In his speech to a cheering, partisan crowd today, Bush .......

[rodeodance]

must be that 33% gang!


......In his speech to a cheering, partisan crowd today, Bush outlined some of the differences he saw between the Republican and Democratic parties.

Bush said Democrats once supported U.S. military actions overseas to protect the nation. He mentioned former Democratic presidents John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

"John F. Kennedy declared America's commitment to, in his words, 'pay any price and bear any burden' in the defense of freedom," Bush said. "These presidents understood the challenges of their time and were willing to confront those challenges with strong leadership."

But the Democratic party "began a slow shift of philosophy," during the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, shying away from conflicts overseas, Bush said. And now, he said, some Democrats opposed to the Iraq war "argue that we should pull out our troops before the job is done."

Bush called the Democrats "the party of cut and run."

"We have a difference of opinion," he said, later adding: "It's a difference of opinion, but it's a fundamental issue in this campaign. The voters out there need to ask the question: Which political party will support the brave men and women who wear our uniform when they do their job of protecting America?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/20/AR2006102000512_2.html

[stevietheman]

1. Doesn't hold water; Clinton wasn't shy of using our forces. n/t

n/t

[BlueManDude]

2. Bush critisized the use of forces overseas when he ran in 2000 n/t

[kineneb]

3. to cheering, partisan crowd

chanting "Sieg Heil"... having left their brains and their crayons at the front door...

[Sinti]

4. Perhaps some of us agree with old George Washington regarding

unnecessary foreign entanglements and overgrown military establishments. You don't send your boys off to die when you are not threatened, to pay the price in blood for the freedom of other people, particularly when those people don't care to pay the same price in their own blood. Call me isolationist. Not to mention, we're losing ours.

While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations, and what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rivalships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other...

[Ice4Clark]

5. This is how W supports the brave men and women in uniform

Even more than his father, and Ronald Reagan before him, Bush is cutting budgets for myriad programs intended to protect or improve the lives of veterans and active-duty soldiers. Bush’s handlers have worked hard, through the use of snappy salutes and fly-boy stunts, to present the service-ducking former National Guardsman as the soldiers’ friend. But though Republicans enjoy widespread military support, Bill Clinton was the only president of the last four to cut weapons programs instead of veteran benefits.

Consider the following:

With 130,000 soldiers still in the heat of battle in Iraq and more fighting and dying in Afghanistan, the Bush administration sought this year to cut $75 a month from the “imminent danger” pay added to soldiers’ paychecks when in battle zones. The administration sought to cut by $150 a month the family separation allowance offered to those same soldiers and others who serve overseas away from their families. Although they were termed “wasteful and unnecessary” by the White House, Congress blocked those cuts this year, largely because of Democratic votes.

This year’s White House budget for Veterans Affairs cut $3 billion from VA hospitals—despite 9,000 casualties in Iraq and as aging Vietnam veterans demand more care. VA spending today averages $2,800 less per patient than nine years ago.

The administration also proposed levying a $250 annual charge on all Priority 8 veterans—those with “non-service-related illnesses”—who seek treatment at VA facilities, and seeks to close VA hospitals to Priority 8 veterans who earn more than $26,000 a year.

Until protests led to a policy change, the Bush administration also was charging injured GIs from Iraq $8 a day for food when they arrived for medical treatment at the Fort Stewart, Georgia, base where most injured are treated.

In mid-October, the Pentagon, at the request of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, announced plans to shutter 19 commissaries—military-run stores that offer discounted food and merchandise that helps low-paid enlisted troops and their families get by—along with the possiblility of closing 19 more.

At the same time, the Pentagon also announced it was trying to determine whether to shutter 58 military-run schools for soldiers’ children at 14 military installations.

The White House is seeking to block a federal judge’s award of damages to a group of servicemen who sued the Iraqi government for torture during the 1991 Gulf War. The White House claims the money, to come from Iraqi assets confiscated by the United States, is needed for that country’s reconstruction.

The administration beat back a bipartisan attempt in Congress to add $1.3 billion for VA hospitals to Bush’s request of $87 billion for war and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In perhaps its most dangerous policy, the White House is refusing to provide more than 40,000 active-duty troops in Iraq with Kevlar body armor, leaving it up to them and their families to buy this life-saving equipment. This last bit of penny-pinching prompted Pentagon critic and Vietnam veteran Col. David Hackworth to point to “the cost of the extraordinary security” during Bush’s recent trip to Asia, which he noted grimly “would cover a vest for every soldier” in Iraq.

read more HERE