These people drive me crazy! No war is popular, but this war must be fought and won. This is nothing more than political grandstanding. The problem is they are standing on the backs of our soldiers and on American's safety.

I have come to think that when the Dems say that they support the troops...the mean the enemy's troops.

Lex, Lex, RSS any comment? When they are cutting into the personnel side the cuts are REALLY deep. I can feel the pain in the program offices as I sit and type this. Some programs are dead, some are just idling, and some are stalled completely. The frequent salami slice cuts are over, and real meat is being cut everywhere. Contractors are or will be laying off.

But its for the better good. Its that awful President's fault.

Trackbacked by The Thunder Run - Web Reconnaissance for 05/11/2007
A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention.

I think it is time that the the executive branch consolidate some departments. Department of the EPA...now part of DOD. Department of State...now part of DOD. Just keep the consolidation going until you have enough budget for the military.

Recall all Congressional protections and freebies..ie big a$$ jets for Pelosi.

I'm sure the Fifth Column will hit this thread soon. They're not anti-war, they're on the other side.

If they do have to stop paying the troops, I hope they start with bases in Democrat districts... and a training day on the meaning of "enemies foreign and domestic" wouldn't be out of place either.

It is important to remember that the funds held up now are an emergency appropriation for the war on terror. If holding up this money causes pain in terms of personnel accounts or equipment shortages, the Administration is as much to blame as the Democrats for not including this money in the regular budgetary process. They know it is not an emergency, but they call it that for political reasons--mostly so they can say that they that the budget is closer to balance than it really is.

It is telling that the Air Force spokeswoman initially said that pay would never be held up, and then changed her tune. I think she had it right the first time--in my 20 years, I saw budget battles several times, usually at the end of fiscal years. Even when the appropriations bills came late, we got paid--that last thing to be cut would be servicemember's paychecks. On that you can rely as a certainty--if this were truly a possiblity, even a Democratic Congress would pass a bill to fund military pay in a NY minute. No politician is stupid enough to go down that road.

This is really just another straw man. If you really believe that Democratic politicians actually support the enemy, hate America, and want us to lose, you belong in the same category as those who think Bush and Cheney planned 9-11 so he could funnel money to Halliburton. Right or wrong, both sides believe they are doing the right thing for the country. As CY has said before, there is little value in name calling and silly accusations--this debate needs substantive discussion based on facts.

I think Congress is trying to execute its duty as the legislative branch, and because Democrats run the place now, that duty is interpreted differently than it was under the GOP. One of its Constitutionally mandated duties is managing the armed forces and declaring war. It wants to use funding to manage the military (in terms of training and deployment length), and perhaps to declare this war over. I think this is the wrong approach--they should just vote on whether to demand an end to the war, and if they lose, they should tell the President that next year he will have to put all military funding in the normal budget process, and deal with it then. If they think training and deployment issues need to be addressed, they should do that separately.

But I would caution those who accuse Democratic politicians of "political grandstanding" or "supporting the enemy troops." These guys are doing this because they believe that the American people want this thing brought to a close. Many polls support this view, and Democrats are reacting to them. They think they have a mandate, and they are trying to execute it. In one sense an "up or down vote" strategy is a politically sound one--it gets GOP reps and Senators on record as voting to continue the war. This would work in some districts, but would probably work agains Republicans in others (such as those that elect GOP reps even as they vote for Dem Presidential candidates).

In the final analysis, we will know soon enough. In about 18 months we will have new elections. Those who believe that Americans support the war, send the message that they will continue it. Those who believe that we are on the wrong track, and need a drastically new strategy (one based on police work and diplomacy, for example) need to make that case. If Americans support the war, we will see new GOP majorities and perhaps a President Giuliani. If not, the Dems will increase their control over Congress and elect a President (hopefully not Hillary).

I am willing to take bets.

THESE PHRASES about shooting officers and generals, are taken almost verbatim from "The Internationale", the theme song of Communists and Socialists. They have been singing it for decades, at many many Socialist gatherings and meetings.

HOW COULD anyone be so naive as to call these people 'Liberals' or 'Progressives'? They are so obviously NOT.

AN amazed Canadian.
Pro Patria
More:
http://www.box.net/shared/7dnvimtb5z

Posted by R. Stanton Scott at May 12, 2007 10:05 AM

I agree that congress will pay the military. I remember when Regan was in, there was one year we only got paid because of a stop-gap measure that was passed by a huge majority while they (Both sides of the isle) fought over the rest of the budget.

I also don't believe the Dems support our enemies, but really do believe they are misguided in how they do what they believe is best for our troops and America in general.

This is our Soverign Nation, we can't allow what happened on 9-11 happen again. We can't be bullied by terrorists or it will never end. The line in the sand has already been drawn, we need to toe the line.

Retired Navy: And I think it is the GOP that is misguided about how best to manage our military services and protect the nation. I believe they have drawn the line in the sand in the wrong place, and once they drew it they began to toe it incompetently. The American people seem to agree in growing numbers.

The claim that something must be working because we have not been attacked here since 2001 is nothing more than a talking point. On 9.10.01, the claim that Clinton's anti-terrorism policy must be working, because we had not been attacked for 8 years, seemed a valid one. Not so, as it turned out so tragically.

We can no more completely eliminate the possiblity of future terrorist attacks than we can eliminate the possiblity of future liquor store robberies. Bad people are out there, and they are not going away. We can manage the problem to some degree--minimize the damage when it occurs, and punish actors--but society will always be under attack.

But these attacks are not an existential one. We should not allow terrorists to bully us, but the fact is that our "Sovereign Nation" is not under an existential threat from terrorists any more than capitalism is threatened by petty criminals. No al-Q'aida "Caliphate" is going to conquer the US, and Americans will never be forced to worhsip Allah in mosques against their will. If disagree, you have less faith in our military forces, and the American people at large, than I.

Since we cannot eliminate terrorism completely, and the threat is at any rate not an existential one, we have to address the moral implications of our anti-terrorism policy. We have killed thousands of people in defense of a nation that is not going to die. We torture and kill innocent people because we are afraid to die. Is this morally acceptable because our system is somehow special, or because our lives are somehow more valuable? It is important to remember that every time we bomb a neighborhood to kill terrorists we kill someone's sister or mother. From their perspective, it is often we who are the terrorists.

Thinking of terrorism this way is difficult, and in many ways it boils down to a question of "who started it?" At some point, who struck the first blow becomes less important than asking ourselves some difficult moral questions, and wondering: What would Jesus do?