Posted on 02/18/2007 8:15:31 PM PST by kristinn
What's funny is that Democrats all over the internet, at least in the forums they allow the dissenting views of Republicans be heard, are rabidly attepting to devour bush in yet another "scandal". As in the march to go to war in Iraq, they paint a bizarre picture of an elected leader they insist is a dimwit unfit to be elected dogcatcher, as a uber-manager singlehandedly in charge, and with full knowledge of, every miniscule process in the Federal gov't, with the entire legislative branch his patsy, victims, or in the case of the soldiers, their only hope to be saved from Bush mismanagement.
Again, like Iraq, their position is one which requires incredible ignorance and/or dishonesty to adopt as your own.
The US constitution, Article 1, section 8, clearly places upon Congress, not the President, the responsibility to raise, maintain and regulate our Armed Forces. (I hadn't seen that point raised yet)
And Congress feigns outrage over this. Maybe they chould conduct an inquiry on themselves? I'm not suggesting Bush ignore the problem of course. Just chock up one more reason to believe that today's "liberals" or "progressives" actually insult the true meanings of both of those words with their tactics.
The American military troop is quite a unique breed. They'll sleep in the mud and eat dirt while dodging bullets but rarely complain. Dustin10thMountain was staying in Building 18 most of the time he freeped with us. Did any of us know about the poor living conditions there? No. It seems it takes an outsider to expose some of the crap the troops have to endure.
I know you don't like hearing this stuff coming from Dana Priest. But I wouldn't be so quick to denigrate the substance of this article.
Understood. She's still a whore.
See my comment here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1789311/posts?page=20#20
What is interesting is that we've never heard complaints from the troops at WRAMC. I guess they thought dry and no live fire was all they needed. In addition, I doubt that all of Building #18 was as portrayed.
PS - Which is worse Building #18 at WRAMC or the DC Public Schools?
Dana Priest????
where have I heard that "SKANK's name before?
I think you'll find in the midst of all the replies around page 2, a concession that the raw facts of the facility's condition, does indeed exist amongst most of the repliers, after an initial reaction to the author. My single post included an easily missed line that Bush shouldn't ignore "the problem".
The four years I spent in the Navy saw most of the barracks I slept in 3 or 4 decades old- we kept them clean, but there were always buildings with leaky plumbing, and holes in the walls. The ship I spent the bulk of my service on, the USS Coral Sea, had its keel laid 35 years before I set foot on it. Rats the size of a small house cat peered out from the voids where the hangar bay doors nestled, and when we hit the tropics the air conditioning was old and useless, the only thing worse than working during night ops on the flight deck breathing JP-5 fumes in that heat was trying to sleep in the day with each drop of sweat driving you mad but you dared not turn on the light to find it wasn't sweat but the 23rd cockroach that got past the double sided tape perimeter you laid around your rack every day.
However it wss bearable, because we knew we had a commander in chief who would not send 50 guys to perish in a cluster**** in a desert in Iran, and pull us out just becsuse our mommies missed us. Supporting the troops to me has always meant the result of the sacrifice was kicking ass, taking names, and the right to come home and spend your remaining years in a country you loved waving its flag and proudly telling the story of your deeds to kids who looked up to you in awe for what you secured for them.
Dana Priest doesn't seem to realize that is the "psychological support" missing at Walter Reed. We got kids missing major body parts tuning in CNN in the lounge room with the fascist leftist message playing every hour that their loss was for "lies", a "mistake", and killed innocents in the process. They have no pride, no silver lining to their dark clouds, they get drunk on post and likely put some of those holes in there themselves.
I would too, if you taped a picture of Ted Kennedy or Al Gore bellowing in 2004 "bring the troops home, the war was started on LIES!" on it.
Folks we know we did that to Nam vets, and that was the difference between WW2 heroes who returned and became community leaders for towns that patted them on the back for winning the big one- and the droves of disillusioned men, many of whom walk America's streets and alleys today broke and waiting to die- the horrors they lived through weren't much different, I can think of nothing which can ravage a man's psyche like going to hell and back and being told by millions of spineless, ankle biting self defeatist haters that it was a waste of time.
If it's spackle and wallboard and glue that will repair Walter Reed and its soldiers' desire to recover and lead productive lives, you're not going to go far patching walls with it. Start with filling the cake-holes of the jackasses picketing the gates in the name of Michael Moore and Cindy Sheehan, and don't stop until the 2008 campaign platform of both parties is not "Bush's mess" but "America's Victory".
Yep.
BufordP - thanks for the ping.
batvette - thanks for your service and thoughts. Nothing like JP4 on a hot humid day.
