Do You Want To Re- Elect Bush For Presendent!
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The NY Post is as unabashedly conservative as the NY Times is unabashedly liberal. I'd hardly trust either one to give an unbiased opinion on the current campaign.delldude said:JUST THE FACTS,MA'AAMUNBIASED MEDIA??
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BUSH FICTION: Bush keeps his promises when it comes to supporting our troops.
FACT: Bush’s go it alone strategy is placing greater strain on our forces—with little assistance from other countries, our troops are facing back to back deployments and are spread thin
* In addition to buying body armor for members of the military, families also had to purchase plane tickets for some of them to return home.
* We are using more National Guard and Reserves in this conflict than ever before in history—they make up nearly half the troops In Iraq
* Bush opposed an amendment to provide health care to all uninsured Reservists
* Bush proposed cutting combat pay for troops overseas
* Yesterday Vice President Cheney admitted they sent troops to Iraq unprepared.
Bush’s Broken Promises Leave Troops and Families Forced to Buy Own Gear
The Lloyd family in Carroll County, Ohio is one of many families that is considering digging into their personal finances to ensure their family servicemember is equipped with the [Kevlar] vest.
Bush Ex-Vets Co-Chair: ‘He's killing the active-duty military....Look at the reserves call-ups for Iraq, the hardships. The National Guard--the state militia--is being used improperly. I took the president at his word on Iraq, and now you can't find a single report to back up or substantiate weapons of mass destruction.’†[Knight Ridder, 3/14/04]
CHENEY ADMITS THE ADMINISTRATION SENT TROOPS TO IRAQ UNPREPARED
“HUME: And [John Kerry] made the accusation, in particular, that body armor was lacking; that proper body armor--the most advanced body armor--was not available to our forces. And he laid the blame at the door of the Bush Administration for that. Your reaction, sir.
CHENEY: “Well the facts are that at the outset of the campaign there was only one factory producing the latest, newest state-of-the-art body armor. There are now 6--they are up and running. I believe the chief of staff of the army, and the vice chief, vice chairman, joint chiefs have testified recently that all of our troops in Iraq are now properly equipped with the newest body armor. So the main problem had been just the sheer capacity to produce these items early on.†[FOX, 3/17/2004 emphasis added]
Major General Don Shepperd Asks Why We Sent Troops Unprepared. “[Reporter Wolf] BLITZER: When you were there, General Shepperd, and you met with men and women on the ground in the military, what were they saying to you?
GEN. SHEPPERD: Well, they were saying that we are short on the up- armored Humvees, we're short of the proper body armor. Everybody had flack jackets and some body armor, but not the new body armor. They showed us the schedule, and said it was going to be done. They was short at that time, I believe, around 1,400 up-armored Humvees that were coming into the country, and the body armor was on schedule. So these shortage will drastically come down, but it does leave you wondering why couldn't we have done this before the war, and we simply didn't.†[CNN, 3/14/04, emphasis added]
Bush’s Failure Leaves Military Families Buying Body Armor for Troops. House appropriators wrote in October 2003 that some active-duty soldiers and reservists are spending as much as $650 out of pocket to buy Interceptor Body Armor vests and Small Arms Protective Insert plates to replace the Vietnam-era flak vests issued when they arrive in Iraq." The Lloyd family in Carroll County, Ohio is one of many families that is considering digging into their personal finances to ensure their family servicemember is equipped with the vest. Ohio Democratic state Senators Marc Dann and Robert Hagan have introduced legislation to provide the Ohio National Guard with $500,000 to buy body armor for troops in Iraq; they expect the federal government will reimburse the state for that money. [Columbus Dispatch, 1/11/04; The News & Observer, 1/4/04; Defense Week, 10/14/03l.]
Army Secretary Said They Were “Not Prepared†for Prolonged Involvement in Iraq. “When the Saddam Hussein government collapsed, U.S. troops in Iraq figured the war was over, except for some mopping up. But as the acting secretary of the Army, Les Brownlee, acknowledged to Congress last week, ‘we simply were not prepared’ for the insurgency that developed in early summer, prolonging the war and taking the lives of hundreds of American soldiers. One 3rd Infantry soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Eric Wright, put it this way in Iraq last June: ‘What was told to us was that we would fight and win and go home.’ It's not that simple.†[Associated Press, 3/13/04]
Troops Forced to Pay Their Way Home. “To date, troops have lacked some key resources. The Pentagon has struggled with delays in the production and distribution of the latest body armor to troops in Iraq, among other supply problems. Troops reuniting with their families have had to pay for their own airfare home and other travel costs once they are flown free to a small selection of cities while on leave.†[AP, 1/20/04; Albuquerque Journal, 12/13/03]
Bush Administration Wanted To Cut Soldiers’ Pay. The Defense Department initially said it would not renew a 50 percent increase in imminent danger pay and a 150 percent increase in the family separation allowance. After a nationwide wave of protest, the Pentagon agreed to a temporary extension of the benefits. [The Leaf-Chronicle, 10/2/03; Boston Herald, 8/15/03; Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/6/03]
Bush Did Not Want To Provide Full Health Care to Reservists. The Bush Administration initially opposed an amendment to allow reservists who could not afford expensive civilian plans to buy into the cheaper TRICARE program year-round, even when they are not on active duty. TRICARE offers medical, dental and pharmacy plans. The provision also extended health coverage to reservists and their families for six months after they return from active duty. According to a 2002 study by the General Accounting Office, about 20 percent of the nation's 1.2 million National Guard and Reserve members do not have adequate health insurance. The number becomes more severe in the lower ranks, where about 40 percent were without coverage, most of those under the age of 35. [Seattle Times, 11/23/03]
Former Cheney Employee, Halliburton, Reaps Profits While Forcing Troops To Eat In Filthy Conditions. Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root [KBR] serves 110,000 soldiers in Iraq their meals. For that service, American taxpayers pay Halliburton “$28 per soldier per day.†But, according to NBC News, “Pentagon inspections of mess halls run by KBR are finding a mess in some of them…In the main Baghdad dining facility where President Bush surprised the troops on Thanksgiving, inspectors found filthy kitchen conditions in each of the three previous months. Complaints filed in August, September and again in October report problems. Blood all over the floor of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meats and vegetables. In October, the inspector writes that Halliburton's previous promises to fix the problems have not been followed through and warns the company serious repercussions may result, due to improper handling and serving of food.†[NBC News, 12/12/03, emphasis added]
As Vice President, Cheney Continued Receiving Compensation From Halliburton. In his $20 million retirement package from Halliburton, Cheney was granted deferred compensation, which paid out his bonus his salary from 1999 over a five year period and his bonus from that year in 2001. In 2001, while serving as Vice President, Cheney received $1,656,696 in deferred compensation from Halliburton, which included a bonus worth $1,451,398 and $205,298 in deferred salary. In 2002, Cheney received $162,392 in deferred salary compensation. [“Income: Type and amount,†Schedule A, Standard Form 278, Richard B. Cheney Personal Financial Disclosure, May 15, 2002; May 15, 2003]
Halliburton A Hazard To Troops. Halliburton doesn’t just hand the troops dirty meals in filthy kitchens. They’re unsafe too. NBC News’ reported that troops suffer “Unclean kitchens and cooking equipment, unsafe food and inadequate food supplies†in Halliburton’s hands. Also, “Just before Bush's visit,†to Baghdad, “there were problems with the safety of drinking water where the president ate his Thanksgiving dinner.†[NBC News, 12/12/03, emphasis added]
Halliburton Also Overcharged Taxpayers on Food for Troops. “The Pentagon said Wednesday that it would withhold about $300 million from payments to a Halliburton subsidiary on a contract to feed soldiers in Iraq until auditors were certain that the government had not been overcharged. The money represents about 15 percent of an open-ended contract with the subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root. A Pentagon spokeswoman said the decision to withhold the money came from the Defense Department's auditing agency, which found ‘the possibility of substantial overcharges.’ …Both Halliburton and the military have come under recent criticism over other Iraq contracts in which Halliburton was found to have overcharged the government. Department auditors have previously reported deficiencies in Halliburton's cost estimates for work in Iraq. In some cases, the company has reimbursed the government; other cases are under review.†[New York Times, 3/19/04]
BUSH LOSING SUPPORT OF MILITARY FAMILIES
