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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (443105)	8/14/2003 5:55:58 PM
From: SeachRE	Respond to of 769667

So verbose...

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (443105)	8/14/2003 6:08:11 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 769667

<<...The only nuclear event going on concerning Iraq is a meltdown of the Bush administration. The death toll of US soldiers is now 257. The death toll of Iraqi soldiers and civilians is in the thousands. No weapons of mass destruction have been found. No nuclear program has been found. Cheney's claim of a mortal threat continues to grow into a mortal wound for the moral justification for the invasion. Rice continues to say we were right not to wait for Saddam's smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. She told the conference, "The threat could not be allowed to remain unaddressed." With no smoking gun of the threat, the plume Americans should be looking for is the one over the White House, growing into the most deadly lie since Vietnam...>> commondreams.org

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (443105)	8/14/2003 7:00:12 PM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

”I took issue with your statement that the pay cut took "gratuitous" pay from the troops.” The pay was “extra,” the Pentagon ran out of money to pay it. It was not essential or all of the troops would be unable to continue from this point. It is a simple statement of fact….not an opinion… not an attitude…not a feeling. Your issues are not with my statement, they are personal. Then I took issue with your saying that they had nothing to complain about because they "volunteered." No I didn’t. I simply stated some other facts: They did volunteer. Going to war is not an effort to wrangle the most competitive employment conditions. I have posted that if/when Congress allocates funding for them to have more extra pay I will say Yipppeeee. Otherwise, I have nothing to do with it. ”I gave you some criteria upon which to objectively evaluate the issue in terms of fairness, alternative uses of budget money, and the importance of morale.” You and I know nothing about how the Pentagon budgets its funding. It is easy to say give everybody money and their “moral” will be good. If that’s all you are saying, I agree. I doubt whether that is practical under the circumstances or the Pentagon would have done it. I suspect that is why they sought and received the extras in the first place. ”It's your "so what" treatment of the soldiers point of view that keeps it going.” I don’t treat their “view point” in a “so what” manner, I treat it as something that I don’t have privy to and definitely am not a spokesperson for. All that I know about the soldiers point of view is that it comes from a decision to volunteer to serve in the most violent effort ever waged. You have stated many presumptions that IMO are incredible. ”Unlike some on both side of the issue who give lip service, I truly opposed the war but support our troops.” If you support them, then you honor their decision and respect the sacrifices they are making. They have agreed to put themselves in harms way in battle if need be and to use aggressive violent force against the forces targeted by their superiors. If you simply mean that you want them to have the same working conditions and benefits afforded to non-combatants, then the “support the troops” comment is empty agendized rhetoric. All that has happened so far is that the Pentagon has announced pay cuts based on no funds for the extras. The rest is SF Chronicle agenda.