Does the Bush Administration Support the Troops? Yes, Like a Noose Supports a Hanging Man!

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/8739

Does the Bush Administration Support the Troops? Yes, Like a Noose Supports a Hanging Man!
by Walter C. Uhler | Jul 16 2007

On August 2, 2000, while accepting the Republican Party's nomination as Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney told the U.S. military, "help is on the way." Cheney used the occasion to savage the Clinton administration: "Rarely has so much been demanded of our armed forces and so little given them in return." Yet, Cheney's rebuke has proven to be vastly more applicable today than it has been for the past thirty years. When it comes to abuse and neglect of our military, President Clinton emerges as a rank amateur when compared with President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney.

It was the Bush administration that sent American soldiers to war in Iraq without adequate supplies of body armor, without an adequate number of armored vehicles to ward off roadside bombs and, most significantly, without an adequate number of troops to secure the peace in Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld disdained and abused the senior military leadership - and the disdain was largely reciprocated.

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According to Gen. Odom, "No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days on the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods…In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering serious wounds."

Some have argued that Webb's bill was an unconstitutional constraint on the president's war-making authority, even if it had survived a presidential veto. But, then, the question remains: "Why hasn't the Bush administration taken similar steps to support the troops?

Why? Because such relief would jeopardize Bush's plans to "string out the war until he leaves office, in order to avoid taking responsibility for the defeat he has caused and persisted in making greater each year for more than three years." Ever decreasing combat readiness and the death of a few hundred more soldiers and Marines can be offset temporarily by a "surge" in troop strength.

Unfortunately, in a regime where such losses seem but a small price to pay, in order to assure that Bush can claim that Iraq wasn't lost during his presidency, "support for the troops" becomes synonymous with the support that a noose provides a hanging man.