Frightening!

Tricare (often referred to as "try and get care") is pretty much what I was referring to. Thanks Timber.

I was shocked to read about how little US soldiers earn.

I read a story about the family of a soldier who was currently in Iraq. His wife just had a baby, so couldn't work herself - so the family had to rely on his salary. They were getting food stamps now, because it was that little.

Soldiers' families should never have to rely on foodstamps. Period.

I agree with you there, nimh, one hundred percent. Now, if only The Democrats saw it that way too, it would be a better deal all around.

Of course, mebbe the Dem's don't want to see the underpaid lower-ranking military leave the fold ... think there's anything to that?

Back to them pesky fact thingies, anyone who cares to can download this PDF file from Defense Accounting and Financial Serivice: US Military Pay Tables, Jan 2004

Um, wasn't it Bush who just slashed funding for troops and vets?

Dont get Timber started on that ... <grins>

You'll have to track down your own numbers to get a double check. His will tell you Bush gave them more than any administration in the past ;-)

Lol ... remember that episode, do ya nimh? hehehehe

Well, I just went with the numbers available from, and cross-corroborated by, the various pertinent Federal Budget Approvals, The Department of Defense, the Government Accounting Office, The Bureau of Labor Statistics, and The Congressional Record as pertaining to past and current Military Appropriations and Expenditures. That was good enough for me. :wink:

Yes, maybe so, but everyone knows the government lies especially with Bush at the helm.

:wink:

Yeah, McG, for some, thats one of those comforting assumptions, ain't it? :wink:

Twelve more dead and twenty more injured, so far, today. Heroic speeches (naturally) from the sewage who keeps sending more Americans to Iraq as cannon-fodder.

Always very easy for the most protected land-grabbers on earth to wear flak-jackets, make patriotic speeches, surround themselves with American flags, send others to their deaths and shed crocodile tears on television.

No one can claim Bush and his gang are biased. They are now mass-murdering Shiites and Sunnis alike, including innocent women and children, and destroying their homes - and somehow believe that this will make Americans popular with Iraqis.

Still, they can always do the usual and claim those being killed and injured are all terrorists - there are plenty of voters in this country stupid enough to believe every word they hear.

In the meantime, at least 5 more dead soldiers since earlier this morning.

Inflamatory, hyperbolic, partisan rhetoric ... may make the issuer feel better, but in no way addresses the issue at hand, but rather serves only to incite and enable division.


Elitist, exclusionary derision, based on Reductio Ad Absurdam and Strawdog fallacies


Freedom is not free. The cost of defending it is dear, but it is a necessary expense.

I know you don't agree with me, or with my assessments of your assessments, JW ... cool. That's what point-of-view and perspective are all about. You're welcome to have and express any point of view you find congruent with your personal philosophy. Other folks are as welcome to do the same as may conform to their own perspective. I don't deny that yours is a sincere point of view, nor do I impute it to be arrived at other than by informed and honorable means. I just don't share it.

I figure the violence occurring at present in Iraq is the last gasp of the insurgency, related to coming anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, and that it will fail. When the initial assault on Saddam's regime took place a year ago, a direct thrust toward Baghdad was made, and little or no attention was paid to disarming and/or pacifying the areas not directly within the path of that thrust. Many known Iraqi Army and Republican Guard units were never identified as among the units encountered and neutralized during that thrust. Those troops were somewhere, and went somewhere thereafter. I suspect, given the apparent organization, sophistication, and evident tactically valid conduct of the recent wave of attacks indicate the remnant military cadre is behind them. I further suspect that cadre, and with it, the insurgency, is doomed. They've chosen to fight and die. Fine. There are millions of Iraqis who soon will have no further cause from concern from the few thousands of former Baathists and foreign jihadists who would seek to inhibit the emergence of a soveriegn, autonomous, free, prosperous Iraq.

Iraq is but a component in the overarching and ongoing War On Terror.

And, again, of course, you're free to disagree.

John Webb wrote:
"No one can claim Bush and his gang are biased. They are now mass-murdering Shiites and Sunnis alike, including innocent women and children, and destroying their homes - and somehow believe that this will make Americans popular with Iraqis."

"Inflamatory, hyperbolic, partisan rhetoric...." timberlandko

And, you failed to mention, 100% accurate. [/color]

Not at all Titus, most pointedly not at all. In the interest of accuracy, I will submit I conveyed my own impression, not yours.

