As you read the following excerpts from the WaPO just forget the dollar figure there. Ignore it. (Honestly, I mean that!)
The U.S. Air Force is asking the Pentagon’s leadership for a staggering $50 billion in emergency funding for fiscal 2007 — an amount equal to nearly half its annual budget, defense analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute said on Tuesday.
…snip…
Another source familiar with the Air Force plans said the extra funds would help pay to transport growing numbers of U.S. soldiers being killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is not the the dollar figure, it is the thought that they have to ship back that many soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan that are dead and wounded. Think about that…
These are our children, America’s future, being handed the misfortune of serving at the precise time that our government has completely failed them. This is the human cost that is a direct result of the GOP and Bush’s failed policies. This will not stop until the Bush administration is forced to face up to the realities of what they have done.
Meandering thoughts BELOW:
Even The Military Question The GOP’s Failed Tactics
As a recent New York Times article “portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos,” members of the military are begining to question the refusal of the Bush administration to redeploy the soldiers from Iraq:
The Iraqi government’s refusal to take certain measures to reduce sectarian tensions between Sunni Arabs and the nation’s Shiite Muslim majority has led these officers to conclude that Iraqis will not make difficult decisions unless they are pushed.
Therefore, they say, the advantages of deadlines may outweigh the drawbacks.
“Deadlines could help ensure that the Iraqi leaders recognize the imperative of coming to grips with the tough decisions they’ve got to make for there to be progress in the political arena,” said a senior Army officer who has served in Iraq.
…snip…
Former Pentagon official Kurt Campbell said more officers are calling for deadlines after concluding that the indefinite presence of U.S. forces enables the Shiite-run Iraqi government to avoid making compromises.
A WaPo article shows one of the many reasons the soldiers’ frustrations are becoming evident:
“How can we expect ordinary Iraqis to trust the police when we don’t even trust them not to kill our own men?” asked Capt. Alexander Shaw, head of the police transition team of the 372nd Military Police Battalion, a Washington-based unit charged with overseeing training of all Iraqi police in western Baghdad. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure we’re ever going to have police here that are free of the militia influence.”
The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., predicted last week that Iraqi security forces would be able to take control of the country in 12 to 18 months. But several days spent with American units training the Iraqi police illustrated why those soldiers on the ground believe it may take decades longer than Casey’s assessment.
Seventy percent of the Iraqi police force has been infiltrated by militias,
The soldiers keep getting told that as the Iraqis stand up, the American military will stand down. But this is a failing policy. The soldiers on the ground know that it will be decades before Iraqis will be able to protect themselves. Something that Bush administration has shown no signs of understanding. As long as we are there the Iraqis have no incentive to stand up and, to make matters worse, we are further aggravating the situations between the different groups fighting for control within Iraq. And in doing that we are forcing our soldiers to work alongside many Iraqis that are part of the problem.
American soldiers said that although they gather evidence of police ties to the militias and present it to Iraqi officials, no one has ever been criminally charged or even lost their jobs.
The soldiers are doing the best they can in a worst case scenario, but the reality is that the Iraqi government is just as effective as the Bush administration has repeatedly shown itself to be when it is faced with complicated problems.
They do nothing.
Some of the idiots in the right-wing-cheerleader-camp of the GOP are echoing a simplistic answer that is too little, too late, when they advocate that we should just send more troops to quell the CHAOS in Iraq but where are these soldiers going to come from anyways?
- The Army has “close to zero combat-ready brigades in reserve”
- The National Guard is “in an even more dire situation than the active Army.”
- 63 percent of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe the Army and Marine Corps are overextended.
The military is already stretched to near its breaking point and the Bush administration offers no real answers to this problem. Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly stated his desire to reshape the military, but there are serious limitations to military preparedness that cannot be overcome without the needed manpower:
The U.S. military suffers from a glaring manpower deficiency. The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated that in operations such as counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, stabilization, and peacekeeping, even the United States’ impressive technology cannot substitute for soldiers.
…snip…
The Bush administration, however, does not share this assessment, as evidenced by its handling of the invasion of Iraq. Before the war, Rumsfeld was dismissive, even contemptuous, of warnings from senior U.S. military officials, such as former Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki, that securing Iraq would require a vast number of boots on the ground.
…snip…
Despite this obvious manpower shortage, the Bush administration remains committed to Rumsfeld’s military-transformation agenda. Neither the president’s budget for 2007 nor the Pentagon’s 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review calls for expanding the number of U.S. troops.
In other words:
The Bush administration does nothing.
They “Stay the course!” that Rumsfeld failing plan has laid out for them and try to ignore the real problems.
Unless McCain and the rest of the GOP that back his plan are advocating reinstating the draft when McCain calls for “another 20,000 troops in Iraq” then they really offer no real solution at all.
Beyond offering no solutions, it is becoming painfully obvious to anyone that pays attention that the Pentagon, rather than dealing with the problems, would rather just paint a beutiful picture of an Iraqi paradise for all of us in the USA. According to SusanG: “More bullshit to swallow from the Pentagon, and yes … you, my fellow taxpayer, get to foot the bill for this faster-food meal, served up to spin the 24-hour news cycle:”
Pentagon memo reveals launch of new PR war
WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is buttressing its public relations staff and starting an operation akin to a political campaign war room as Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld faces intensifying criticism over the Iraq war.
In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, said new teams of people will “develop messages” for the 24-hour news cycle and “correct the record.”
…Another branch would coordinate “surrogates.” In political campaigns, surrogates are usually high-level politicians or key interest groups who speak or travel on behalf of a candidate or an issue.
The plan would focus more resources on so-called new media, such as the Internet and Weblogs. It would also include new workers to book civilian and military guests on television and radio shows.
“Correct the record”??? (The Pentagon released a statement from Donald Rumsfeld Today: “Pay no attention the incompetent man behind the curtain.”)
If they only had a brain…
For the record… That is a propaganda campaign they are gearing up. Don’t they know it is illegal for the American government to direct propaganda at American cictizens?
What is a few more million dollars of OUR TAX MONEY wasted on PROPAGANDA for the failed Bush admins’ policies anyways? For the Bush administration throwing money at a problem is always better than actually doing something to fix it. Little wonder why honest fiscal conservatives hate the GOP now. This is all part of the Bush administrations plan to Stay the course.
Remember this:
A 74-page Pentagon briefing book with talking points on Iraq may be illegal. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complaining that his office had spent “taxpayer dollars to produce partisan political documents,” possibly in violation of laws prohibiting the Executive Branch from using taxpayer dollars for lobbying and propaganda activities.
Just more of the same. No real answers. Beyond rinse and repeat:
They do nothing
The GOP wastes billions of of our tax dollars messing everything up in Iraq in every way possible and creating endless war profits for their cronies… And then they waste even more of our tax dollars trying to convince us it is good for us. And all the while we know the soldiers are returning home to the USA dead and wounded, regardless of the efforts to hide their arrivals from the news’ cameras.
These disgusting propaganda games played by the Pentagon and the Bush administration in order to avoid actually doing something will never draw our attention away from the reality that we will do everything we can to stop this waste of our most precious resources… Our children.