Taking Care Of The Troops

The proposed Bush budget calls for a reduction in veteran health care two years from now, followed by three years of freezes... in addition to the cuts veterans have already suffered.

Yet, the government is not even taking good care of our veterans now: read about the shocking and deplorable conditions our returning injured troops endure at Walter Reed and the bungling bureaucratic treatment of veterans who suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Read the moving account of a Marine's suicide who was made to wait for PTSD treatment.

And this is how the pro-war "support the surge" Republic Party continues to NOT support our troops:

After repeatedly spinning their pre-approved talking points (PDF) to stall voting, and in spite of the fact that the nonbinding resolution specifically does support our troops, the Republic Party in the Senate foiled the Dems' bid to repudiate the Iraq surge:

The 56-34 vote fell four short of the 60 needed to advance a nonbinding measure identical to one the House passed Friday. [snip]

The nonbinding measure consisted of fewer than 100 words. It disapproved of Bush's decision to deploy more troops and pledged to support and protect the troops in the field. [snip]

"The Senate will keep fighting to force President Bush to change course," Reid said at a news conference after the vote.

In the House, Democrats have said they will attempt to place restrictions on Bush's request for an additional $93 billion for the military in an effort to make it impossible for him to deploy all 21,500 additional troops.

It makes you wonder:

How can any patriotic American support a regime that has shredded the US Constitution, ignored the separation of powers, violated the Geneva Conventions, forced through a law legalizing torture, launched a war of aggression that has produced 26,000 American military casualties in service of a lie, murdered tens or hundreds of thousands of Muslim civilians, destroyed an entire country, and planned an attack on Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons?

It’s time to simply admit the obvious:

The president of the United States is crazy as a loon, and the Congress and the media are functioning as co-dependents as he runs the country off a cliff. [snip]

This seems to be the attitude in Congress and the media. The Democrats, who could put the president in a richly deserved straightjacket, are afraid to take that step. The media are afraid the president and his crazy backers would howl if they pointed out how nutty he has become.

So they all let him rant on, as though he were making sense.

The problem is that this president is also the commander in chief. He has ordered three heavily armed (and nuclear-equipped) carrier battle groups to the Persian Gulf and is talking about “dealing” with Iran. We all know what that means. He wants to attack Iran and expand his disastrous war in the Middle East to put us at war with another 70 million people.