Friday, April 24, 2009
I AGREE
I have to agree with the author on this one. Yes we should pull out of Iraq. Granted thats what our Government has been saying they're going to do for...oh?, four years now. I wasn't part of the actual invasion into Iraq, I was part of the second and fourth deployments to that country. However I do remember seeing the cheers from the Iraqis as we pulled that statue of Saddam Hussien down, just like the rest of the World did. We were held as liberators of freedom, we gave the people of Iraq something they had never had before. Unfortunately that is where we went wrong. I remember talking to an Iraqi man during my first deployment, he told me how the people were over-joyed by the outsting of this tyrant, but sorta like a sheltered child that goes off to college, they went wild. He told me how people felt they could do what they want, steal, murder, rape...it didn't matter because they were free. Out of this choas that ensued, an insurgency took hold. Bottome line we should have known what the consequence would be, when you free a people that have been oppressed for decades. So yes we should get out, will we anytime soon? That I wish I could answer. I also agree with Jerome, if the country of Iraq does become a stable government they better remember who helped them get there. Of course like I keep saying, people only remember the bad you do, not the good.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Did they finally pull their heads out?
It's about time the Nation's Defense Department started spending money responsibly. Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates laid out the plan for the military's 2010 budget. While roughly the same amount of money will be asked from the 2009 budget, (that's around 4 % GDP) the 2010 budget will take that money and use it where it is needed.
A prime example of this irresponsible use of taxpayer money would have to be the Air Force's
F-22 program. The program is not going to be completely scrapped but the budget calls for the Air Force to scale back on the number of aircraft in its regiments. This makes perfect sense, the wars being fought today and probably for the rest of this century will be wars fought on the ground, from an enemy that can fire a surface to air missile, get on his or her bike and disappear before we even know it, to make an analogy, we're buying dynamite to kill an ant hill.
The downside to actually doing what is for the greater good of the Military, is the legislative outcry from state representatives. These projects create and sustain jobs and these jobs bring money to our representative's states. While this budget causes these jobs to be lost and the money to go to more important causes, like better health care for our service men and women, or rebuilding the equipment that the wear and tear of lengthy deployments wreaks on them; it is obvious that someone finally needed to make this decision.
Politicians like to use the military as their pity party when they want to pitch their ideas. Instead of not complaining because your district or your state won't be able to make a wiring harness for a multi-billion dollar jet, or a camera lens for a state-of-the-art laser system (that sometimes works), actually sympathize for the men and women in our military and agree to this budget because their tired of using broken equipment, and their tired of inadequate health care facilities or substandard living conditions. Maybe if our Government hadn't of spent billions of dollars on a faulty missile defense system, then maybe our troops could of had the armor they needed, during the first and second and even third stages of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and maybe soldiers wouldn't have died from electrocution while taking showers on U.S. bases. As if these men and women don't have enough to worry about over there, roadside bombs, mortars, ambushes, etc. they also have to worry about faulty wiring in their living quarters. If that isn't a wake up call to our leaders, then I don't know what is.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67092/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-wed-apr-8-2009
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/10/zakaria.pentagon/index.html
A prime example of this irresponsible use of taxpayer money would have to be the Air Force's
F-22 program. The program is not going to be completely scrapped but the budget calls for the Air Force to scale back on the number of aircraft in its regiments. This makes perfect sense, the wars being fought today and probably for the rest of this century will be wars fought on the ground, from an enemy that can fire a surface to air missile, get on his or her bike and disappear before we even know it, to make an analogy, we're buying dynamite to kill an ant hill.
The downside to actually doing what is for the greater good of the Military, is the legislative outcry from state representatives. These projects create and sustain jobs and these jobs bring money to our representative's states. While this budget causes these jobs to be lost and the money to go to more important causes, like better health care for our service men and women, or rebuilding the equipment that the wear and tear of lengthy deployments wreaks on them; it is obvious that someone finally needed to make this decision.
Politicians like to use the military as their pity party when they want to pitch their ideas. Instead of not complaining because your district or your state won't be able to make a wiring harness for a multi-billion dollar jet, or a camera lens for a state-of-the-art laser system (that sometimes works), actually sympathize for the men and women in our military and agree to this budget because their tired of using broken equipment, and their tired of inadequate health care facilities or substandard living conditions. Maybe if our Government hadn't of spent billions of dollars on a faulty missile defense system, then maybe our troops could of had the armor they needed, during the first and second and even third stages of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and maybe soldiers wouldn't have died from electrocution while taking showers on U.S. bases. As if these men and women don't have enough to worry about over there, roadside bombs, mortars, ambushes, etc. they also have to worry about faulty wiring in their living quarters. If that isn't a wake up call to our leaders, then I don't know what is.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/67092/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-wed-apr-8-2009
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/10/zakaria.pentagon/index.html
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