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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (21831)	7/11/2003 1:28:49 AM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 89467

And Bush especially hates the poor soldiers fighting a losing battle in IRaq...families of slain soldiers are getting the finger from Bush....'Help Is On the Way'? The Army Times, in an editorial headlined "Nothing but lip service," complains: "President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress have missed no opportunity to heap richly deserved praise on the military. But talk is cheap -- and getting cheaper by the day, judging from the nickel-and-dime treatment the troops are getting lately." What has Army Times upset? They don't like the White House's griping and opposition to a proposal to double the $6,000 now paid to families of troops who die on active duty. (An additional $6,000 multiplied by 212 dead so far works out to $1.27 million -- or, for perspective, about 0.00032 percent of the nearly $4 billion per month the war is costing us.) They also want to cut monthly imminent-danger pay to $150 from $225, and cut the family-separation allowance down to $100 a month from $250. The anti-tax Administration is doing nothing for the military -- it won't even step up and ease residency rules to help frequent-traveling service members who sell a home qualify for capital-gains exemptions. The Administration plans to cut more than a billion dollars out of next year's budget for military housing. "The chintz even extends to basic pay," Army Times fumes, noting that Bush's proposed 2004 budget would cap raises for some ranks at 2 percent. All this from an Administration that came to power declaring: "To all of our men and women in uniform, and to their parents and families: Help is on the way!" One Army soldier was shot dead Wednesday outside Baghdad, another was killed hours later by a rocket-propelled grenade outside Tikrit -- becoming the 211th and 212th combat deaths, respectively. (The Washington Post has put faces on those statistics here.) So today the President -- some 77 deaths and two months after having declared victory -- finally allowed as how things aren't going so well. "There's no question we've got a security issue in Iraq," he says. "And we're going to have to deal with it person-by-person." (Person-by-person? What the heck is he talking about?) "It's going to take more than 90 to 100 days for people to recognize the great joys of freedom and the responsibilities that come with freedom," the President adds. As if the Iraqis are just dizzy with great joy and freedom, and have started firing rocket-propelled grenades at us out of "irresponsibility." Back in Washington, meanwhile, the Pentagon has finally started reporting wounded in Iraq, instead of just deaths, and it turns out more than 1,000 US troops have been wounded there so far. That's a ratio of about five wounded per death -- unusually high by modern combat standards, and yet another indicator that, as our President might put it, we've got some security issues. * * *