That was my experience in Vietnam where I lived on an 82 ft. long boat in country for a year. Big brown rats occasionally got aboard and the crew had a heck of a time catching them. One time they caught one and threw him over the fantail and we watched him swimming in the wake behind us. And the air conditioning? Well, it was tempermental but our engineman was able to keep it going most of the time.
CedarDave, you'd probably find it no surprise the reaction I get from the left when I challenge their long held beliefs of Vietnam being a worthless mistake. While in and of itself the goal of propping up the South Vietnam government wasn't realized, now the officials of the former USSR gov't are writing their memoirs and telling all. We knew the Soviets were assisting the NVA but I doubt we had any idea the billions of dollars of resources that funnelled in through 1979. For instance 6,000 SAM batteries with full training and support in 1965 alone-that's a lot of rubles! The Soviets pretty much fed the whole country with grain transported down the Ho Chi Minh trail throughout the conflict. Given the USSR collapsed about a decade later largely because of a lack of the exact resources they poured into Vietnam, I think Vietnam was merely a campaign of the cold war-and who in their right mind thinks you can remove events like that from history, merely because it wasn't as pretty as we'd like, without altering the outcome?
They deny the domino effect yet forget we were grabbing swaths of dominoes from around the planet to stop their fall. The effect of Vietnam on the cold war therefore wasn't just symbolic, or idealism, it was vital and tangible. I refuse to accept we have to have 1.5 million Americans told their sacrifice amounts to nothing merely to protect the reputations of the Fondas and Kerrys and their cohorts, and their stubborn insistence they were right because American policy was flawed.
Sorry for diverging off the topic but I get the impression the author of the Post article is clueless about the role of the mind and spirit in healing the body. Those vets need moral support as much as anything yet a vocal minority has spent 4 years advancing their perverted message that the war is IMMORAL! It's not for concern for the Iraqis but pure partisan politics. Now it's accepted fact amongst the ignorant the Iraq war is based on lies, not one of which they've proven- the same people will tell you atrocities in 'Nam were widespread and as good as written policy. When does the insanity end?
I firmly believe that the Iraq war was not based on lies -- it's obvious to all but those that will not see.
WMD's? Of course, and he had 6-9 months before our attack in March 2003 to get them out of the country, bury or dismantle them. The infamous Chemical Ali or Dr. Germ didn't get their names for nothing. Saddam's ties with terrorists? Maybe not directly with the 9/11 hijackers, but he supported terror activities directed against Israel and other nations probly with some oil for food money. Nuclear weapons? Saddam would have acquired one if he could. And there is evidence that he was or was trying to stockpile uranium.
I do not see why the administration does not refute those lies that the left, the DemonRats and the "peace" activists tell about our efforts. By remaining silent, they enable these losers to spread their anti-US, anti-military, anti-troops message and encourage our enemies in Iraq and elsewhere.
I don't know who the wise but weaselly liberal journalist was who penned the talking point "no WMD found, no justification for war" but it stuck and they ran with it. They'll twist the rationale to the absurd angle that we went to Iraq to remove WMD from Saddam- as if inanimate objects were the danger, not the megalomaniac dictator who used them with impunity. So what if we found nothing? If the narcotics detectives call the local crack dealer and say "we're going to come get you in 30 days, AND call them again with a 48 hour reminder, they'd have to be doing a lot of their own product to be so dumb to have any when they arrived on schedule!
Truth be told I believe what we found at that ammo dump- (16 55 gallon drums labelled pesticides, but were a pure organophosphate compound nobody with any sanity uses around people anymore for its toxicity to humans) were the stuff David Kay desccribed when he said Saddam had gone covert with his programs. Organophosphate is the precurser chemical for nerve gas, add the secondary ingredient and it's the stuff we said he had. Why else did he balk at destroying those missiles with proscribed warheads?
In the end what happened is the administration realized the sad reality that posting finds that were anything but Saddam sitting in a warehouse with pallets clearly labelled "WMD" was not going to be accepted by the anti-war haters. For "political expediency", as they say, I think they figured tell them the only thing they wanted to hear or risk having that be the only issue in the 2004 election.
I think that was a bad idea, but what else to do? He put his re-election before shutting up the leftist critics, and it's greatly harmed the outcome of the venture- but had Kerry won in 2004 wouldn't that have been just as bad? (my ire for Kerry and his self serving antics is incredible)
This is an angle of Saddam and his terrorist support few know about, though surely the White House knew. Of course Saddam had his reward program for suicide bombers to hit Israel. I understand a total of 120+ rewards were paid between 2000-2003. See http://www.husseinandterror.com
Now you surely have heard the "petrodollars" theory of Saddam selling oil in Euros risking the value of the dollar, but it's scoffed at because we think we could move quickly to stop a world wide selloff, and other nations would not join Saddam.