2000 Vets Co-Chair Turned Down Job, Disappointed With Bush Administration’s Treatment of Troops in Iraq. “When the Bush campaign asked James McKinnon to co-chair its veterans steering committee in New Hampshire -- a job he held in 2000 -- the 56-year-old Vietnam veteran respectfully, but firmly, said no. ‘I basically told them I was disappointed in his support of veterans,’ said McKinnon, who served two tours in Vietnam with the Coast Guard. ‘He's killing the active-duty military. . . . Look at the reserves call-ups for Iraq, the hardships. The National Guard -- the state militia -- is being used improperly. I took the president at his word on Iraq, and now you can't find a single report to back up or substantiate weapons of mass destruction.’†[Knight Ridder, 3/14/04]
Bush Losing Support of Military Families. “A bipartisan ``Battleground'' poll of likely voters conducted in September found that Bush's approval rating among relatives of military personnel was only 36 percent. Military Families Speak Out, an anti-war group of relatives of deployed troops, plans to observe the Iraq war's first anniversary this week with processions outside Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. ‘I voted for Bush in 2000, and I'm not going to vote for him again,’ said Jean Prewitt, a group member from Birmingham, Ala. Her 24-year-old son, Kelley, was in the Army's 3rd Infantry Division when he was killed April 6 south of Baghdad. ‘I just feel deceived. He just kept screaming, screaming, weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, we've got to get in there. We got in there and now there aren't any.’†[Knight Ridder, 3/14/04]
Troops Frustrated By Lack Of Timely, Accurate Information About Deployments. “The biggest problem is not having a definite answer,†said Maj. Stephen Iacovelli, 37, from Schaumburg, Ill., a member of the Army Reserve's 362nd Psychological Operations Company, of Fayetteville, Ark. [The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9/10/2003]
Staff Sgt. Jerry Sanchez and the other members of his Florida National Guard unit thought they might head home before Thanksgiving. Now, they are not sure if they will leave Iraq until February after Tuesday's announcement that Army National Guard and Reserve units in Iraq and surrounding countries must serve in the region for a full year. “This is totally demoralizing. It's hard enough to be here this long.†[Chicago Tribune, 9/10/03]
BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS NO EXIT STRATEGY
Bush Alienation of Allies Leave “No Good Solutions†In Iraq. “The range of ways to endow Iraqis with power offers "no really good solutions," says a senior intelligence official. Washington would prefer to keep the Governing Council, which it handpicked, or expand it to "replenish" the group with broader representation than the current lineup commands. But neither of those arrangements, if managed unilaterally by the U.S., would look more legitimate to Iraqis than the current council, which is broadly dismissed as nothing but a U.S. proxy. … The dilemma has produced an almost comical turn of events: the go-it-alone Bush Administration is desperately trying to lure the U.N. back into Iraq. "Time was, the U.N. wanted Iraq, and we wouldn't give it away," says a State Department official. "Now we can't give it away fast enough." Ask White House officials how things are progressing toward the June 30 deadline, and they sheepishly say they are waiting for the U.N. to take the lead. ‘They're going to take over the process, and we're going to follow their recommendations,’ says a Bush aide.†[Time, 3/15/04]
Army Chief of Staff Said Several Hundred Thousand Troops Needed. Testifying before Congress, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki admitted, “I would say that what's been mobilized to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousands soldiers are probably a figure that would be required. We're talking about post- hostilities, control over a piece of geography that is fairly significant with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems, and so it takes a significant ground force presence.†Shinseki was later fired by Rumsfeld. [PBS, 3/1/ 04, Boston Globe, 4/6/03]
Number of U.S. Troops Still In Iraq. “There are about 120,000 U.S. forces in Iraq, plus roughly 20,000 in neighboring Kuwait, plus about 30,000 to 40,000 international troops on the ground in Iraq. In other words, there are more ground troops in Iraq now than were used during the initial invasion.†[Associated Press, 3/13/04]
Military Currently Facing Back to Back Deployments. “The Army is spread so thin around the globe that when it needs fresh combat troops for Iraq this fall it will have little choice but to call on the same soldiers who led the charge into Baghdad last spring. The 3rd Infantry Division already has been given an official "warning order" to prepare to return to Iraq as soon as Thanksgiving. When those soldiers flew home from Iraq last summer to their bases in Georgia, few of them could have known they were, in effect, on a roundtrip ticket. They are not alone in facing back-to-back deployments to Iraq. Some of the same Marines who teamed up with the 3rd Infantry to topple Baghdad are already assembling again in Kuwait, only a matter of months after returning home, and more Marines will go next year.†[Associated Press, 3/13/04]
Number of U.S. Troops Killed Since Bush Declared “Mission Accomplishedâ€: “During the two months of major hostilities, March and April of 2003, the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq averaged 69 a month. Now: Since the end of major combat operations May 1, the number of U.S. deaths has averaged 41 a month.†[Associated Press, 3/13/04]
_____________________________
JOHN KERRY WILL ENACT A MILITARY FAMILY BILL OF RIGHTS
I. RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND STEWARDSHIP OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY
• Increase The Size Of The Military. The American military was designed to fight with coalition partners. Lacking those partners due to a failed policy of unilateralism, our Army is stressed to the breaking-point. John Kerry will temporarily increase the size of the active-duty Army by 40,000 troops so that we have the force structure for the challenges we face.
• Reinvigorate American diplomacy to better meet the needs of America’s security. Our military has a right to expect that when they go into conflict on a mission of international security they will have maximum support from troops of other nations affected. Because of the Bush Administration’s disregard for allies and other potential partners, our troops make 82% of the military forces dealing with the insurgency operation in Iraq today, and have suffered 85% of the fatalities. [SOURCE: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat.htm; http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/]
II. COMPETITIVE PAY
• Assure Sufficient Imminent Danger Pay And Family Separation Allowances. Military families, particularly when the service member is deployed to a combat zone, are entitled to our full support and full respect. Unlike the Bush Administration, John Kerry will never attempt to reduce special compensations such as family separation allowance and hazardous duty pay. [SOURCE: Edward Epstein, “Troops in Iraq face pay cut; Pentagon says tough duty bonuses are budget-buster,†San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 2003.]
III. QUALITY HOUSING
• Bring Up Standards Of All Family Housing Units. Military families should live in housing that is adequate to their needs and meets American standards. Unfortunately, military housing has been grossly inadequate for several decades. [Source: Telegraph Herald, “Military Housing Inadequate,†10/28/01] John Kerry will accelerate the construction of new military housing by providing incentives for private developers to build new housing on or near military bases and lease it to military families at a rate consistent with their housing allowances.
IV. QUALITY HEALTH AND DENTAL CARE
• Ensure Service Members and Families Receive Adequate Health Care. Military families should have full access to quality health and dental care, whether stationed at home or abroad. John Kerry will fight to make permanent the extension of TRICARE to unemployed or uninsured reservists.
V. QUALITY EDUCATION
• Defend Impact Aid from Bush Administration Cuts. Military children, along with their parents, sacrifice much in terms of educational and other opportunities by frequently moving to new, different schools. Children of service members deserve educational opportunities equal to the best in our country, and whether at home or abroad, John Kerry will ensure they get the quality education they deserve. The Bush Administration has proposed cutting the Impact Aid program, which provides funding for our nation’s Department of Defense schools. [SOURCE: Brian Faler, “Educators Angry Over Proposed Cut in Aid; Many Children in Military Families Would Feel Impact,†Washington Post, March 19, 2003.]
VI. FIRST-RATE TRAINING, ARMS, AND EQUIPMENT
• Reimburse Families Forced To Purchase Body Armor. No military family should ever have to bake cakes or wash cars to raise the funds to provide their service member adequate personal equipment such as body armor when on a deployment. The Bush administration deployed troops to Iraq without the latest body armor. John Kerry will reimburse families that were forced to provide for themselves. [Source: Vernon Loeb and Theola Labbe, “Body Armor Saves Lives in Iraq; Pentagon Criticized for Undersupply of Protective Vests,†Washington Post, December 4, 2003.]
• First-Rate Training And Equipment. No soldier, sailor, airman or Marine will ever go into harm’s way untrained, when the best training is available, and poorly or incompletely equipped when we have the best equipment available. Our service members and families deserve the peace of mind that comes with knowing that all that can be done to ensure a quick and safe return from a combat theater has been done, and John Kerry will ensure military families have that peace of mind.
