Some military voters may abandon Bush

Some military voters may abandon Bush
President might be losing support among veterans, service members and their families
By WILLIAM DOUGLAS
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON — When the Bush campaign asked James McKinnon to co-chair its veterans steering committee in New Hampshire — a job he held in 2000 — the 56-year-old Vietnam veteran respectfully, but firmly, said no.

“I basically told them I was disappointed in his support of veterans,” said McKinnon, who served two tours in Vietnam with the Coast Guard.

“He’s killing the active-duty military. ... Look at the reserve call-ups for Iraq, the hardships. The National Guard — the state militia — is being used improperly. I took the president at his word on Iraq, and now you can’t find a single report to back up or substantiate weapons of mass destruction.”

President Bush is seeking re-election as a “war president” whose decisive leadership steered the military to victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. But as guerrilla warfare drags on in both countries, casualties mount and the Army is stretched ever thinner, many voters in or affiliated with the military are no longer saluting the commander in chief.

Factors threatening to erode Bush’s once-strong support among military voters include:

In the 2000 presidential election, absentee military ballots from overseas helped deliver the narrow margin of victory that sent Bush into the White House. So even a small defection of current and retired military people and their dependents could spell trouble for Bush in 2004.

“I think President Bush has an electoral edge despite the fact that Senator (John) Kerry has a better military service record,” said Loren Thompson, the chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute, a conservative Washington think tank.

“That said, the prolonged tours of duty, the unexpected intensity (of the Iraq war) and the way reservists are being deployed are working against the president. There is a lot of resentment in the ranks about the level of commitment demanded of the reserves, particularly among the families.”

A bipartisan poll of likely voters conducted in September found that Bush’s approval rating among relatives of military personnel was only 36 percent. Family members upset by Bush’s policy on Iraq are venting through Web sites and public protests.

Military Families Speak Out, an antiwar group of relatives of deployed troops, plans to observe the Iraq war’s first anniversary next week with processions outside Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the bodies of dead soldiers are returned, and at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, where wounded soldiers are treated.

Democrats sense an opportunity to chip away at what’s been a mostly Republican base since the United States turned to an all-volunteer military in 1973. Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate from Massachusetts and a decorated Vietnam veteran, touts his military record on the campaign trail.

Bush campaign officials say they expect military voters to return to the fold because the president has delivered on his 2000 campaign promise that “help is on the way” for underfunded, underpaid armed forces.

In his 2005 budget, Bush proposed 3.5 percent pay increases for armed service members, more than double the 1.5 percent increase for federal workers. Since Bush assumed office, the Pentagon has upgraded about 10 percent of its military housing and expects to modernize 76,000 more homes this year.

If you actually made it to retirement, then where's the disability?

In my case I intended to go for thirty years, but had to retire at 20 years and eight months - I could no longer pass the annual physical. I could no longer work on a vessel, but spent the last few months teaching others to do so until I could no longer do even that.
I did try to reeducate myself after I retired, but for several reasons a decent job was not forthcoming, and E7 retirement is not enough to actually live on. I could no longer work it the field in which I was trained and had twenty years experience - that is why we have the VA disability system; but it was withheld from career military for a century.

I have lot's of friend's drawing a 20-30 year retirement dying to get their additional 50% for their "service connected hearing loss" caused by high dB headphone rock and roll while off duty. I can't hear any better than they, but wasn't willing to claim a lifestyle choice as a service connected disability.

That is not the common case, but is often used as a reason to deny benefits.
I my own case I lost my sight due to early cataracts - too many years of bright sunlight reflected from the water (during my retirement physical the Dr. chewed me out for not wearing sunglasses - which we were not allowed to use - to “Hollywood”!). I also have severe osteoarthritis in my feet, knees, hips, back, neck, shoulders and wrists from twenty years of wearing combat boots on bouncing and pounding steel decks -we were not allowed to wear deck shoes until the last few years.
By your way of thinking, very few people would ever get any disability awards, as it was probably a life style choice that caused the loss.

KERRY HAS A BETTER MILITARY SERVICE RECORD????

BWAAHAHAHAHAHA, the idiots gave themselves away with this one.

Give me a Buh-reak, for Pete's sake.

The liberal, biased, Socialist media is at it again.

Every, and let me repeat here, EVERY Military person I know, active-duty or Reservist, is clearly FOR the re-election of President Bush.

This writer needs to get out of his biased little cubicle and interview real people, the pale-skinner little nerd that he is.

I agree, this is just another fresh load of media bias. I'm active duty military currently enjoying the warm desert sun myself, and while I know a lot of people who aren't overly thrilled with President Bush, I don't know a single one who actually prefers Kerry. Even the few liberal holdouts are very turned off by his shady service record and downright anti-military congressional record.

That having been said, the vast majority of soldiers understand that what we are doing is vital and unavoidable. Most gripes are along the lines of how the war is being conducted, not why. To think that Kerry would do a better job, when he doesn't even think we should be here in the first place (or does he? It's hard to tell with him) is flat out crazy.

These figures do not include the cost of a supplemental appropriations request expected to be presented to Congress for fiscal year 2003 to cover the war on terrorism and the cost of the likely war against Iraq

And that makes a big difference right there, apart from the main budget figures. Bush is going to the congress and asking to pay for the war. During the Clinton administration, OTOH, not a single penny was appropriated (or ever even requested) for The Rapists' thirty-odd military deployments. Bosnia alone cost tens of billions of dollars, all of which had to come out of the Pentagon's regular budget. This is one of the reasons why not a single major weapons system was deployed during those eight years. Many were in the pipes, but the R&D budgets had to be raided to pay for deployments.

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