The Uncalled For Silence

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Congress voted down another cut and run measure yesterday, by the same number as it was voted down last year.  56 votes for. 

An amendment to mandate minimum rest times for U.S. troops between deployments faced long odds Wednesday after an influential Republican senator switched his position and said he would vote against it.

John W. Warner, R-Va., a senior Armed Services Committee member who voted for the amendment by Jim Webb, D-Va., when it last came to the floor in July, said he had changed his mind. He said the ranks of military specialists are so thin in many positions that commanders on the ground would be seriously hobbled by mandatory “dwell times” between deployments.

Bush administration officials have been furiously lobbying moderate Republican senators to oppose the measure.

The Webb amendment would require military personnel to be given at least as much time at home as they spend deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. National Guard and reserve forces would have to be allowed three years at home for each one at war.

It was a sneaky back door way to drawdown the troops and nobody bought it, well except for the Democrats but they all want us to run like cowards anyways.  No, I’m talking about the Republicans.  They understood that this measure would force a cut of the number of troops inside Iraq and voted the right way.  While giving the troops more leave time would be great every single one of them understood what was required of them when they signed up.  That’s what makes them heroes.  They signed up anyways, and keep signing up:

Regardless of what’s happening in terms of recruitment, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines already serving are reenlisting at rates that surpass all expectations, according to defense officials.

Defense Department statistics for June, released yesterday, showed the Army missed its active-duty recruiting goal for the second consecutive month. Yet retention remained high across the board, 101 percent of goal for the active Army, 119 percent for the Army Reserve, and 107 percent for the Army National Guard, Maj. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, told American Forces Press Service.

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Of particular interest, he said, are high retention rates among troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Meanwhile John Cornyn introduced a measure to condemn the MoveOn ad that keeps on giving, Spree at Wake Up America was watching:

John Cronyn has just proposed an amendment to condemn anyone that attacks our Commanders or troops, as MoveOn did when they took out their ad in the NYT attacking General Petraeus, accusing him of "cooking the books" and calling him General Betray Us.

Dick Durbin is speaking out against this amendment of Cronyns and at the same time saying he trusts General Petraeus. (Talking out both sides of his mouth again)

Dick Durbin just said the language in the MoveOn ad was wrong and he is trying to distract the issue by talking about the Swift Boat Veterans and John Kerry.

Cronyn has made it clear one was done as a political campaign and is like comparing apples with oranges because this attack was against a sitting General that is leading our troops in Iraq.

Durbin is doing everything in his power to stop a vote on condemning MoveOn.org.

Cronyn told Durbin to feel free and propose his own amendment about that issue but he holds no standing to try to get him (Cronyn) to change his amendment to include anything else.

This ad was not something that should be considered protected under free speech.  It was libelous to call him a traitor when he has served this country almost his entire adult life and is the architect of a winning strategy inside Iraq.  Bush views this the same way:

President Bush may have been most emphatic though when it came to the topic of “those left wing ads” attacking General Petraeus. The president brought the infamous New York Times MoveOn ad up without prompting, saying of his reaction to it: “I was incredulous at first and then became mad.”

“It is one thing to attack me — which is fine,” the president said. But the president’s view the attack on Petraeus as “an attack on men and women in uniform.”

He said pointedly: “I was looking for the voices from leadership on the Hill and I didn’t hear too many.” He said, “This is wrong.”

The president added that the ad “was uncalled for…and so was the silence” from the Democrats on the Hill.

The silence was uncalled for but not surprising in the least.  The Democrats cannot make their masters angry after all. 

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Thanks for the link, ( you COULD have fixed my spelling error…..lol)

Seriously, I fixed it and was glad to see that the Cornyn measure was passed and that quite a few Democratic senators voted for it.

Clinton and Dodd did not and I think that if they could not even support an amendment to support our military they are not qualified to even RUN for President in 2008.

The military will not forget their vote on this.

Hey, We agree for once. Congress mandating military policy, definitely unconstitutional, and they should be ashamed of themselves, after they cowardly sidesteped their obligation to declare the war – to take responsibility for it (or not).

I’m disappointed, I was hoping for something on the Defeat of Habeas Corpus, or maybe the Jena 6.