number of boots on the ground, and a concerted effort to fund and provide quality services to our newest veterans. But Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld tried to do it on the cheap, and our soldiers and veterans shoulder the burden.
The Walter Reed tragedy provided gut-wrenching documentation of the disgraceful treatment our veterans received under the “stewardship” of the Bush administration. But for every Walter Reed story, there are numerous other outrageous stories of veterans and soldiers denied the basic medical and (especially) mental health services they need.
This afternoon I attended a meeting of the Veterans and Military Families Caucus at the Democratic National Convention. There were two panels comprised largely of veterans: Major general Scott Gration USAF (Ret.), Colonel Dick Klass USAF (Ret), Command Sergeant Major Michelle Jones USAR (Ret), Lieutenant Colonel John Medve USA (Ret), Sergeant Major John Estrada USMC (Ret), among others.
The mood in the room was not one of anger (say, the the kind of anger you get from bloggers like me who are outraged over the fraud perpetuated on our country by the Bush administration). There were no “swift boat” attacks on McCain from the panel. Rather, the mood was one of disappointment, hope for the future, and determination.
McCain’s record on military and veterans issues was vetted by the panel, not in anger but in disappointment. The bottom line was summed up by one panelist: “McCain doesn’t listen.” A man who should be in a position to offer leadership on military and veterans issues has been AWOL far too often. A high-profile example is last year’s Webb amendment that required periods of rest and recovery between deployments. McCain voted against the amendment. Another example…in May of 2006, McCain voted against a bill that provided an additional $20 million for medical facilities for veterans. Veterans and their families noticed these votes with disapproval and disappointment.
Much of the panel discussions were about the positive things Obama would do for soldiers, their families and veterans. Folks were quick to note that the very first committee Obama joined as a freshman Senator was the Veterans Affairs Committee. Likewise there was grateful acknowledgment and praise for Michelle Obama’s genuine interest in the families of soldiers (and these folks seemed to make up a large proportion of the audience). Barack and Michelle have listened to soldiers, their families, and vets. (If you want more information on Barack Obama’s positions on the military issues, BTW, check out his recent interview with Stars and Stripes.)
I’ve dropped in on a few of these meetings over the last two days. This one was different, and I found it personally very compelling and even, dare I say, emotional. The Veterans and Military Families Caucus meeting transcended “politics as usual.” It was an authentic dialog among people deeply concerned about America and her warriors. They expressed a genuine hope in an Obama presidency—hope for change that we owe to veterans, soliders, and their families after eight years of recklessness and abuse.
Great post. “Doing it on the cheap” was a deliberate strategic and political calculation on the part of Rumsfeld/Cheney.
Iraq was their test case for a future of never-ending war to impose unassailable American hegemony on the whole world. The “axis of evil” was their war agenda.
The number of warriors deployed in Iraq/Afghanistan was deliberately kept somewhat low to forestall American unrest. As long as the American people are kept busy consuming, watching sports and the media is broadcasting the Administration line the Bushies could do what they want – lavishly spending billions rewarding their campaign contributors with no-bid contracts.
So the Bushies and their friends have cashed in and the warriors have paid the price with their involuntary servitude resulting in financial ruin, physical infirmity and a runaway epidemic of suicide. And this is but a part of the ugly Bush legacy.
We Dems cannot neglect their sacrifice as the Vietnam vets were neglected. We have to do what Dems have often done – clean up the mess left by the Republicans and NEVER let the people forget the crimes of the Bush regime and their Republican/Bush Dog enablers.
I have a question. Who here believes the saying “War is Terrorism?” You’ve probably seen that statement on the back of some white liberal’s car. Anyway, if you believe that statement is true, then mustn’t you also believe that soldiers are at least as bad as terrorists, if not worse?
That reminds me, Roger Rabbit, you still have not answered my question. You once said that war is WORSE than terrorism. So do you then believe the Darcy Burner’s brother, who is still currently, I believe, a US soldier who has done an Iraq tour, is worse than a terrorist?
And don’t give me that “soldiers just follow orders” crap. Is Darcy Burner’s brother worse than a terrorist? Yes or no?
Amen, Darryl, amen.
The Bushites have completely wrecked the government’s ability to have a positive influence in the world. Sometimes you need the carrot, sometimes you need the stick. Both are now broken.
Positive for whom?
Have a military draft to increase the size of the army for more imperial adventures? No. Bad idea.