VII. UP-TO-DATE, ACCURATE INFORMATION ABOUT DEPLOYMENTS
• Ensure Families Know When Their Loved Ones Leaving and Coming Home. By their very nature, emergency deployments are unpredictable. But routine rotations to sustain on-going operations are reasonably predictable. Our families deserve the best, most current information about the timing and duration of deployments. John Kerry will make every effort to ensure they know that and much more.
VIII. HELP FOR FAMILY MEMBERS AFFECTED BY EXTENDED DEPLOYMENTS
• Penalty-Free Withdrawls from IRA Expenses Associated With Deployments. Our service members and families deserve more consideration and assistance when on operational deployments, and John Kerry will ensure they get that consideration and assistance, including penalty-free withdrawals from Individual Retirement Accounts for expenses associated with deployments.
• Make Family Separation Allowance Permanent. The Bush administration tried to cut family separation allowance. John Kerry would make it permanent and index it to inflation.
IX. ASSISTANCE WHEN A SERVICE MEMBER HAS BEEN KILLED
• Increase The Death Gratuity. When a service member is injured or killed in the line of duty, military families deserve full, complete, and timely notification. No other moment in life will ever carry such pain, and the nation owes surviving family its highest respect and best efforts. Kerry will work to have a $250,000 gratuity added to the Service Members Group Life Insurance if a service member is killed in a combat zone.
• One Year of Military Housing for Families Of Deceased Service Members. Our service members and families deserve full assistance that matches their sacrifice. Kerry will extend from 180 days to one year the amount of time that a family of a service member killed in action can live in military housing so that children can finish the school year and families can plan for the future.
X. RESPONSIVE GOVERNMENT SUPPORT AFTER LEAVING THE MILITARY
• After military service ends, a new commitment from the nation begins to assist and recognize those who have served, and who often bear the wounds of battle. All agencies of government that can help our veterans must help our veterans with service that is complete and compassionate
• John Kerry will fight for quality access to healthcare for all military retirees, provide for full concurrent receipt; and reverse the Bush administration’s Department of Labor inclusion of military training in the criteria for employees who may be exempted from over-time pay.
FACT: Bush’s go it alone strategy is placing greater strain on our forces—with little assistance from other countries, our troops are facing back to back deployments and are spread thin
* In addition to buying body armor for members of the military, families also had to purchase plane tickets for some of them to return home.
* We are using more National Guard and Reserves in this conflict than ever before in history—they make up nearly half the troops In Iraq
* Bush opposed an amendment to provide health care to all uninsured Reservists
* Bush proposed cutting combat pay for troops overseas
* Yesterday Vice President Cheney admitted they sent troops to Iraq unprepared.
Bush’s Broken Promises Leave Troops and Families Forced to Buy Own Gear
The Lloyd family in Carroll County, Ohio is one of many families that is considering digging into their personal finances to ensure their family servicemember is equipped with the [Kevlar] vest.
Bush Ex-Vets Co-Chair: ‘He's killing the active-duty military....Look at the reserves call-ups for Iraq, the hardships. The National Guard--the state militia--is being used improperly. I took the president at his word on Iraq, and now you can't find a single report to back up or substantiate weapons of mass destruction.’†[Knight Ridder, 3/14/04]
CHENEY ADMITS THE ADMINISTRATION SENT TROOPS TO IRAQ UNPREPARED
“HUME: And [John Kerry] made the accusation, in particular, that body armor was lacking; that proper body armor--the most advanced body armor--was not available to our forces. And he laid the blame at the door of the Bush Administration for that. Your reaction, sir.
CHENEY: “Well the facts are that at the outset of the campaign there was only one factory producing the latest, newest state-of-the-art body armor. There are now 6--they are up and running. I believe the chief of staff of the army, and the vice chief, vice chairman, joint chiefs have testified recently that all of our troops in Iraq are now properly equipped with the newest body armor. So the main problem had been just the sheer capacity to produce these items early on.†[FOX, 3/17/2004 emphasis added]
Major General Don Shepperd Asks Why We Sent Troops Unprepared. “[Reporter Wolf] BLITZER: When you were there, General Shepperd, and you met with men and women on the ground in the military, what were they saying to you?
GEN. SHEPPERD: Well, they were saying that we are short on the up- armored Humvees, we're short of the proper body armor. Everybody had flack jackets and some body armor, but not the new body armor. They showed us the schedule, and said it was going to be done. They was short at that time, I believe, around 1,400 up-armored Humvees that were coming into the country, and the body armor was on schedule. So these shortage will drastically come down, but it does leave you wondering why couldn't we have done this before the war, and we simply didn't.†[CNN, 3/14/04, emphasis added]
Bush’s Failure Leaves Military Families Buying Body Armor for Troops. House appropriators wrote in October 2003 that some active-duty soldiers and reservists are spending as much as $650 out of pocket to buy Interceptor Body Armor vests and Small Arms Protective Insert plates to replace the Vietnam-era flak vests issued when they arrive in Iraq." The Lloyd family in Carroll County, Ohio is one of many families that is considering digging into their personal finances to ensure their family servicemember is equipped with the vest. Ohio Democratic state Senators Marc Dann and Robert Hagan have introduced legislation to provide the Ohio National Guard with $500,000 to buy body armor for troops in Iraq; they expect the federal government will reimburse the state for that money. [Columbus Dispatch, 1/11/04; The News & Observer, 1/4/04; Defense Week, 10/14/03l.]
Army Secretary Said They Were “Not Prepared†for Prolonged Involvement in Iraq. “When the Saddam Hussein government collapsed, U.S. troops in Iraq figured the war was over, except for some mopping up. But as the acting secretary of the Army, Les Brownlee, acknowledged to Congress last week, ‘we simply were not prepared’ for the insurgency that developed in early summer, prolonging the war and taking the lives of hundreds of American soldiers. One 3rd Infantry soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Eric Wright, put it this way in Iraq last June: ‘What was told to us was that we would fight and win and go home.’ It's not that simple.†[Associated Press, 3/13/04]
Troops Forced to Pay Their Way Home. “To date, troops have lacked some key resources. The Pentagon has struggled with delays in the production and distribution of the latest body armor to troops in Iraq, among other supply problems. Troops reuniting with their families have had to pay for their own airfare home and other travel costs once they are flown free to a small selection of cities while on leave.†[AP, 1/20/04; Albuquerque Journal, 12/13/03]
Bush Administration Wanted To Cut Soldiers’ Pay. The Defense Department initially said it would not renew a 50 percent increase in imminent danger pay and a 150 percent increase in the family separation allowance. After a nationwide wave of protest, the Pentagon agreed to a temporary extension of the benefits. [The Leaf-Chronicle, 10/2/03; Boston Herald, 8/15/03; Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/6/03]
Bush Did Not Want To Provide Full Health Care to Reservists. The Bush Administration initially opposed an amendment to allow reservists who could not afford expensive civilian plans to buy into the cheaper TRICARE program year-round, even when they are not on active duty. TRICARE offers medical, dental and pharmacy plans. The provision also extended health coverage to reservists and their families for six months after they return from active duty. According to a 2002 study by the General Accounting Office, about 20 percent of the nation's 1.2 million National Guard and Reserve members do not have adequate health insurance. The number becomes more severe in the lower ranks, where about 40 percent were without coverage, most of those under the age of 35. [Seattle Times, 11/23/03]
Former Cheney Employee, Halliburton, Reaps Profits While Forcing Troops To Eat In Filthy Conditions. Halliburton’s subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root [KBR] serves 110,000 soldiers in Iraq their meals. For that service, American taxpayers pay Halliburton “$28 per soldier per day.†But, according to NBC News, “Pentagon inspections of mess halls run by KBR are finding a mess in some of them…In the main Baghdad dining facility where President Bush surprised the troops on Thanksgiving, inspectors found filthy kitchen conditions in each of the three previous months. Complaints filed in August, September and again in October report problems. Blood all over the floor of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meats and vegetables. In October, the inspector writes that Halliburton's previous promises to fix the problems have not been followed through and warns the company serious repercussions may result, due to improper handling and serving of food.†[NBC News, 12/12/03, emphasis added]
As Vice President, Cheney Continued Receiving Compensation From Halliburton. In his $20 million retirement package from Halliburton, Cheney was granted deferred compensation, which paid out his bonus his salary from 1999 over a five year period and his bonus from that year in 2001. In 2001, while serving as Vice President, Cheney received $1,656,696 in deferred compensation from Halliburton, which included a bonus worth $1,451,398 and $205,298 in deferred salary. In 2002, Cheney received $162,392 in deferred salary compensation. [“Income: Type and amount,†Schedule A, Standard Form 278, Richard B. Cheney Personal Financial Disclosure, May 15, 2002; May 15, 2003]