I'm not clear on the last one there. Is a "strawdog fallacy" the mistaken belief that Sam Peckinpah is a bad director?

(That was one **** flick...I'll cut Peckinpah some slack for it based on his body of work...)

LOL! Good catch, Joe ... my bad ...

But then, mebbe I was just thinkin' about "running dog libruls" or somethin' like that :wink:

Yellow Dogs, dammit!

Damn, I just ain't gonna catch a break here at all, looks like

Timbero, the following extract from today's N.Y. Times may help to broaden your outlook concerning the qualities of the Bush Administration:

"The Iraqi Inversion
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: April 8, 2004

WASHINGTON

Maybe after high-definition TV, they'll invent high-dudgeon TV, a product so realistic you can just lunge through the screen and shake the Bush officials when they say something maddening about 9/11 or Iraq, or when they engage in some egregious bit of character assassination.

It would come in handy for Karen Hughes's Bush-nannying book tour and Condoleezza Rice's Clarke-riposting 9/11 commission testimony.

And I was desperately wishing for it yesterday, when Donald Rumsfeld held forth at a Pentagon briefing.

Even though the assumptions the Bush administration used to go to war have now proved to be astonishingly arrogant, naïve and ideological, Mr. Rumsfeld is as testy and Delphic as ever about the fragility of Iraq.

"We're trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going," he said, adding: "Some things are going well and some things obviously are not going well. You're going to have good days and bad days." On the road to democracy, this "is one moment, and there will be other moments. And there will be good moments and there will be less good moments."

Calling the families of more than 30 young Americans killed this week in the confusing hell of Iraq must be a less good moment.

Our troops in Iraq don't know who they're fighting and who they're saving. They don't know when they're coming home or when they're being forcibly re-upped by Rummy. Our diplomats in Baghdad don't know who they're handing the country over to next month. And Bush officials don't know where to go for help, since the military's tapped out, the allies have cold feet, the Arab world's angry and the rest of the globe is thinking, "You got what you deserved."

Before heading out to Iraq last spring, Marine commanders explained that they would try to take a gentler approach than the Army. They would avoid using military tactics that would risk civilian casualties, learn Arabic and take off their sunglasses when talking with Iraqis. "If to kill a terrorist we have got to kill eight innocent people, you don't kill them," Maj. Gen. James Mattis told The Times's Michael Gordon.

But in the wake of the Falluja horror and Shiite uprising, civility must take a back seat to stomping.

The marines had to fire rockets at a mosque in Falluja used by the Shiite followers of the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, and the hospitals are filled with civilians. Instead of playing soccer with kids, now the marines have to worry that the kids are the enemy, spotting targets or wielding guns. The farmers and taxicab drivers, wearing their own clothes and driving their own cars, try to murder the marines before melting back into the populace.

Paul Wolfowitz assumed that the Shiites, tormented by Saddam over their religion, would be grateful, not hateful. Wrong. It isn't a cakewalk; it's chaos.

Every single thing the administration calculated would happen in Iraq has turned out the opposite. The W.M.D. that supposedly threatened us did not exist. The dangerous dictator was deluded and writing romance novels. The terrorism that would be thwarted has mushroomed in Iraq and is feeding Arab radicalism.

Mr. Rumsfeld thought invading Iraq would exorcise America's Vietnam syndrome, its squeamishness about using force. Instead, it has raised the specter of another Vietnam, where our courageous troops don't understand the culture, can't recognize the enemy and don't have an exit strategy. And the administration spins the war every day.

Rummy also thought he could show off his transformation of the military, using a leaner force. Now even some Republicans say he is putting our troops at risk by stubbornly refusing to admit he was wrong.

Dick Cheney thought fear was better than weak-kneed diplomacy, that if America whacked one Arab foe, all the others would cower. Wrong. The Iraq invasion has multiplied and emboldened our enemies.

Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rumsfeld thought America should flex its hyperpower muscles, castrating the U.N. and blowing off multilateral arrangements. Now the administration may have to crawl back for help.

The hawks thought they could establish a democracy that would produce a domino effect in the Arab world. Wrong. The dominoes are falling in a scarier direction.

The president thought he could improve on the ending to his father's gulf war. Wrong again."

As a fellow military veteran, I agree!