Ignoring republican plant TROLL who really, really wants to change the subject here because his guy McSame is SOOOOOO wrong on this issue, I’d like to add that I checked, and McSame voted against the last 10 – count em 10 bills that would have helped vets.
But then again, the asshole made 30 propaganda videos for the VC during his time in prison, ignoring Article V of the Code of Conduct.
While GW Bush was an AWOL draft dodger, McSame is just as bad because he’s ignored and abandoned the vets. This is a pattern in the man’s life. He abandonded his disfigured wife when he came back from Nam so he could cheat on her with SIN dee. He abandoned his constituents when he got involved with Keating Five. He abandoned America when he got in bed with the energy lobby.
He’s worthless – like all republicans.
Let’s get something clear right up front: John McCain was a kid with a silver spoon in his mouth whose way through the military was greased and smoothed over at every step. His grandfather and father were both famous admirals, and anyone who thinks he got the same treatment as everyone else is dreaming. And anyone who believes McCain, from his privileged pedestal, acquired any concept of what military service is like for Average G.I. Joe has been smoking dope.
Unfortunately, we live in a country where political power comes with a price tag that only the ultra-wealthy can afford. Nearly every member of Congress is a millionaire. Hardly any of our leaders have ever had to work for a living or balance a budget. And damned few of them have ever spent any time in the military or VA hospital wards that exist for ordinary troops — the non-VIP wards.
I’m not saying we should necessarily elect a waitress, truck driver, or Army corporal to our highest political job. (Germany experimented with the corporal bit, with disastrous results.) The presidency is not an entry-level position. But a guy worth $100 million, a son of admirals, can’t possibly understand what it’s like to be an ordinary joe carrying the burdens of the 100-year-war that McCain wishes to inflict on our nation.
The primary criterion for selecting our next president ought to be ability to do the job. When you look at McCain’s military career, all you see is cotton candy. He clearly was an affirmative action candidate in the Naval Academy — a party boy who got in with family pull, did not apply himself to his studies, who ended up almost dead last academically in his class of nearly 900 cadets. For most people, the service academies are the opportunity of a lifetime; for McCain, it was merely an extension of junior high school, something less than a community college.
From graduation to exit from military service, all you see is a perpetual fuckup. A guy who wasn’t serious and didn’t try very hard. A guy who screwed up everything he did, and whom no command wanted. After coming home from Vietnam, he was assigned to political duties because he was considered unfit for command and untrainable for anything else. He left the Navy because he not only had no upward ladder, he didn’t even have a sideways path. And he then did what people who have money but nothing else going for them do … he went into Republican politics.
Republicans approach politics very differently from Democrats. People who go into Democratic politics are trying to change the world, or at least our country, to make it better for the ordinary everyday folks who have to work hard every day merely to achieve the most modest of goals: Supporting themselves and their families. Republicans approach politics like they approach elite colleges and military or Wall Street careers: To them it’s a fucking frat house party, a sinecure, a nice title and nameplate on the door that comes with no responsibilities or obligations.
Why would anyone vote for John McCain? Or, for that matter, any Republican?
Flight Delays: Another Made-In-GOP Fiasco
Yesterday, hundreds of east coast airline flights were cancelled or delayed due to the breakdown of a critical FAA computer system.
The FAA’s problems have been endemic for years, and they relate mostly to money. This isn’t about taxes or budget deficits. The FAA is funded by dedicated monies that come from airport fees, ticket surcharges, and other user fees. For years, if not decades, Republicans have refused to release funds that have piled up in the FAA account to pay for improvements to the air traffic management system. They have willfully allowed that system to crumble.
The result has been striking. Under the Bush administration, taxiway incidents, airborne near-misses, and air traffic control meltdowns have soared. Oversight of airlines has collapsed and the quality of aircraft maintenance has degraded into scandal territory, where airlines neglect essential maintenance, and aircraft maintenance supervisors routinely falsify mechanical and maintenance records.
Much more is wrong with flying today than looting of passenger luggage. The bottom line is that flying is far more dangerous now than when Clinton was president.
This is intentional. Conservatives don’t build anything. They’re destroyers. They are hell-bent on dismantling our civilization, not one stick at a time, but by blowing up the whole thing as fast as possible. They want a world in which a few people (themselves) live in mansions and everyone else lives in caves. They are nostalgic for the 1400s.
