An Open Letter To Our Troops

An Open Letter To Our Troops


February 23, 2007

To the brave men and women serving in our military:

I think I can speak for all Americans when I say that I have the utmost compassion and gratitude for you who have sacrificed so much, including your very own jobs, lives and health, to serve in our armed forces. You have taken the risks that most of us at home could not or would not take. You have endured the hardships that most of us at home couldn't possibly have sustained. And you have represented our country with pride, passion, dignity, and integrity.

Our country should owe you enormously for the service you've performed. But unfortunately our government has let you down in so many ways. We sent you into war’s theatre without adequate equipment or leadership. And when you returned maimed and broken, we didn't take adequate care of you. Those of you who returned in caskets never received proper recognition. Instead you're a statistic - well into the 3000's now. As President Bush implements his "surge" strategy in Iraq, we know that you'll be staying in the theatre longer, and/or returning to battle sooner, and it pains us to see you endure even more hardship.

What bothers me the most is that our government sent you into harm's way under false pretenses. We know that now, with a multitude of evidence, that this invasion of Iraq was wrong in so many ways. It wasn't just wrong in how we did it, it was wrong that we did it in the first place, since the intelligence wasn't just faulty, it was fabricated. It wasn't just wrong that so many lives were lost, it was wrong in that so many people profited. It wasn't just wrong that America's standing in the world stage has diminished, it was wrong that turmoil, tensions, and violence in the Middle East have magnified because of it.

Today I write to you to give you a message from the vast majority of Americans who feel like I do. We want this senselessness to stop. We want you to come home, in one piece, and with all your pieces.

President Bush’s mission in Iraq has been a disastrous failure from the inception, but it's not your fault. You have valiantly and gallantly performed your duties as ordered, but the mission was doomed from the start. You went into a country and successfully overthrew a government and military headed up by the minority party, and installed a democracy which by definition means that the new government is headed up by the majority party. A civil war was inevitable. There was no way you could stop it then, and there’s no way you can stop it now. The Sunnis and Shiia have been battling for centuries, and Bush’s ousting of Sadaam Hussein essentially tore down the barriers to their own conflict. As occupiers of this country, America’s presence is only making this situation worse.

Your Commander-in-Chief treated you with disdain and contempt when he arrogantly misled you into thinking you were protecting America's national security. Instead, you were sent there to protect the interests and profits of our military-industrial-complex. We don't blame you for the failure of his mission. We blame George W. Bush and his neo-con cabal for contriving this imperial conquest in the first place. Please know that our anti-war efforts are directed at our President and his mission. They are not directed at you. We don’t want you to be in harm’s way over greed, arrogance, stupidity, or a personal vendetta.

And when you do return, we want to treat you with respect, dignity, and appreciation for your service. You should have your old jobs back or a reasonable alternative opportunity. You should have access to the finest health care just as our law-makers have. And you should be recognized as the heroes you are.

Scott Shuster
American Citizen

Comrade CHEFMIKE

It is my pleasure to award you this:

Very original...and BTW...

Have you seen this billboard, bushevik?

support the troops
stab them in the back

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Originally Posted by corbomite

support the troops
stab them in the back

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Originally Posted by FigJam

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Maybe you should ease up on the fig jam, pilgram.

It may have backed up into your cranium...

Yeah chefmikey....whatever you say....

Uh huh...

And how does that kool-aid taste, you clueless pilgram?

Like blood for oil, maybe?

for chefmikey:

NEWSFLASH: The Democratic party swept the elections this past November, and the election was a referendum on Iraq, pilgram... 8)

So suck it up, lame-duck busheviks! :P

chefmikey...

I grant you that the dems prevailed in the election. But what have they done since? Seems like they have led us into a

QUAGMIRE!

By Jules Crittenden

An American Congress has got itself into a war it can’t win. It is stuck. Can’t move forward, can’t move back. And Congress is starting to take casualties. It doesn’t know which way to turn. It’s a quagmire.

The situation is dire, and congressmen everywhere are increasingly beleaguered. They have been unable to come up with any strategy for success, but more seriously, they haven’t been able to agree on a strategy for failure. One of their leading lights, Rep. John Murtha, has already been reduced to an object of derision and the danger is he will drag more of them down with him.

Congress spent four days … four days! … yammering earnestly, and then cast a strong, uncompromising, forceful non-binding resolution with a self-negating caveat. The president of the United States, in reaction to this devastating congressional shock-and-awe campaign, said, “Thank you, that was interesting.”

