Blue Star Vice Presidential Candidates

(Cross posted from Gold Star Mom Speaks Out)

Dear Governor Palin & Senator Biden-

I know you are busy getting ready for the first and only vice-presidential debate of the 2008 presidential campaign. I'm sure you've both been practicing your debate skills, figuring out what temperament to show, running through the issues in your mind hoping to remember that factoid that will be the perfect comeback, the line that will go viral. I'm sure Gwen Ifil will ask questions about the economy, foreign policy, health care, maybe climate change, maybe energy, maybe choice, maybe event lipsticks or pigs. All those subjects, except pigs & lipstick, are important to let people get to know how you feel about those subjects, and as Vice President, how you would deal with them once in office. I'm guessing January is looming pretty large; the challenges, the opportunities to put your special mark on the fabric of our country. Vice President Palin? Vice President Biden? Just the sound of it is HUGE! Only 46 men in this country have been given that title.

What I really want you to talk about is foreign policy as it relates to the military. When I say military, I mean the troops; you know like Beau and Track and my son Ken, the men (and women) who make up the military. Beau, Track and Ken are our oldest sons, and in my case my only son, my only child.

Sarah, my son Ken, was 18 when he joined the military, just a year younger than Track, so I can relate to what you are going through. Your firstborn, leaving the nest to join the Army. Those are tough days; you worry about how they are doing during boot camp, how they will adapt. Back in 1995, Ken got orders for Bosnia shortly out of boot camp, and now your Track is heading to Iraq, so I really have walked in your shoes. Ken was 24 when he headed for Iraq and I was terrified every single one of those 384 days he was deployed. You cannot imagine how the war will take over your life when your child is on the front lines. That child that grew for 9 months in your womb now belongs to someone else and he's halfway around the world in harms way.

And Joe, your son Captain Beau Biden is being deployed later this week as far as I can tell. I know about operational security, so the date isn't really important, but he will miss sharing the excitement of the final days of this important presidential campaign. I suspect he's been pretty involved in your campaign and all of that will change with this deployment. I'm sure that you have a close relationship with your son as I did; it's just that way with single parent children.At the age of 39, Beau's a bit older than Ken was when he deployed, and as officers, life in Iraq is a little different. Beau leaves a lovely wife and 2 children at home, Natalie, age 4, and Hunter, age 2. They will miss their daddy terribly. 1 year separated from their daddy is a very long time to little ones like your grandchildren, Joe.

Now that I've shown you how this troop thing is personal, and an experience that we all share, you might see how the occupation in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan loom large in the lives of military families. Some may think our children are "deployable assets" and that they belong to the military, and while that is true, they will always be our little boys. Our sons grew up to serve their country, to stand up when called and we are so proud of the men they grew up to be.

Sarah & Joe, today you are Blue Star Families, those with a loved one serving in the military. On May 30, 2004, my son, Lt Ken Ballard was killed in Iraq and I became a Gold Star Mother. It is not a journey that I wish on anyone.

I don't want either of you to wear a black metal bracelet engraved with your child's name, rank, unit, date & place of death and the words OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. I also don't want you to replace that blue star on your service flag with one of gold; I don't want another parent to receive a Gold Star Banner. I don't want you to know the reality of receiving that one knock on the door that will change your life forever. I really don't want you to know what it feels like to be escorted to the airport by your local police department and when you see that jet pull up to the gate and the doors of the cargo department open up to reveal a coffin that contains the remains of your oldest child, covered with a red, white and blue American flag, you know your child has made his last journey home. I don't want you to listen to the mournful notes as TAPS is played by an Army bugler in honor of your son's life. I don't want you to receive a folded flag from a general with the words "on behalf of a grateful nation...", I don't want you to know the emptiness in your heart knowing you will never feel your child's hug, never hear his laugh and never know what heights he might have attained. I don't wish any of this on anyone. Never. Ever.

Sarah & Joe, you both have a unique position as a military parent that very few people in this country understand; please use that experience and make a commitment to all the troops and their families that your administration will stop the shameless treatment of vets. Vow that war will only be used as a solution of last resort. I urge you both, as military parents, during this vice-presidential debate, to commit to ending the war in Iraq, bring the troops home and take care of them when they get here.

There's more: "Blue Star Vice Presidential Candidates" >>

The Democrats Who Enable Bush

(via truthout)

The Democrats Who Enable Bush
By Helen Thomas, Hearst Newspapers, Thursday 04 October 2007

Washington - President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

Last week at a debate in Hanover, N.H., the leading Democratic presidential candidates sang from the same songbook: Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York, and Barack Obama of Illinois and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards refused to promise to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq by 2013, at the end of the first term of their hypothetical presidencies. Can you believe it?

