WHITE HOUSE IS AMBUSHED BY CRITICISM FROM AMERICA'S MILITARY COMMUNITY

White House is ambushed by criticism from America's military community

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
20 September 2003

George Bush probably owes his presidency to the absentee military
voters who nudged his tally in Florida decisively past Al Gore's. But
now, with Iraq in chaos and the reasons for going to war there mired
in controversy, an increasingly disgruntled military poses perhaps the
gravest immediate threat to his political future, just one year before
the presidential elections.

From Vietnam veterans to fresh young recruits, from seasoned officers
to anxious mothers worried about their sons' safety on the streets of
Baghdad and Fallujah, the military community is growing ever more
vocal in its opposition to the White House.

"I once believed that I served for a cause: 'To uphold and defend the
Constitution of the United States'. Now I no longer believe that," Tim
Predmore, a member of the 101st Airborne Division serving near Mosul,
wrote in a blistering opinion piece this week for his home newspaper,
the Peoria Journal Star in Illinois. "I can no longer justify my
service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies."

The dissenters - many of whom have risked deep disapproval from the
military establishment to voice their opinions - have set up websites
with names such as Bring Them Home Now. They have cried foul at
administration plans to cut veterans' benefits and scale back combat
pay for troops still in Iraq. They were furious at President Bush for
reacting to military deaths in Iraq with the phrase "bring 'em on".

And they have given politically embarrassing prominence to such issues
as the inefficiency of civilian contractors hired to provide shelter,
water and food - many of them contributors to the Bush campaign
coffers - and a mystery outbreak of respiratory illnesses that many
soldiers, despite official denials, believe is related to the use of
depleted uranium munitions.

"It is time to speak out because our troops are still dying and our
government is still lying," Candace Robison, a 27-year-old mother of
two from Krum, Texas, and a politically active serviceman's wife, told
a recent protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch. "Morale is at
an all-time low and our heroes feel like they've been forgotten."

How deep the anti-Bush sentiment runs is not yet clear, but there is
no doubt about its breadth. Charlie Richardson, co-founder of a group
called Military Families Speak Out, said: "Our supporters range from
pacifists to people from long military traditions who have supported
every war this country has ever fought - until this one.

"Many people supported this war at the beginning because they believed
the threat from weapons of mass destruction and accepted the link
between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'ida ... Now they realise their
beliefs were built on quicksand. They are very angry with the
administration and feel they've been duped."

Most of the disgruntlement expressed in the field has of necessity
been anonymous, so Tim Predmore's counterblast in the Peoria Journal
Star felt particularly powerful. Having been in the army for five
years, he is just finishing his tour of duty in Iraq. He wrote that he
now believes the Iraq war was about oil, not freedom, "an act not of
justice but of hypocrisy.

"We have all faced death in Iraq without reason or justification," he
added. "How many more must die? How many more tears must be shed
before Americans awake and demand the return of the men and women
whose job it is to protect them rather than their leader's interest?"

Less visible, but no less passionate, has been the ongoing voicing of
grievances over the internet. A prominent military affairs specialist,
David Hackworth, keeps a website filled with angry reflections on
conditions in Iraq for both the military and the local civilian
population, and the government that put the troops there. "Imagine
this bastard getting away with such crap if we had a draftee army,"
runs one typically scabrous anti-Bush line from Mr Hackworth.

More considered analysis is also available online, such as this
reflection from a 23-year-old serving in the US Air Force, who wonders
what the Iraq mess is going to do to the future of the US military:
"The powers that be are destroying our military from the inside,
especially our Army.

"How many of these people that are 'stranded' (for lack of a better
term) in Iraq are going to re-enlist? How many that haven't deployed
are going to re-enlist ... how many families are going to be
destroyed?" he asked.

One big rallying point for the critics is the Pentagon's budget plan,
which proposes cutting $1.8 billion (£1.1bn) from veterans' health
benefits and reducing combat pay from the current $225 a month to
$150, which is where it stood until the Iraq war began in the spring.
The budget will not be finalised until later this month, and the White
House - embarrassed by editorials in the Army Times and by news
stories in the mainstream press throughout America - says it won't
insist on the combat pay cutback.

Another rallying point is the lack of official explanation for more
than 100 cases of respiratory illness in the Middle East. According to
the Pentagon, 19 soldiers have required mechanical ventilation and two
have died. Military personnel believe the use of depleted uranium may
have played a part in this mystery illness.

In article <3f76a914.2902018@news.cox-internet.com>, Freedom Warrior
wrote:

>America's military community HATES PINHEADS WHO POST POLITICS TO THE
WRONG GROUP


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