Halliburton A Hazard To Troops. Halliburton doesn’t just hand the troops dirty meals in filthy kitchens. They’re unsafe too. NBC News’ reported that troops suffer “Unclean kitchens and cooking equipment, unsafe food and inadequate food supplies†in Halliburton’s hands. Also, “Just before Bush's visit,†to Baghdad, “there were problems with the safety of drinking water where the president ate his Thanksgiving dinner.†[NBC News, 12/12/03, emphasis added]
Halliburton Also Overcharged Taxpayers on Food for Troops. “The Pentagon said Wednesday that it would withhold about $300 million from payments to a Halliburton subsidiary on a contract to feed soldiers in Iraq until auditors were certain that the government had not been overcharged. The money represents about 15 percent of an open-ended contract with the subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root. A Pentagon spokeswoman said the decision to withhold the money came from the Defense Department's auditing agency, which found ‘the possibility of substantial overcharges.’ …Both Halliburton and the military have come under recent criticism over other Iraq contracts in which Halliburton was found to have overcharged the government. Department auditors have previously reported deficiencies in Halliburton's cost estimates for work in Iraq. In some cases, the company has reimbursed the government; other cases are under review.†[New York Times, 3/19/04]
BUSH LOSING SUPPORT OF MILITARY FAMILIES
2000 Vets Co-Chair Turned Down Job, Disappointed With Bush Administration’s Treatment of Troops in Iraq. “When the Bush campaign asked James McKinnon to co-chair its veterans steering committee in New Hampshire -- a job he held in 2000 -- the 56-year-old Vietnam veteran respectfully, but firmly, said no. ‘I basically told them I was disappointed in his support of veterans,’ said McKinnon, who served two tours in Vietnam with the Coast Guard. ‘He's killing the active-duty military. . . . Look at the reserves call-ups for Iraq, the hardships. The National Guard -- the state militia -- is being used improperly. I took the president at his word on Iraq, and now you can't find a single report to back up or substantiate weapons of mass destruction.’†[Knight Ridder, 3/14/04]
Bush Losing Support of Military Families. “A bipartisan ``Battleground'' poll of likely voters conducted in September found that Bush's approval rating among relatives of military personnel was only 36 percent. Military Families Speak Out, an anti-war group of relatives of deployed troops, plans to observe the Iraq war's first anniversary this week with processions outside Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. ‘I voted for Bush in 2000, and I'm not going to vote for him again,’ said Jean Prewitt, a group member from Birmingham, Ala. Her 24-year-old son, Kelley, was in the Army's 3rd Infantry Division when he was killed April 6 south of Baghdad. ‘I just feel deceived. He just kept screaming, screaming, weapons of mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, we've got to get in there. We got in there and now there aren't any.’†[Knight Ridder, 3/14/04]
Troops Frustrated By Lack Of Timely, Accurate Information About Deployments. “The biggest problem is not having a definite answer,†said Maj. Stephen Iacovelli, 37, from Schaumburg, Ill., a member of the Army Reserve's 362nd Psychological Operations Company, of Fayetteville, Ark. [The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 9/10/2003]
Staff Sgt. Jerry Sanchez and the other members of his Florida National Guard unit thought they might head home before Thanksgiving. Now, they are not sure if they will leave Iraq until February after Tuesday's announcement that Army National Guard and Reserve units in Iraq and surrounding countries must serve in the region for a full year. “This is totally demoralizing. It's hard enough to be here this long.†[Chicago Tribune, 9/10/03]
BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS NO EXIT STRATEGY
Bush Alienation of Allies Leave “No Good Solutions†In Iraq. “The range of ways to endow Iraqis with power offers "no really good solutions," says a senior intelligence official. Washington would prefer to keep the Governing Council, which it handpicked, or expand it to "replenish" the group with broader representation than the current lineup commands. But neither of those arrangements, if managed unilaterally by the U.S., would look more legitimate to Iraqis than the current council, which is broadly dismissed as nothing but a U.S. proxy. … The dilemma has produced an almost comical turn of events: the go-it-alone Bush Administration is desperately trying to lure the U.N. back into Iraq. "Time was, the U.N. wanted Iraq, and we wouldn't give it away," says a State Department official. "Now we can't give it away fast enough." Ask White House officials how things are progressing toward the June 30 deadline, and they sheepishly say they are waiting for the U.N. to take the lead. ‘They're going to take over the process, and we're going to follow their recommendations,’ says a Bush aide.†[Time, 3/15/04]
Army Chief of Staff Said Several Hundred Thousand Troops Needed. Testifying before Congress, Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki admitted, “I would say that what's been mobilized to this point, something on the order of several hundred thousands soldiers are probably a figure that would be required. We're talking about post- hostilities, control over a piece of geography that is fairly significant with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems, and so it takes a significant ground force presence.†Shinseki was later fired by Rumsfeld. [PBS, 3/1/ 04, Boston Globe, 4/6/03]
Number of U.S. Troops Still In Iraq. “There are about 120,000 U.S. forces in Iraq, plus roughly 20,000 in neighboring Kuwait, plus about 30,000 to 40,000 international troops on the ground in Iraq. In other words, there are more ground troops in Iraq now than were used during the initial invasion.†[Associated Press, 3/13/04]
Military Currently Facing Back to Back Deployments. “The Army is spread so thin around the globe that when it needs fresh combat troops for Iraq this fall it will have little choice but to call on the same soldiers who led the charge into Baghdad last spring. The 3rd Infantry Division already has been given an official "warning order" to prepare to return to Iraq as soon as Thanksgiving. When those soldiers flew home from Iraq last summer to their bases in Georgia, few of them could have known they were, in effect, on a roundtrip ticket. They are not alone in facing back-to-back deployments to Iraq. Some of the same Marines who teamed up with the 3rd Infantry to topple Baghdad are already assembling again in Kuwait, only a matter of months after returning home, and more Marines will go next year.†[Associated Press, 3/13/04]
Number of U.S. Troops Killed Since Bush Declared “Mission Accomplishedâ€: “During the two months of major hostilities, March and April of 2003, the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq averaged 69 a month. Now: Since the end of major combat operations May 1, the number of U.S. deaths has averaged 41 a month.†[Associated Press, 3/13/04]
_____________________________
JOHN KERRY WILL ENACT A MILITARY FAMILY BILL OF RIGHTS
I. RESPONSIBLE LEADERSHIP AND STEWARDSHIP OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY
• Increase The Size Of The Military. The American military was designed to fight with coalition partners. Lacking those partners due to a failed policy of unilateralism, our Army is stressed to the breaking-point. John Kerry will temporarily increase the size of the active-duty Army by 40,000 troops so that we have the force structure for the challenges we face.
• Reinvigorate American diplomacy to better meet the needs of America’s security. Our military has a right to expect that when they go into conflict on a mission of international security they will have maximum support from troops of other nations affected. Because of the Bush Administration’s disregard for allies and other potential partners, our troops make 82% of the military forces dealing with the insurgency operation in Iraq today, and have suffered 85% of the fatalities. [SOURCE: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_orbat.htm; http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/]
II. COMPETITIVE PAY
• Assure Sufficient Imminent Danger Pay And Family Separation Allowances. Military families, particularly when the service member is deployed to a combat zone, are entitled to our full support and full respect. Unlike the Bush Administration, John Kerry will never attempt to reduce special compensations such as family separation allowance and hazardous duty pay. [SOURCE: Edward Epstein, “Troops in Iraq face pay cut; Pentagon says tough duty bonuses are budget-buster,†San Francisco Chronicle, August 14, 2003.]
III. QUALITY HOUSING
• Bring Up Standards Of All Family Housing Units. Military families should live in housing that is adequate to their needs and meets American standards. Unfortunately, military housing has been grossly inadequate for several decades. [Source: Telegraph Herald, “Military Housing Inadequate,†10/28/01] John Kerry will accelerate the construction of new military housing by providing incentives for private developers to build new housing on or near military bases and lease it to military families at a rate consistent with their housing allowances.
IV. QUALITY HEALTH AND DENTAL CARE
• Ensure Service Members and Families Receive Adequate Health Care. Military families should have full access to quality health and dental care, whether stationed at home or abroad. John Kerry will fight to make permanent the extension of TRICARE to unemployed or uninsured reservists.