These fuckers have to be stopped. By any means at our disposal. There is no place in American politics anymore for politeness. They are an existential threat to our civilized way of life. They don’t play nice, so we can’t afford to. Conservatives must be defeated and then they must be quarantined. We, not they, should be building detention facilities. As fast as we can.*
* Hey, just kidding! Got ya going, didn’t I? Well, that good ol’ wingnut humor always stirs the pot and gets your blood circulating at 7 am, doesn’t it? har har har har
Although downplayed by the domestic GOP-lackey media, one of the more significant stories coming out of Iraq these days is the Iraqi government’s insistence that foreign contractors be made subject to Iraqi laws. It seems the Iraqis are fed up with U.S.-paid mercenaries murdering their women and children.
There are at least 7 different legal systems that potentially apply to civilian contractors in Iraq. When they shoot Iraqis in a drunken stupor, it takes a battery of law firms just to figure out who’s responsible for prosecuting them, and the usual result is that no one does.
If a foreign country sent their soldiers into Seattle, and those foreign soldiers were given immunity from our laws and a free hand to randomly arrest, tortur, and shoot our citizens, and none of them were ever prosecuted or held acountable … I’d be out there setting roadside bombs and sniping at them, and killing them by every other means possible, as fast as I could. And I would be called a “patriot.” Hey, I’m not suggesting there’s any parallel between this hypothetical scenario and the unprovoked U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. I’m merely describing universal human behavior. I’m a reporter, not an advocate. You can fill in the blanks however you like.
From the conservative British news magazine The Economist:
“The American federal agency that monitors progress in rebuilding Iraq recently gave warning to Congress that proposed changes in Iraqi law could provoke an exodus of private contractors ….
” … Iraq’s government [proposes] to end the contractors’ immunity from prosecution in Iraqi courts … at the end of this year.
” … At least seven different legal regimes govern private security companies in Iraq. … Their apparent immunity was first guaranteed by an order of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American-led body that ran Iraq after the invasion of 2003 but which was abolished a year later. … Contractors working directly for the Pentagon fall under … the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, whereas those serving with American troops may be prosecuted under … the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But a strong American distaste for trying civilians under military law has led to only one indictment.
” … American prosecutors are loth to wade into such murky legal waters. Some Iraqis who were apparently mistreated in the American-run prison of Abu Ghraib have given up trying to seek redress through the criminal law and have instead lodged a civil suit in American courts ….
” … [T]he law has been only part of the issue. The other is the political will to carry it out. If they had wanted, American prosecutors could have used the existing laws far more energetically to enforce justice when contractors have behaved badly. As a result, if Iraqi courts are faced with another scandal … they may tilt the other way and prosecute more aggressively ….
” … In any event, … the question of the contractors’ legal status will probably be left to the next American president. Whoever it is will have to make things a lot clearer.”
(Quoted under fair use.)
Roger Rabbit Commentary: It’s probably unfair to accuse the inept Bush administration of neglecting prosecution of criminal behavior by civilian contractors in Iraq. It’s undoubtedly more accurate to say this legal vacuum is intentional and the Busheviks have deliberately protected their mercenaries from prosecution for behavior amounting to war crimes.
After all the shit conservatives have pulled in the last 8 years, I’m amazed the conservative trolls have the cajones to show their faces on this board. Even the Nazis had enough sense to flee when their regime collapsed.
Journalism is no longer practiced in America. The commercial media reports nothing. Their sole product is propaganda disguised as punditry. That’s why the newspapers and TV networks are dying.
Funny how a self-described partisan hack and propagandist like me ends up reporting the news because the media won’t, isn’t it?
Roger Rabbit has posted 66.6% of the comments in this thread. If you don’t like it, stuff a donkey dick up your ass.
Claire McCaskill on the first night of the convention (from Media Matters):
re 2: I’m sure this discussion would take on a wholly different cast if you were an Afghan peasant whose village had just been accidentally hit by a US daisy cutter.
Go back to trade school and leave the thinking to the grownups.
re 2: I made the trade school comment on purpose so you could fulminate about my ‘elitism’.
Seriously, though, a plumbing apprenticeship is there for the asking for anyone with a strong back who wants to be a millionnaire.
Remember, Troll, a strong back is also a terrible thing to waste.
Roger
THIS IS THE HUGE ISSUE ABOUT OBAMA THAT IS BEING MISSED!
In an era were it is increasingly hard for those who did not come form privilidge, an era that would gladden the ehart od Disraeili, here is aguy who worked his way through the system and is now competing for the Presidency.
Of course Barack is not alone in this. Clinton I, Jiummy Carter, LBJ, Reagan and Nixon all come to minds as remnders of the American Dream and of the caveat that being “from the people” does not mean a President will rule as beibg of the people.