But read what was really going on in early 2002:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/04/03/wmid303.xml
Saddam's suicide bombers- and they WERE his, notice how all that **** dropped off after the invasion? They were causing the Israelis to respond with a heavy hand, and the Palestinian casualties were causeing Arabs to riot in the streets in Cairo, Jordan, all over the more progressive middle east. Saddam gets the Iranians on his side and damn near pulls off an Arab oil embargo on Israel AND the US, it's all there in the article.
This is not long after 9/11, confidence in US financial markets was shaky, US-Saudi tensions were high, and Russia and France were chomping at the bit to go in and start pumping. I believe the reason the other nations didn't join was because Bush was making noise about ousting Saddam and had to choose sides.
I think we narrowly missed a financial calamity that would make 1929 look like a cakewalk. There are more ways to wage war than dropping bombs. I think this was behind the French/Russian backdoor deals with Saddam, Chirac, with Saddam's billions already in a Paris bank, already had all the conduits open to facilitate a Euro-based oil distribution network. Not only would the world divest US Dollar assets, we'd be hard pressed to sustain our economy domestically after the Arabs cut us off, it would be a double whammy.
I think the war in Iraq was a bargain. I think the sacrifices made by our troops saved America from having millions die standing in depression era soup lines. I think if our wounded veterans knew more about this and less that their Commander in Chief "lied" for the war that crippled them, Dana Priest would have been run out of there with her poison pen stuck where the sun doesn't shine. Maybe if the media gave a fraction of the coverage to Saddam's Mig-25's on high speed recon missions 60 km into Saudi airspace at a time, in January 2003, he pledged to live in peace with his neighbors that they gave Joe Wilson's lies, the world would know our soldiers were protectors, not invaders.
http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_247.shtml
(proof of Saddam's Mig-25 antics- as you know high speed recon runs are tantamount to an act of war, they precede bombing runs by mapping mobile SAM batteries lighting up their radar)
Sorry for the long post, there's some good info in there to those who care.
Finally, your ire at Kerry is the same as mine. I served alongside the Swifties in Vietnam, though I never came across Kerry (he was down south and I was in the central part of the country). I know how they feel about him and his antics, especially how he got himself transfered out after only 120 days (I spent a full year in country on a boat). If it had been an enlisted man who tried those antics, he would have been charged with some sort of a military offense and most certainly would be labeled a malinger. Corporal Klinger antics were not appreciated. Of course, all our crew, including myself, were volunteers and we knew what we were getting into. It takes a different mindset to put yourself in harm's way, if only partially, in order to use it as a lever for future political gain. Disgusting is too mild a word for his actions.
she's the very face of the class classless enemy.
Personally I'd call her lower than pond scum - she's duck $hit!
Still, ya' gotta stick with the "class enemy" expression to get it across to Dana that she's a nasty chick.
to batvette:
"The US constitution, Article 1, section 8, clearly places upon Congress, not the President, the responsibility to raise, maintain and regulate our Armed Forces. (I hadn't seen that point raised yet)"
Of course you have not seen it raised here, because unlike your leftist garbage most Freepers know that Article 1, section 8 does not "clearly" place all the "responsibility to raise, maintain and regulate our Armed forces", in the way you think it means.
Under section Article 1 Section 8 Congressional power is limited to (1)declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, (2) make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water (3) raise and support Armies (provide the funds - or deny the provision of funds), (4) and the same for a Navy and (5) to make rules for the Government and regulation of the troops (Uniform Code of Military Justice).
In other words Congress (1)declares war, or not, (2)makes rules about capturing enemies, (3)has the power of the purse over the military - it can provide or deny monies requested for the military, and (4) sets the rules of military conduct - how the society of the military is organized - the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That's it.
What Congress is not is the Commander In Chief, the executive authority that operates the military; that the Constitution grants only to the President (Article II, Section 2.)
As Commander in Chief he is authorized to direct the movements of the military forces placed by law at his command (which in modern times includes ALL our intelligence agencies as adjuncts to the military function), and to employ them in the manner he may deem most effectual to the operations they are performing in the national defense. (He does not call in Congress to "authorize" the next air strike on the next insurgent hide out), as the idea that Congress as complete responsibility over the military would have one believe).
