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02/03/2004 Archived Entry: "Military vote? Sheah, right."
Military vote? Sheah, right.
People are getting pissed, all right. Even the people who supposedly love El Residente.
-"The president ignored veterans in the State of the Union Address and with today's release of his 2005 budget, it is further evident that veterans are no longer a priority with this administration," said the leader of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S., expressing dismay at the disgraceful 1.8% increase in veterans' medical care funding. "We look to Congress to reject the president's inadequate proposal and to provide a budget that fully acknowledges the debt our nation owes its veterans."VFW Commander-in-Chief Edward S. Banas Sr., of Voluntown, Conn., said that with only a $500 million increase in medical funding, the administration's budget falls $2.6 billion short of what the Independent Budget recommends is needed to fully meet the demands for quality veterans' health care. "This funding package is a disgrace and a sham," Banas said.
"This deplorable budget will do nothing to alleviate the many thousands of veterans who are waiting six months or more for basic health care appointments with VA. Instead, the budget seeks to drive veterans from the system by realigning funding, charging enrollment fees for access and more than doubling the prescription drug copayment. This is inexcusable, especially when no member of this administration or Congress would wait this long for their health care."
Replies: 3 people speak up
Once again this administration is showing it's true allegiance.
This really bites!!! He is so f'n pompous and why shouldn't he be? He just got yet another free ride another governator self inquiry. We all know what that will turn up,...not much...too little too late.
Time for me to stop writing and go listen to Roy Neel on Dean radio.
I'm going to start suggesting Blah 3, as their site is just overloaded! Too many talkin' and not too much listening responding or even acknowledging and man there's alot going on!
Posted by Joni @ 02/03/2004 09:05 PM NY
Vote these bums out. All of them.
If we can'nt muster enough balls, gumption, time, desire, shrewdness, dedication, passion, inginuity, money, conscensus, whatever (TF) it takes, then we don't deserve it anyway. How many in this administration and Congress are worth a shit? Two, five, ten? Stretching it.
Our founding fathers would puke if they could see these shape we are in. What progess have we made in 200 years? How have we prepared to leave our Country/World for the future generations? I repeat vote these bums out. All of them.
Posted by Aristophanes @ 02/03/2004 09:12 PM NY
Please forgive this long excerpt but before it gets tossed along the internet highway never to be seen again i thought i'd post it here.
If this is bad blog etiquette let me know...
The Real Facts, Please
(Note: this post being left up on top for at least another day, because of the link from BlogforAmerica)
Late last week, the president tried to, unsuccessfully brush off U.N. WMD Inspector Kay's report that there was no basis for believing reports that Iraq had WMDs and was an imminent threat to the U.S. or the world:
Former chief U.S. weapons hunter David Kay said on Capitol Hill on Wednesday "we were almost all wrong" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and that his search there found no evidence of biological or chemical arms.
In Dr. Kay's testimony, he noted that the same intelligence agencies that overestimated Iraq's abilities seemed to have underestimated Iran's and Libya's, and still cannot get a clear fix on North Korea's.
Kay and a number of leading Democrats on Capitol Hill have also called for an investigation, but Republicans say they fear an election-year political witchhunt.
With good reason.
President Bush on Friday sidestepped demands for outside review of pre-war intelligence on Iraq, but said it was important to know all the facts surrounding White House assertions Iraq's illicit weapons justified the U.S. decision to invade.
"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.
Excuse me, Mr. President. You want to know the facts NOW???
With that statement alone, you confirm that you did not have the evidence to justify the deaths of more than 500 GIs and the wounding and injuring of 15,000 more. That statement alone condemns your actions and exposes the way you have misled this country.
Either you blindly trusted in your senior advisors, including the Vice President, who fed you the "cherry-picked" intelligence that they (and you) wanted to believe, or in fact, you were not wise enough to ask for the real facts before invading Iraq. Either way, this is not the leadership we need to fight terrorism.
And, months later, after the war, when the public questioning began to get uncomfortable about no WMDs and no ties to Al Qaeda, do you mean to say that you didn't ask for the facts then either?
"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain has broken party ranks to join Democratic demands for an independent probe into how U.S. intelligence got it wrong given the failure by searchers to find weapons of mass destruction Bush insisted were in Iraq.
"Clearly, this has been a bad hair week for the administration," the source said, while noting that a probe does carry plenty of risks for the administration in an election year.
What a disgusting insult to our military and our veterans, that the administration thinks it's had a bad time of it lately - it's been a little more than a "bad hair week" for those coming back from Iraq dead or injured.
"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.
"I want to be able to compare what the Iraq Survey Group has found with what we thought prior to going into Iraq," he said when asked whether he would support an independent probe.
Condoleeza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, on Thursday acknowledged that there may have been some flaws in the intelligence.
"I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground," she told CBS.
But then Sunday, Mr. President, things got a little too hot in the kitchen with the report that you...
... will establish a bipartisan commission in the next few days to examine American intelligence operations, including a study of possible misjudgments about Iraq's unconventional weapons, senior administration officials said.
The president's decision came after a week of rising pressure on the White House from both Democrats and many ranking Republicans to deal with what the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee has called "egregious" errors that overstated Iraq's stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and made the country appear far closer to developing nuclear weapons than it actually was.
"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.
The commission will not report back until after the November elections. Some former officials who have been approached about taking part say they believe it may take 18 months or more to reach its conclusions.
Convenient, isnt it? The results won't be back until long AFTER the election.
"It became clear to the president that he couldn't sit there and seem uninterested in the fact that the Iraq intel went off the rails," said one senior official involved in the discussions. "He had to do something, and he chose to enlarge the problem, beyond the Iraq experience."
"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.
This may come as a surprise to you Mr. President, but we've known the facts for more than a year:
- You were going to fight this war, regardless of the facts.
- You believed what you wanted us to believe, and most of us believed you.
- You chose the intelligence reports to support your agenda, disregarding the caveats that went with them which said that other conclusions were possible.
- You still fail to acknowledge that pre-emptive war presupposes a level of certainty of the facts - "ironclad empirical data" as George Will said yesterday.
- And, it must be especially galling to you and your blind, unquestioning supporters that the U.N. was right all along. You and your advisors callously thumbed your noses at the international community, but demanded their support when you needed a bogus "coalition."
I believed you a year ago. Then that belief turned into questioning, then into frustration, then into dismay, then into realization and disgust - and then finally into action with this blog.
"I want the American people to know that I, too, want to know the facts," Bush told reporters at the White House.
Do You? Then many who served and who now serve in this country's military want the answer to a question that probably seems like a tired cliche to you - but it isn't to us:
What did you know and when did you know it?
But then, we already know the answer to the first part of that question: you didn't have the facts to commit this country to your personal vendetta.
- posted by a Vet @ 5:15 PM - Comments (2)
Posted by Joni @ 02/03/2004 09:37 PM NY