When the question was put to Clinton, she reverted to her usual cautious equivocation, saying: "It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting."

Obama dodged, too: "I think it would be irresponsible" to say what he would do as president.

Edwards, on whom hopes were riding to show some independence, replied to the question: "I cannot make that commitment."

They have left the voters little choice with those answers.

Some supporters were outraged at the obfuscation by the Democratic front-runners.

On the other hand, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., are more definitive in their calls for quick troop withdrawals.

But Biden wants to break up Iraq into three provinces along religious and ethnic lines. In other words, Balkanize Iraq.

To have major Democratic backing to stay the course in Iraq added up to good news for Bush.

Now comes a surprising Clinton fan.

President Bush told Bill Sammon - Washington Examiner correspondent and author of a new book titled "The Evangelical President" - that Clinton will beat Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination because she is a "formidable candidate" and better known.

Sammon says Bush revealed that he has been sending messages to Clinton to urge her to "maintain some political wiggle room in your campaign rhetoric about Iraq."

The author said Bush contends that whoever inherits the White House will be faced with a potential vacuum in Iraq and "will begin to understand the need to continue to support the young democracy."

Bush ought to know about campaign rhetoric. Remember how he ridiculed "nation building" in the 2000 presidential campaign? Now he claims he is trying to spread democracy throughout the Middle East.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush's war.

Pelosi removed a provision from the most recent war-funding bill that would have required Bush to seek the permission of Congress before launching any attack on Iran. Her spokesman gave the lame excuse that she didn't like the wording of the provision. More likely, she bowed to political pressure.

Is it any wonder the Democrats are faring lower than the president in a Washington Post ABC approval poll? Bush came in at 33 percent and Congress at 29 percent.

Members of Congress seem to have forgotten their constitutional prerogative to declare war; World War II was the last time Congress formally declared war.

Presidents have found other ways to make end runs around the law, mainly by obtaining congressional authorization "to do whatever is necessary" in a crisis involving use of the military. That's the way we got into the Vietnam and Iraq wars.

So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?

There's more: "The Democrats Who Enable Bush" >>

al-Maliki: Senate Proposal "a Catastrophe"

Iraq PM: Senate Proposal "a Catastrophe"
CBS News/The Associated Press
via t r u t h o u t, Friday 28 September 2007

Prime Minister sharply rejects government decentralization plan pushed by Biden, others.

Baghdad - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Friday rejected a U.S. Senate proposal calling for the decentralization of Iraq's government and giving more control to the country's ethnically divided regions, calling it a "catastrophe."

The measure, whose primary sponsors included presidential hopeful Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., calls for Iraq to be divided into federal regions for the country's Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities in a power-sharing agreement similar to Bosnia in the 1990s.

In his first comments since the measure passed Wednesday, al-Maliki strongly rejected the idea, echoing the earlier sentiments of his country's vice president.

"It is an Iraqi affair dealing with Iraqis," he told The Associated Press while on a return flight to Baghdad after appearing at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. "Iraqis are eager for Iraq's unity. ... Dividing Iraq is a problem and a decision like that would be a catastrophe."

More at truthout ...

When will they learn?

The Washington Consensus Of Iraq Reality Is Delusion:

Every time Iraqis kill another American soldier, it is, in my view, a "request" to Washington to withdraw all the troops. Some of the puppet government of Iraq would deny that I think. But they are a puppet government, and a large percentage of the social groups in Iraq are rejecting that puppet government and doing their damnedest to force it to collapse.

Iraqis don't want US troops in their country, and they don't want a US puppet government running their country for the benefit of America.

Will they learn?

There's more: "al-Maliki: Senate Proposal "a Catastrophe"" >>

Will Democrats please STFU about a “diplomacy offensive” in Iraq?

The nattering of people like Sen. Joe Biden (D-MBNA) makes it sound like the war in Iraq is solvable by other means if not winnable by military ones.

Joe: It ain’t “solvable,” either; certainly not as long as any of our troops are still there.

Besides, who are we going to “diplomacy” with? Iran will play the stall game. Syria is going to want major money (at least some degree of it, rightfully) for its Iraq refugee problem. Turkey’s going to demand we reign in the Kurdish area more than we have the ability to do with the number of troops there. The Saudis will say “yes” and still funnel money to Sunni insurgents because of Iran.

That’s our Democratic leadership: Still about two exponential factors behind the curve.

There's more: "Will Democrats please STFU about a “diplomacy offensive” in Iraq?" >>