Since then, the Senate minority, wielding flimsy, antiquated procedural weapons, has tied down the Democratic juggernaut in the Senate.

The situation is increasingly desperate. Americans, who had seen in the Democratic Congress a chance to extricate themselves from an unpopular conflict, appear to be coming to the conclusion that Bush’s war is a more attractive choice than the Democratic peace. Here are some of the ugly facts on the ground:

Public Opinion Strategies found that 67 percent of voters think the country is going in the wrong direction and 60 percent think Iraq has no future as a stable democracy. But 57% believe “The Iraq War is a key part of the global war on terrorism” and that we have to keep our troops there and finish the job.

Hillary Clinton, trying out out-Obama Obama, is playing to the hard left in classic pre-primary strategy. That would be the 17% who favor immediate withdrawal.

A majority, 56 percent of likely voters, say “Even if they have concerns about his war policies, Americans should stand behind the President in Iraq because we are at war.” And 53 percent say, “The Democrats are going too far, too fast in pressing the President to withdraw the troops from Iraq.”

Other recent polls have found support for Bush’s troop surge surging, and while opposition to the war is high, so is opposition to (a) surrender, (b) losing, (c) defeat and (d) compelling the troops do do any of them same.

This poses a frightful dilemma for Dem Cong strategists. How to surrender without giving up? How to compel defeat without being seen to cause us to lose?

Little more than a month into what was supposed to be a swift campaign to sure victory, the Democratic Congress is bogged down.

It is becoming increasingly clear that this war cannot be lost politically. It will have to be lost militarily. Hence the only clear Democratic plan to emerge so far: Murtha’s plan to undercut the troops.

There is also an effort to rewrite history to favor the surrender camp, moving the goal post to impose a defacto defeat on the defiant enemy. That would be Biden-Levin to unauthorize the 2002 authorization. The only problem is, there is nothing to indicate this asymmetrical opponent wouldn’t sidestep, or maybe just ignore, that manuever as well! There is also the punt. Any number of backbenchers, from John Kerry to Chris Van Hollen, now joined by skittish frontbencher Hillary, have put forward variations on the Iraq Study Group’s plan for abandonment-lite and negotiations with terrorists.

How does it happen that one of the greatest political powers on Earth, the United States Congress, finds itself bogged down in a quagmire against a politically compromised, chimpy-looking lame duck president?

Congress is unwilling to shed blood in defense of its own beliefs. The great, principled Democratic Congress lacks the strength of its own convictions, and all the rhetoric in the world can’t save it now. It is in a quagmire of its own.

Jules Crittenden is an editor and columnist for the Boston Herald.

I bet you believe what Limbaugh and Hannity tell you also, huh? :roll: :lol: :P

While I don't agree with everything Limbaugh and Hannity say, I agree with them far more than I do with Pelosi, Murtha, Reid, Levin, Biden, Obama, et. al. :D

How in the fuck is defunding the military supporting the military?

Murtha is a dumb cunt.

Even the washingtonpost is questioning this nuts mind,

A botched launch by the plan's author, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), has united Republicans and divided Democrats, sending the latter back to the drawing board just a week before scheduled legislative action, a score of House Democratic lawmakers said last week.
Murtha acted on his own to craft a complicated legislative strategy on the war, without consulting fellow Democrats. When he chose to roll out the details on a liberal, antiwar Web site on Feb. 15, he caught even Pelosi by surprise while infuriating Democrats from conservative districts.

Then for an entire week, as members of Congress returned home for a recess, Murtha refused to speak further. Democratic leaders failed to step into the vacuum, and Republicans relentlessly attacked a plan they called a strategy to slowly bleed the war of troops and funds. By the end of the recess, Murtha's once promising strategy was in tatters.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...022401420.html

8)

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How in the fuck is defunding the military supporting the military?

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oh, putting our troops in the cross-fire between the sheite and the sunni is supporting them?

after the funding is cut, bush should pull them out using the funds that are left. if he doesn't, how is he supporting the troops? (hell, he isn't anyway...our troops still haven't enough amunition, armor, or intelligent civilian leadership)

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Murtha is a dumb cunt.

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sexist bastard! :lol:

GIs Petition Congress To End Iraq War
More Than 1,000 Military Personnel Sign Petition Urging Withdrawal

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/...n2505412.shtml

:roll: :P

As long as we are revealing plans, might as well show this:

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