Still, it seems to me to be difficult not to see that Obama has a unique (at least in recenbt history) connection to the working classes. His acclaim and wealth are all recent acquistions. WADR to other candydates, how many poor people are first name friends of Hillary, McCain, Edwards, Romney? I am certian that Barack has been invited to homes where the cuisine is greens and han hocks .. no doubt the others have eaten this too but in their cases the food was exotic.
All this in a guy who is “clean and articulate!”
Roger
is that the only choice?
Darryl
Great Post. Wouldn’t it be something to have a President who does not think the soldiers are manufactured in some Peasants Inc factory?
My skin crawls when I see Bozo the prexy greeting his troops.
@21 In my humble opinion, you have the best screen name here at HA. Of course, I might just be a wee bit biased.
Bozo greeting his troops. My skin crawls with that one as well.
I am NOT a McCain hater. I like him. BUT, can anyone tell me what party he will lead if he IS elected?
Does anyone really imagine Gingrich is NOT going to try to control the Rep Party?
Rasmussen have the candidates tied in their daily poll.
Sooner or later there has to be a convention bounce, at least that’s what history says. Except, history says a candidate gets a bounce from announcing their veep pick, obama didn’t get one from picking biden. Hell, bush even got a 3 point bounce with cheney.
It’s not looking good for the “black boy.”
@24 “black boy”
Not bigoted much, are you?
I read the this article by Darryl and then the article he linked to at Stars and Stripes. I’m thinking this is powerful stuff. We on the left have known that the vets have been mistreated for years by the Reich. But now the vets themselves are waking up to this.
So what does the troll have to say to defend the indefensible? Like usual, he changes the subject. Of course, what else could he do? Patiently explain to us how wonderfully well this administration has treated our soldiers? Yeah, right.
FiveThirtyEight says its not looking good for Marvin Stamn. Electorial college 58% to 42% Obama’s favor.
Marvin Stamm dreams about sucking elephant dick then taking it up the ass every night.
What will Marvin Stamn do when Obama becomes President?
Thanks steve for biting on the bait. I knew I could count on you.
At least we both agree that referring to obama as “black boy” is racist.
Sorry, I was only quoting (did you notice the quote marks) the words of jimmy carter.
http://blog.eyeblast.tv/?p=61
Let’s see how you spin this now steve. After all, you have a veep pick that was amazed, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it up, that a african american could be clean.
D,
I’ve posted this before.
Vets favor McCain and the GOP.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/109.....cCain.aspx
For those interested Rasmussen is a republican poll – no more authentic than Faux News or Marvin the child rapist from California.
The only poll that matters is the one where Americans go to vote for real in November. While Democrats are ahead in all legit polls, it doesn’t matter.
And of course McSame is expected to get the usual 30 point “GOP” bounce so no doubt Marvin the child rapist will tell us all about those (unless McSame doesn’t get the bounce!)
But where will child rapist Marvin be the day after we take back the White House? My guess is he’ll be alongside most of the other right wing cowards, hiding!
@31,
But does McSame and the GoPeePee favor the vets? The record says not. Vets are waking up to this fact. Witness the Stars and Stripes article.
re 25: Marvin’s not a racist. He used to toot his horn years ago for Gladys Knight and her Pips.
Darryl, could you have taken that photo from any further away? Jeezus.
@ Stuffy 31: And I’ve posted this before…
You’re back at using your fake-Republican, Soviet-style Politburo propaganda techniques…
The poll indicates that they surveyed more vets who vote blindly for the “Republican”, regardless of whether it’s Reagan or Stalin.
Read… to… the… end… of… the… sentence.
What that means Stuffy, is that Johnny plays well with “Republicans”. See? Now go play.
…And, of course, there is that earlier Gallup poll showing:
Military abroad favoring Obama, money-wise
See: http://www.boston.com/news/pol.....broad.html
If you want the truth about the so-called “war hero.”
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/
RR, you’re a coward for not answering my question. I know you think her brother is a as bad as a terrorist, but you’re afraid of offending her, and alienating the people here who respect her.
You’re a gutless coward for being afraid to say what you really believe on this issue.
Wow RR I bet you’re crushed that a mental midget and known liar like the foolish TROLL called you a coward. Of course getting called names by a known-liar like Troll might make you proud. Who knows?
Daryl – I’m so glad you felt that the caucus was different. I felt that too, but I’m a but biased. Nice to have it confirmed in a wonderful post.