V. QUALITY EDUCATION
• Defend Impact Aid from Bush Administration Cuts. Military children, along with their parents, sacrifice much in terms of educational and other opportunities by frequently moving to new, different schools. Children of service members deserve educational opportunities equal to the best in our country, and whether at home or abroad, John Kerry will ensure they get the quality education they deserve. The Bush Administration has proposed cutting the Impact Aid program, which provides funding for our nation’s Department of Defense schools. [SOURCE: Brian Faler, “Educators Angry Over Proposed Cut in Aid; Many Children in Military Families Would Feel Impact,†Washington Post, March 19, 2003.]
VI. FIRST-RATE TRAINING, ARMS, AND EQUIPMENT
• Reimburse Families Forced To Purchase Body Armor. No military family should ever have to bake cakes or wash cars to raise the funds to provide their service member adequate personal equipment such as body armor when on a deployment. The Bush administration deployed troops to Iraq without the latest body armor. John Kerry will reimburse families that were forced to provide for themselves. [Source: Vernon Loeb and Theola Labbe, “Body Armor Saves Lives in Iraq; Pentagon Criticized for Undersupply of Protective Vests,†Washington Post, December 4, 2003.]
• First-Rate Training And Equipment. No soldier, sailor, airman or Marine will ever go into harm’s way untrained, when the best training is available, and poorly or incompletely equipped when we have the best equipment available. Our service members and families deserve the peace of mind that comes with knowing that all that can be done to ensure a quick and safe return from a combat theater has been done, and John Kerry will ensure military families have that peace of mind.
VII. UP-TO-DATE, ACCURATE INFORMATION ABOUT DEPLOYMENTS
• Ensure Families Know When Their Loved Ones Leaving and Coming Home. By their very nature, emergency deployments are unpredictable. But routine rotations to sustain on-going operations are reasonably predictable. Our families deserve the best, most current information about the timing and duration of deployments. John Kerry will make every effort to ensure they know that and much more.
VIII. HELP FOR FAMILY MEMBERS AFFECTED BY EXTENDED DEPLOYMENTS
• Penalty-Free Withdrawls from IRA Expenses Associated With Deployments. Our service members and families deserve more consideration and assistance when on operational deployments, and John Kerry will ensure they get that consideration and assistance, including penalty-free withdrawals from Individual Retirement Accounts for expenses associated with deployments.
• Make Family Separation Allowance Permanent. The Bush administration tried to cut family separation allowance. John Kerry would make it permanent and index it to inflation.
IX. ASSISTANCE WHEN A SERVICE MEMBER HAS BEEN KILLED
• Increase The Death Gratuity. When a service member is injured or killed in the line of duty, military families deserve full, complete, and timely notification. No other moment in life will ever carry such pain, and the nation owes surviving family its highest respect and best efforts. Kerry will work to have a $250,000 gratuity added to the Service Members Group Life Insurance if a service member is killed in a combat zone.
• One Year of Military Housing for Families Of Deceased Service Members. Our service members and families deserve full assistance that matches their sacrifice. Kerry will extend from 180 days to one year the amount of time that a family of a service member killed in action can live in military housing so that children can finish the school year and families can plan for the future.
X. RESPONSIVE GOVERNMENT SUPPORT AFTER LEAVING THE MILITARY
• After military service ends, a new commitment from the nation begins to assist and recognize those who have served, and who often bear the wounds of battle. All agencies of government that can help our veterans must help our veterans with service that is complete and compassionate
• John Kerry will fight for quality access to healthcare for all military retirees, provide for full concurrent receipt; and reverse the Bush administration’s Department of Labor inclusion of military training in the criteria for employees who may be exempted from over-time pay.
how's about the clinton years of deboning the military....??
left 'W' with a terribly underfunded/decapitated military......where do you think clintstone got his budget??
and i just suppose 'w' or anyone for that matter can snap there fingers and its fixed overnite,huh?
oh i forgot,kerry will...
here,you'll like this one: 😉
left 'W' with a terribly underfunded/decapitated military......where do you think clintstone got his budget??
and i just suppose 'w' or anyone for that matter can snap there fingers and its fixed overnite,huh?
oh i forgot,kerry will...
here,you'll like this one: 😉
sentrido
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BUSH/CHENEY FICTION: Vice President Dick Cheney emerged from his bunker to question John Kerry's leadership on national security.
UPDATE: John McCain Comes to Kerry's Defense on National Security. "Mr. McCain also defended Mr. Kerry in an appearance on NBC's "Today," saying in response to a question that he did not believe Mr. Kerry was "weak on defense." [New York Times, 3/18/04]
FACT: CHENEY IS THE WRONG MAN TO CHALLENGE JOHN KERRY ON DEFENSE
Cheney on NBC's Meet The Press:
MR. RUSSERT: Do you regret not taking Saddam out nine years ago?
MR. CHENEY: I don't, Tim. It was--and it's been talked about since then. But the fact of the matter is, the only way you could have done that would be to go to Baghdad and occupy Iraq. If we'd done that, the U.S. would have been all alone. We would not have had the support of the coalition, especially of the Arab nations that fought alongside us in Kuwait. None of them ever set foot inside Iraq. Conversations I had with leaders in the region afterwards--they all supported the decision that was made not to go to Baghdad. They were concerned that we not get into a position where we shifted instead of being the leader of an international coalition to roll back Iraqi aggression to one in which we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world taking down governments. [Meet the Press, 8/27/00, emphasis added]
CHENEY: “We Got It Rightâ€â€”“Sound†Decision To Keep Saddam In 1991
“…I think we got it right, so suppose it's one of those things that'll be debated for some time. But I thought the decision was sound at the time, and I do today.†[Meet the Press, 8/27/00, emphasis added]
CHENEY: Ousting Saddam in 1991 Would “Not Have Been Easyâ€â€”New Government Difficult to Establish
“There were ample reasons for the first President Bush not to go after Mr. Hussein. The current vice president and then the secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, outlined some of them in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1992, when he said: ‘If we'd gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein -- assuming we could have found him -- we'd have had to put a lot of forces in and run him to ground someplace. He would not have been easy to capture. Then you've got to put a new government in his place, and then you're faced with the question of what kind of government are you going to establish in Iraq? Is it going to be a Kurdish government, or a Shia government or a Sunni government?’ Mr. Cheney continued. ‘How many forces are you going to have to leave there to keep it propped up, how many casualties are you going to take through the course of this operation?’†[New York Times, 12/16/03, emphasis added]
CHENEY: Did an ABOUT FACE by Misleading America About Imminent Threat
CHENEY: Began Planning for Hussein’s Overthrow Just Months After Election. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill-A Member of National Security Council-Said Bush Began Building Case Against Saddam "From The Start" Of His Administration. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who served on Bush's National Security Council, revealed that Saddam Hussein was a target as early as the first security meeting (January 30, 2001) ten days after Bush took office. O'Neill recalled, "Getting Hussein was now the administration's focus, and that much was already clear." O'Neill noted, "from the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country…It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President was saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'" [Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, pp. 75, 86]
CHENEY: Cheney Misled America by Building a Case for War By Asserting Hussein Was Trying to Produce Nuclear Weapons, Had Ties to Al Qaeda. “But we also have to address the question of where might these terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons? And Saddam Hussein becomes a prime suspect in that regard because of his past track record and because we know he has, in fact, developed these kinds of capabilities, chemical and biological weapons. We know he's used chemical weapons. We know he's reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War. We know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization.†[NBC, “Meet the Press,†3/16/03]
But Tenet Had to Correct Cheney on Iraq-al-Queda Ties. “Tenet conceded that he had not known until the eve of Tuesday's hearing about a specific reference Cheney made in a newspaper interview in support of his contention of an operational tie between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Cheney had cited an article in The Weekly Standard magazine which was based in large part on a since-discredited - and classified - Defense Department document from the office of Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. That document contended there was a relationship between Saddam and the al-Qaeda organization. Tenet revealed that the CIA ‘went back to the Department of Defense, who subsequently retracted the document and submitted a correction to you (the Senate committee) because of our concerns with what the document said.’ When asked by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., about Cheney's assertion that the magazine article ‘was the best source of information’ about the alleged connection, Tenet replied that he ‘learned about his quote last night when I was preparing for this hearing. I was unaware he had said that, and I will talk to him about it.’â€