In other words, Congress can hamper the President through the power of the purse, but Congress is not a 535 member "Commander In Chief". One need only watch any Congress to understand why the founders wisely limited Congressional power to the declarations of war, funding of the implements of war, regulation of the society of the troops and not the OPERATIONS of the military.
Try reading some conservative materials for a change.
batvette the troll said:
"While in and of itself the goal of propping up the South Vietnam government.................now the officials of the former USSR gov't are writing their memoirs and telling all. We knew the Soviets were assisting the NVA but I doubt we had any idea the billions of dollars of resources that funnelled in through 1979."
The war in Vietnam ended in 1975, when the North Vietnamese abrogated the peace treaty and, upon the departure of US forces, invaded South Vietnam. By 1979, the Soviets were no longer supplying North Vietnam with much.
"For instance 6,000 SAM batteries with full training and support in 1965 alone-that's a lot of rubles! The Soviets pretty much fed the whole country with grain transported down the Ho Chi Minh trail throughout the conflict."
More leftist hogwash. The North was not feeding the South during the war. The Ho Chi Minh trail moved men and material from North Vietnam into the South, to the support of the Viet Cong but it was not a means of supplying rice to "the whole country" including the South.
"Given the USSR collapsed about a decade later largely because of a lack of the exact resources they poured into Vietnam"
More leftist nonsense; where do you get this crap. As much as any particular Soviet aid to North Vietnam was a big help to North Vietnam it was never a substantial segment of the total Soviet GDP. While there are a lot of reasons for the Soviets collapse, aid to Vietnam was not one of them.
"I think Vietnam was merely a campaign of the cold war-and who in their right mind thinks you can remove events like that from history, merely because it wasn't as pretty as we'd like, without altering the outcome?"
And, what, you don't think the outcome should have been altered???? Obviously not.
"They deny the domino effect yet forget we were grabbing swaths of dominoes from around the planet to stop their fall."
Name them you troll. Name the "swaths of dominoes from around the planet" that "we were grabbing"; in as much as you reveal yourself by your choice of words (you cannot hide how you attempt to rearrange your leftist indoctrination into a pseudo-conservative position, because your "dialect" betrays you.
"The effect of Vietnam on the cold war therefore wasn't just symbolic, or idealism, it was vital and tangible."
To who? How? I'd like to hear you explain exactly what you mean by that statement.
"I refuse to accept we have to have 1.5 million Americans told their sacrifice amounts to nothing merely to protect the reputations of the Fondas and Kerrys and their cohorts, and their stubborn insistence they were right because American policy was flawed."
American policy was not flawed, it was undermined by the same anti-American Marxist fifth-column in the U.S. that is undermining the efforts in Iraq and the war on terror.
As General Giap (North Vietnam's top general throughout the war) admitted to his personal biographer, if it had not been for the anti-war movement in the United States, the North would have had to let the south alone. The US military did not lose in Vietnam, they were betrayed by the same people betraying them now - Democrats. Which is why John Kerry has his photo in a North Vietnamese museum as one their war heroes.
Go away troll.
What foolishness has brought you to think I am a leftist? what about my argument even hinted at a leftist bias?
Get help, pal. soon. I'm a registered Republican, a US Navy vet honorably discharged, voted Bush/Cheney in 2004.
Ask yourself this:
(3)has the power of the purse over the military - it can provide or deny monies requested for the military.
Your words. You think they just throw money around haphazardly, without responsibility to ensure it is spent properly? You think maybe it is their responsibility to visit a base like Walter Reed that they throw my money at?
To be continued.
This is even more bizarre than your other reply.
The point of my post that obviously shot over your thick skull was that I am arguing against leftists who call Vietnam a shameful mistake that didn't need to be fought.
There isn't even any need to address your "points" such as "swaths of dominos" one being Vietnam, how about Chile, El Salvador, (most of central and south america for that matter!)
the point was that the left claims the domino effect was false- that country after country would never have fallen- but only have the ability to make such a claim after the fact that we stood and opposed them from falling.
Now go take your meds and find another windmill, Mr. Quixote.
"What foolishness has brought you to think I am a leftist? what about my argument even hinted at a leftist bias?"
Your "sources", your dialectic and your hair-brained forms of communication.
"Ask yourself this: (3)has the power of the purse over the military - it can provide or deny monies requested for the military....You think they just throw money around haphazardly, without responsibility to ensure it is spent properly? You think maybe it is their responsibility to visit a base like Walter Reed that they throw my money at?"
You think the "executive", who is supposed to be run the executive agencies and who is supposed to be the first point of "checking", would be the first one to check?? No?
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