CIA Advisor Kay Said Leaders May Have Manipulated Data. “Kay, the former CIA adviser for the Iraqi weapons search … said Thursday that the commission should look into whether political leaders manipulated intelligence data. ‘I think that is an important question that needs to be understood,’ he said Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.†[Associated Press, 2/6/04]
Tenet Said Intelligence Never Said “Imminent†Threat. â€CIA Director George J. Tenet offered a rare and forceful defense yesterday of the nation's prewar intelligence, saying his agents never said that Iraq posed an "imminent" threat but acknowledging weaknesses in U.S. efforts to penetrate high levels of Saddam Hussein's regime. Under criticism that flawed intelligence information led to the invasion of Iraq, Tenet asserted that his agents accurately portrayed Hussein as a rising danger who sought nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.†[Baltimore Sun, 2/6/04]
As Defense Chief Under Bush I, Cheney Cut Programs That Republicans Now Say Were “Critical To Recent Military Successesâ€
RNC: Kerry Would Cut F-16s [RNC Research Memo,†Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It, 7/18/03]
*Cheney: Proposed Cuts to F-16 Aircraft. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “If you're going to have a smaller air force, you don't need as many F-16s…The F-16D we basically continue to buy and close it out because we're not going to have as big a force structure and we won't need as many F-16s.†According to the Boston Globe, Bush’s 1991 defense budget “kill[ed] 81 programs for potential savings of $ 11.9 billion…Major weapons killed include[d]….the Air Force's F-16 airplane.†[Cheney testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 2/7/91; Boston Globe, 2/5/91]
*Cheney Also Cut F-14 Tomcats. In 1991, Cheney was successful in scrapping plans for new F-14 Tomcat fighters. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “What I recommended to the Committee was that we shut down the new F-14D production line, which will save almost $2-1/2 billion…†[Newday, 2/5/91; Cheney testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 7/13/89]
RNC: Kerry Would Cut B-2s [RNC Research Memo,†Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It, 7/18/03]
*Cheney: Proposed Cuts to B-2 Program. According to the Boston Globe, in 1990, “Defense Secretary Richard Cheney announced a cutback… of nearly 45 percent in the administration's B-2 Stealth bomber program, from 132 airplanes to 75…†[Boston Globe, 4/27/90]
RNC: Kerry Would Cut AH-64 Apaches [RNC Research Memo,†Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It, 7/18/03]
*CHENEY: Proposed Cuts to AH-64 Apaches. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, Cheney said, “This is just a list of some of the programs that I've recommended termination: the V-22 Osprey, the F-14D, the Army Helicopter Improvement Program, Phoenix missile, F-15E, the Apache helicopter, the M1 tank, et cetera.†In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “The Army, as I indicated in my earlier testimony, recommended to me that we keep a robust Apache helicopter program going forward, AH-64…I forced the Army to make choices…So I recommended that we cancel the AH-64 program two years out.†[Cheney testimony, Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, 6/12/90; Cheney Testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 7/13/89]
RNC: Kerry Would Cut M-1 Abrams Tanks [RNC Research Memo,†Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It, 7/18/03]
*CHENEY: Proposed Cuts to M-1 Abrams Tanks. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, Cheney said, “This is just a list of some of the programs that I've recommended termination: the V-22 Osprey, the F-14D, the Army Helicopter Improvement Program, Phoenix missile, F-15E, the Apache helicopter, the M1 tank, et cetera.†The Boston Globe reported on the impact of Cheney’s cuts to armored tanks: “The Army's cupboard is left particularly bare. Coming in the wake of last year's killing of the M-1 tank and the Apache helicopter, the death of the M-2 means the Army will soon have virtually no major weapons in production.†[Cheney testimony, Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, 6/12/90; Boston Globe, 2/5/91]
UPDATE: John McCain Comes to Kerry's Defense on National Security. "Mr. McCain also defended Mr. Kerry in an appearance on NBC's "Today," saying in response to a question that he did not believe Mr. Kerry was "weak on defense." [New York Times, 3/18/04]
FACT: CHENEY IS THE WRONG MAN TO CHALLENGE JOHN KERRY ON DEFENSE
Cheney on NBC's Meet The Press:
MR. RUSSERT: Do you regret not taking Saddam out nine years ago?
MR. CHENEY: I don't, Tim. It was--and it's been talked about since then. But the fact of the matter is, the only way you could have done that would be to go to Baghdad and occupy Iraq. If we'd done that, the U.S. would have been all alone. We would not have had the support of the coalition, especially of the Arab nations that fought alongside us in Kuwait. None of them ever set foot inside Iraq. Conversations I had with leaders in the region afterwards--they all supported the decision that was made not to go to Baghdad. They were concerned that we not get into a position where we shifted instead of being the leader of an international coalition to roll back Iraqi aggression to one in which we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world taking down governments. [Meet the Press, 8/27/00, emphasis added]
CHENEY: “We Got It Rightâ€â€”“Sound†Decision To Keep Saddam In 1991
“…I think we got it right, so suppose it's one of those things that'll be debated for some time. But I thought the decision was sound at the time, and I do today.†[Meet the Press, 8/27/00, emphasis added]
CHENEY: Ousting Saddam in 1991 Would “Not Have Been Easyâ€â€”New Government Difficult to Establish
“There were ample reasons for the first President Bush not to go after Mr. Hussein. The current vice president and then the secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, outlined some of them in an interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1992, when he said: ‘If we'd gone to Baghdad and got rid of Saddam Hussein -- assuming we could have found him -- we'd have had to put a lot of forces in and run him to ground someplace. He would not have been easy to capture. Then you've got to put a new government in his place, and then you're faced with the question of what kind of government are you going to establish in Iraq? Is it going to be a Kurdish government, or a Shia government or a Sunni government?’ Mr. Cheney continued. ‘How many forces are you going to have to leave there to keep it propped up, how many casualties are you going to take through the course of this operation?’†[New York Times, 12/16/03, emphasis added]
CHENEY: Did an ABOUT FACE by Misleading America About Imminent Threat
CHENEY: Began Planning for Hussein’s Overthrow Just Months After Election. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill-A Member of National Security Council-Said Bush Began Building Case Against Saddam "From The Start" Of His Administration. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who served on Bush's National Security Council, revealed that Saddam Hussein was a target as early as the first security meeting (January 30, 2001) ten days after Bush took office. O'Neill recalled, "Getting Hussein was now the administration's focus, and that much was already clear." O'Neill noted, "from the start, we were building the case against Hussein and looking at how we could take him out and change Iraq into a new country…It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The President was saying, 'Fine. Go find me a way to do this.'" [Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty, pp. 75, 86]
CHENEY: Cheney Misled America by Building a Case for War By Asserting Hussein Was Trying to Produce Nuclear Weapons, Had Ties to Al Qaeda. “But we also have to address the question of where might these terrorists acquire weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons? And Saddam Hussein becomes a prime suspect in that regard because of his past track record and because we know he has, in fact, developed these kinds of capabilities, chemical and biological weapons. We know he's used chemical weapons. We know he's reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War. We know he's out trying once again to produce nuclear weapons and we know that he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al-Qaeda organization.†[NBC, “Meet the Press,†3/16/03]
But Tenet Had to Correct Cheney on Iraq-al-Queda Ties. “Tenet conceded that he had not known until the eve of Tuesday's hearing about a specific reference Cheney made in a newspaper interview in support of his contention of an operational tie between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network. In a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Cheney had cited an article in The Weekly Standard magazine which was based in large part on a since-discredited - and classified - Defense Department document from the office of Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith. That document contended there was a relationship between Saddam and the al-Qaeda organization. Tenet revealed that the CIA ‘went back to the Department of Defense, who subsequently retracted the document and submitted a correction to you (the Senate committee) because of our concerns with what the document said.’ When asked by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., about Cheney's assertion that the magazine article ‘was the best source of information’ about the alleged connection, Tenet replied that he ‘learned about his quote last night when I was preparing for this hearing. I was unaware he had said that, and I will talk to him about it.’â€
CIA Advisor Kay Said Leaders May Have Manipulated Data. “Kay, the former CIA adviser for the Iraqi weapons search … said Thursday that the commission should look into whether political leaders manipulated intelligence data. ‘I think that is an important question that needs to be understood,’ he said Thursday at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.†[Associated Press, 2/6/04]
Tenet Said Intelligence Never Said “Imminent†Threat. â€CIA Director George J. Tenet offered a rare and forceful defense yesterday of the nation's prewar intelligence, saying his agents never said that Iraq posed an "imminent" threat but acknowledging weaknesses in U.S. efforts to penetrate high levels of Saddam Hussein's regime. Under criticism that flawed intelligence information led to the invasion of Iraq, Tenet asserted that his agents accurately portrayed Hussein as a rising danger who sought nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.†[Baltimore Sun, 2/6/04]
As Defense Chief Under Bush I, Cheney Cut Programs That Republicans Now Say Were “Critical To Recent Military Successesâ€
RNC: Kerry Would Cut F-16s [RNC Research Memo,†Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It, 7/18/03]
*Cheney: Proposed Cuts to F-16 Aircraft. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “If you're going to have a smaller air force, you don't need as many F-16s…The F-16D we basically continue to buy and close it out because we're not going to have as big a force structure and we won't need as many F-16s.†According to the Boston Globe, Bush’s 1991 defense budget “kill[ed] 81 programs for potential savings of $ 11.9 billion…Major weapons killed include[d]….the Air Force's F-16 airplane.†[Cheney testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 2/7/91; Boston Globe, 2/5/91]
*Cheney Also Cut F-14 Tomcats. In 1991, Cheney was successful in scrapping plans for new F-14 Tomcat fighters. In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “What I recommended to the Committee was that we shut down the new F-14D production line, which will save almost $2-1/2 billion…†[Newday, 2/5/91; Cheney testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 7/13/89]
RNC: Kerry Would Cut B-2s [RNC Research Memo,†Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It, 7/18/03]
*Cheney: Proposed Cuts to B-2 Program. According to the Boston Globe, in 1990, “Defense Secretary Richard Cheney announced a cutback… of nearly 45 percent in the administration's B-2 Stealth bomber program, from 132 airplanes to 75…†[Boston Globe, 4/27/90]
RNC: Kerry Would Cut AH-64 Apaches [RNC Research Memo,†Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It, 7/18/03]
*CHENEY: Proposed Cuts to AH-64 Apaches. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, Cheney said, “This is just a list of some of the programs that I've recommended termination: the V-22 Osprey, the F-14D, the Army Helicopter Improvement Program, Phoenix missile, F-15E, the Apache helicopter, the M1 tank, et cetera.†In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, Cheney said, “The Army, as I indicated in my earlier testimony, recommended to me that we keep a robust Apache helicopter program going forward, AH-64…I forced the Army to make choices…So I recommended that we cancel the AH-64 program two years out.†[Cheney testimony, Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, 6/12/90; Cheney Testimony, House Armed Services Committee, 7/13/89]
RNC: Kerry Would Cut M-1 Abrams Tanks [RNC Research Memo,†Kerry’s Military: As He Would Like It, 7/18/03]
*CHENEY: Proposed Cuts to M-1 Abrams Tanks. In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, Cheney said, “This is just a list of some of the programs that I've recommended termination: the V-22 Osprey, the F-14D, the Army Helicopter Improvement Program, Phoenix missile, F-15E, the Apache helicopter, the M1 tank, et cetera.†The Boston Globe reported on the impact of Cheney’s cuts to armored tanks: “The Army's cupboard is left particularly bare. Coming in the wake of last year's killing of the M-1 tank and the Apache helicopter, the death of the M-2 means the Army will soon have virtually no major weapons in production.†[Cheney testimony, Senate Appropriations Committee, Defense Subcommittee, 6/12/90; Boston Globe, 2/5/91]
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BUSH FICTION: In 1995, John Kerry proposed "deeply irresponsible" cuts in intelligence spending that "gutted" intelligence funding.
FACT: The so-called "deeply irresponsible cuts" mentioned by Bush "represented about the same amount Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Senate that same day he wanted cut from the intelligence spending bill based on an unspent, secret fund that had been accumulated by one intelligence agency "without informing the Pentagon, CIA or Congress," according to The Washington Post.
The truth is, the cuts passed by voice vote with no opposition, including such radical "left-wingers" as Republicans Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum and Don Nickles. The so-called "cuts" then became law, without a single Republican complaining about the measure for the nine years prior to the 2004 Presidential campaign. Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate, makes this point: "Kerry's proposal would not have cut a single intelligence program." What the Republicans don't want you to know is that John Kerry has supported $200 billion in intelligence funding over the past seven years - a 50 percent increase since 1996.
On March 9th, in a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, George Tenet said that the one percent reduction would not gut the intelligence capabilities:
DAYTON: I'd just like clarify one point that was made earlier by Senator Cornyn. You have a budget that's obviously classified, but the reference to the contemplated or conceptualized $1.5 billion, I think as then Senator Cornyn acknowledged, was a $300 million reduction in the budget or the proposed budget or the increases in the budget for each of five years. But 1 percent, if that's the approximate number, based on published reports, reduction in your budget overall for each of the five years, would that, quote,/unquote "gut your agency and your intelligence-gathering capabilities"? As far as I know, that wasn't specified, but would a 1 percent -- hypothetically, would a 1 percent, say, reduction in your budget for each of five years, quote/unquote, "gut your agency and its intelligence-gathering capabilities"?
TENET: Let me say that in the mid-'90s, it wouldn't have been helpful.
DAYTON: Would it have "gut" in that -- would it have "gut" in that vernacular?
TENET: Sir, obviously no $300 million cut is going to "gut" your intelligence capabilities.
DAYTON: Thank you.
FACT: The so-called "deeply irresponsible cuts" mentioned by Bush "represented about the same amount Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), then chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, told the Senate that same day he wanted cut from the intelligence spending bill based on an unspent, secret fund that had been accumulated by one intelligence agency "without informing the Pentagon, CIA or Congress," according to The Washington Post.
The truth is, the cuts passed by voice vote with no opposition, including such radical "left-wingers" as Republicans Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, Rick Santorum and Don Nickles. The so-called "cuts" then became law, without a single Republican complaining about the measure for the nine years prior to the 2004 Presidential campaign. Fred Kaplan, writing for Slate, makes this point: "Kerry's proposal would not have cut a single intelligence program." What the Republicans don't want you to know is that John Kerry has supported $200 billion in intelligence funding over the past seven years - a 50 percent increase since 1996.
On March 9th, in a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, George Tenet said that the one percent reduction would not gut the intelligence capabilities:
DAYTON: I'd just like clarify one point that was made earlier by Senator Cornyn. You have a budget that's obviously classified, but the reference to the contemplated or conceptualized $1.5 billion, I think as then Senator Cornyn acknowledged, was a $300 million reduction in the budget or the proposed budget or the increases in the budget for each of five years. But 1 percent, if that's the approximate number, based on published reports, reduction in your budget overall for each of the five years, would that, quote,/unquote "gut your agency and your intelligence-gathering capabilities"? As far as I know, that wasn't specified, but would a 1 percent -- hypothetically, would a 1 percent, say, reduction in your budget for each of five years, quote/unquote, "gut your agency and its intelligence-gathering capabilities"?
TENET: Let me say that in the mid-'90s, it wouldn't have been helpful.
DAYTON: Would it have "gut" in that -- would it have "gut" in that vernacular?
TENET: Sir, obviously no $300 million cut is going to "gut" your intelligence capabilities.
DAYTON: Thank you.
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HOLT: But in John Kerry's case, he went to Vietnam… He took his own photo camera, by the way, so he could get some good pictures.
and where are his photos of war crimes? 😉
and where are his photos of war crimes? 😉
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John Kerry - Enemy of the Jewish People
Anti-Jewish, anti-American and anti-freedom. These sentiments go together and are generally called “liberalâ€.
John Kerry, the probable nominee of the Democrats for President of the United States, exemplifies all that is meant by “liberal†today. First, Kerry, the grandson of a Jewish Austrian immigrant named Kohn, sees no reason why Israel should defend itself against murder. According to Kerry and his Democrat colleagues, Israel has no right to build a wall designed to prevent murderers from entering. Evidently Kerry and the “liberals†see nothing wrong when Arabs bomb buses, slaughter children and men and women eating in a restaurant or even invade the homes of families to kill, maim and cripple innocent Jews. Said Kerry: “We don’t need additional barriers to peace.†Evidently he meant the peace of the grave - for Jews. His mentor and friend, Jimmy Carter, went even further. He announced at a recent conference in Geneva that if he had been re-elected he would have found “the final solution†to the Jewish problem. Of course we Jews know that phrase all too well. Hitler used it. “The final solution†means mass murder of all the Jews in Israel and surely Carter meant just that.
Our previous president, Bill Clinton, not only invited the terrorist Arafat to the White House once a month, he even handed Arafat all of Jerusalem, all of Judea, all of Samaria and Gaza. Arafat was, thank G’d, not satisfied. He also wanted Tel Aviv. Now candidate Kerry tells us he would appoint Clinton as special envoy to Arafat so as to find a means of implementing Carter’s “final solutionâ€. Why would any Jew vote for that?
There are apologists for Israel haters who pretend that anti-Israel does not mean anti-Jewish, that one can disagree with the policies of Ariel Sharon without being at once labeled an anti-semite, etc. Well, of course, the Jew haters are not anti-semitic. We are not semites. A semite is someone who speaks a semitic language such as Hebrew, Arabic or Aramaic. Linguists classified these three languages as “semitic†because the Torah tells us that Shem, the son of Noah and his descendants, settled the lands of the so-called “Middle East†(Chapter X of Beraysheet or Genesis). It is called “Middle-East†as distinguished from “Far East†from the European point of view. No, those who hate Jews are not anti-semites. They are religious bigots like Mel Gibson, who likes to revive the “Christ killer†accusations of the Middle Ages today.
Anyone who objects to the construction of Israel’s wall must therefore be in favor of having homicide bombers continue their ugly slaughter. Now why would an American Jew vote for a man who sees nothing wrong with killing our brethren in Israel?
Those who hate Jews usually hate America as well. The “liberals†pretend that the attack of September 11, 2001 did not happen. On that day 19 terrorists killed 3,000 Americans in 1.5 hours. This, say the America haters, is not important.
Of course, a Viet Nam veteran and war hero like Kerry does not hate America. No chance. He just likes dictators. He and his friends have never seen a brutal dictator they didn’t like. They say that Saddam Hussein should never have been removed from power in Iraq even though he repeatedly said that he sought to emulate Hitler and that he did so. He sent Scud missiles into Israel to kill Jews. He paid homicide killers who had killed Jews $20,000 each (to their families, of course). He had the ambition to kill a hundred thousand Israelis in one day by shooting chemical rockets into Israel. No doubt, had he succeeded he would have become the greatest Arab hero since Sal-ad-din (a Kurd). Now, why would a Jew vote for a party and a man who finds it wrong to remove Saddam from power? Should we expect that if Kerry becomes president (yemach shemo vegoalo) he will re-install Saddam into power in Iraq? If not, why not?
Furthermore, we must wonder why Kerry voted for the Iraq war and now claims he was against it. How can anyone trust a man who votes contrary to what he believes?
The “liberals†see nothing wrong with Saddam, with Khaddafi, with Mubarak, with the Syrian dictator Assad. They love them all. They compare the president of the United States with Hitler, but the anti-Jewish hate mongers are their friends. Why would an American Jew vote for those who seek to kill us all?
This all reminds me of the 1930’s when the German Jews begged for help after Hitler became dictator in 1933. No one helped. No one gave “a damnâ€. The German Jews were abandoned because everybody knew we were exaggerating the threat to our lives, that we were all arrogant and that we had mistreated the Eastern European Jews of the first decade of the 20th century.
Here it is again. Jews blame Israel and not the Arabs. Jews on the campuses of our universities denounce Israel, attack Hillel, burn newspapers with the “wrong opinionsâ€, participate with the Arab and other hate mongers in staging anti-Jewish riots at San Francisco University and denounce other Jews who stand up for our people. Most of those who do these things are professors such as Noam Chomsky of M.I.T., who even denies the Holocaust.
Yet, we will survive. Yet we will live. We will never be destroyed, not even by the “liberalsâ€. We will vote for George W. Bush, the best friend we Jews have ever had in the White House, because all of us are not “lemmings†(look up what a lemming does).
Shalom u’vracha.
Anti-Jewish, anti-American and anti-freedom. These sentiments go together and are generally called “liberalâ€.
John Kerry, the probable nominee of the Democrats for President of the United States, exemplifies all that is meant by “liberal†today. First, Kerry, the grandson of a Jewish Austrian immigrant named Kohn, sees no reason why Israel should defend itself against murder. According to Kerry and his Democrat colleagues, Israel has no right to build a wall designed to prevent murderers from entering. Evidently Kerry and the “liberals†see nothing wrong when Arabs bomb buses, slaughter children and men and women eating in a restaurant or even invade the homes of families to kill, maim and cripple innocent Jews. Said Kerry: “We don’t need additional barriers to peace.†Evidently he meant the peace of the grave - for Jews. His mentor and friend, Jimmy Carter, went even further. He announced at a recent conference in Geneva that if he had been re-elected he would have found “the final solution†to the Jewish problem. Of course we Jews know that phrase all too well. Hitler used it. “The final solution†means mass murder of all the Jews in Israel and surely Carter meant just that.
Our previous president, Bill Clinton, not only invited the terrorist Arafat to the White House once a month, he even handed Arafat all of Jerusalem, all of Judea, all of Samaria and Gaza. Arafat was, thank G’d, not satisfied. He also wanted Tel Aviv. Now candidate Kerry tells us he would appoint Clinton as special envoy to Arafat so as to find a means of implementing Carter’s “final solutionâ€. Why would any Jew vote for that?
There are apologists for Israel haters who pretend that anti-Israel does not mean anti-Jewish, that one can disagree with the policies of Ariel Sharon without being at once labeled an anti-semite, etc. Well, of course, the Jew haters are not anti-semitic. We are not semites. A semite is someone who speaks a semitic language such as Hebrew, Arabic or Aramaic. Linguists classified these three languages as “semitic†because the Torah tells us that Shem, the son of Noah and his descendants, settled the lands of the so-called “Middle East†(Chapter X of Beraysheet or Genesis). It is called “Middle-East†as distinguished from “Far East†from the European point of view. No, those who hate Jews are not anti-semites. They are religious bigots like Mel Gibson, who likes to revive the “Christ killer†accusations of the Middle Ages today.
Anyone who objects to the construction of Israel’s wall must therefore be in favor of having homicide bombers continue their ugly slaughter. Now why would an American Jew vote for a man who sees nothing wrong with killing our brethren in Israel?
Those who hate Jews usually hate America as well. The “liberals†pretend that the attack of September 11, 2001 did not happen. On that day 19 terrorists killed 3,000 Americans in 1.5 hours. This, say the America haters, is not important.
Of course, a Viet Nam veteran and war hero like Kerry does not hate America. No chance. He just likes dictators. He and his friends have never seen a brutal dictator they didn’t like. They say that Saddam Hussein should never have been removed from power in Iraq even though he repeatedly said that he sought to emulate Hitler and that he did so. He sent Scud missiles into Israel to kill Jews. He paid homicide killers who had killed Jews $20,000 each (to their families, of course). He had the ambition to kill a hundred thousand Israelis in one day by shooting chemical rockets into Israel. No doubt, had he succeeded he would have become the greatest Arab hero since Sal-ad-din (a Kurd). Now, why would a Jew vote for a party and a man who finds it wrong to remove Saddam from power? Should we expect that if Kerry becomes president (yemach shemo vegoalo) he will re-install Saddam into power in Iraq? If not, why not?
Furthermore, we must wonder why Kerry voted for the Iraq war and now claims he was against it. How can anyone trust a man who votes contrary to what he believes?
The “liberals†see nothing wrong with Saddam, with Khaddafi, with Mubarak, with the Syrian dictator Assad. They love them all. They compare the president of the United States with Hitler, but the anti-Jewish hate mongers are their friends. Why would an American Jew vote for those who seek to kill us all?
This all reminds me of the 1930’s when the German Jews begged for help after Hitler became dictator in 1933. No one helped. No one gave “a damnâ€. The German Jews were abandoned because everybody knew we were exaggerating the threat to our lives, that we were all arrogant and that we had mistreated the Eastern European Jews of the first decade of the 20th century.
Here it is again. Jews blame Israel and not the Arabs. Jews on the campuses of our universities denounce Israel, attack Hillel, burn newspapers with the “wrong opinionsâ€, participate with the Arab and other hate mongers in staging anti-Jewish riots at San Francisco University and denounce other Jews who stand up for our people. Most of those who do these things are professors such as Noam Chomsky of M.I.T., who even denies the Holocaust.
Yet, we will survive. Yet we will live. We will never be destroyed, not even by the “liberalsâ€. We will vote for George W. Bush, the best friend we Jews have ever had in the White House, because all of us are not “lemmings†(look up what a lemming does).
Shalom u’vracha.
