About 30 Oregon veterans who support Democrat John Kerry for president were rebuffed Tuesday when they showed up at a Republican rally in hopes of delivering a letter to first lady Laura Bush criticizing the war in Iraq. - APRead More......
President Bush and interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi insisted last week that Iraq would go ahead with elections scheduled for January, despite continuing violence. But U.S. officials tell TIME that the Bush team ran into trouble with another plan involving those elections — a secret "finding" written several months ago proposing a covert CIA operation to aid candidates favored by Washington. - TIMERead More......
Would she vote for a Democrat? "Absolutely," she says. "I would vote for Howdy Doody if I thought it would keep my boys home and safe."Watch the video here.
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At some point, the jokes need to end. At some point, the president of the United States will be approached by a vet or a soldier in uniform or the wife of a man who's now dead in Iraq, and they'll say to him, "Mr. President, the death of over 1,000 Americans in Iraq is not a joke."
Thirty percent of former U.S. soldiers who have been called back to duty involuntarily to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed to report on time, and eight have been declared AWOL, the Army said Tuesday.Read More......
At the U.S. military hospital on a wooded hilltop here, the cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs, shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives.Read More......
They're the seriously wounded U.S. soldiers who arrive daily at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, a growing human toll that belies American election talk of improving times in Iraq....
They're convinced U.S. soldiers will be fighting, dying and getting maimed in Iraq for many years to come....
Hecker retired from the military years ago but recently left his lucrative private practice in Detroit to save lives at Landstuhl.
"I'm here for him — nobody else," he says, pointing to the soldier. "I didn't come here for my government."
He pauses, then blurts out: "Bush is an idiot."
Immediately, he regrets having said that about the U.S. president, and makes clear he's been under enormous stress.
He describes taking a bullet out of the neck of an 18-year-old soldier six days ago, a wound that left the young man a quadriplegic.
"It's terrible, terrible, terrible," Hecker says. "When we talked to him, he just cried."
"If it was me, I'd tell them to take me off the machine," he says. He then considers his job and adds, "I'll never be the same mentally." ....
In another room, 23-year-old Mark Romero from the army's Third Brigade is also nursing a broken arm. A mechanic who served 11 months in Iraq, he snapped a bone trying to stop a 230 kilogram metal door from falling on a fellow soldier.
Lodged in his back is a piece of shrapnel from mortars that rained through the roof of the gym at the U.S. base in Mosul, northern Iraq, while Romero was working out.
He says the question constantly asked by soldiers is: "What are we doing there?"....
If Americans understood what was really going on in Iraq, they'd pressure Bush to be clearer about "why we're really fighting," he says.
"The war on terror wasn't in Iraq till we went there," he says. "We initially went there to topple Saddam (Hussein) and then all these damn terrorists came in."
As a soldier, he describes himself as "almost a political prisoner" in the sense that he can't express himself on whether he believes U.S. soldiers should stay in Iraq.
But his 33-year-old wife, Cheryl, has no qualms about speaking her mind.
"The army is not going to like what I have to say, but I think we have no business being there," she says about Iraq.
She too comes from a family with a long military tradition and works as a civilian at her husband's military base in Texas. She voted for Bush in 2000, but now says Democratic challenger John Kerry will get her support.
"I will definitely vote for Kerry, not because I prefer Kerry over Bush but because I don't want Bush back in office. I'm hoping that if Kerry takes office, we'll be pulling out" of Iraq, she says.
Cheryl believes Bush misled the country to war, arguing he diverted resources from far greater threats to U.S. interests, including the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
Asked why Bush launched the war, she says: "I think he wanted to fill his dad's shoes. I think he felt he had something to prove."
If the point of the war was to remove Saddam from power, then Bush's father, former president George Bush, should have done so in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which Daniels also fought.
Increasing Cheryl's anger is the fact the army did little to help her contact her wounded husband.
She paid for her flight to Germany, and is staying at the Fisher House, a privately funded agency that offers virtually free accommodation in Landstuhl to the families of injured soldiers.
Infuriated by what she sees as a misleading president, an unnecessary war and a heartless military, Cheryl vows to break the Daniels' family tradition of serving their country. Her 12-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter are already talking of enlisting one day, but Cheryl won't hear of it.
"We've paid our dues," she says.
LANCASTER NEW ERA (LANCASTER, PA.)Read More......
September 24, 2004, Friday
Military draft for Amish?
To the Editor:
As a veteran of the Korean War, I served my country well and I am still serving in my retirement. I got involved at the local VA hospital. I love the work I do. There are so many needs there.
War is not a pretty sight when you see all the needs. As I visit the sick and the hospice ward; not a pretty sight, at all.
If the Amish want to vote, good. But then, start the draft and draft their sons. That would be a no-no for them. I had no choice; I was drafted. I enjoyed my stay in the service and I enjoy what I am doing now. But we need a new leader.
Bush and Cheney have to go. We need new leadership. One who is for the everyday working men and women, not the rich and those who don't pay their share of taxes.
Wake up, America.
James A. Murphy
Lancaster
I have checked out Newsweek's poll. Their sample of registered voters includes 38% Republican, 31% Democrat and 31% Independent voters. If we look at the three last Presidential elections, the spread was 34% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 33% Independents (in 1992 with Ross Perot in the race); 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans, and 27% Independents in 1996; and 39% Democrats, 35% Republicans and 26% Independents in 2000. While party identification can indeed change within the electorate, there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that Democrats will only represent 31% of the total vote this year. In fact, other competitors have gone in the opposite direction. The Los Angeles Times released a poll in June of this year with 38% Democrats and only 25% Republicans. And Gallup's party identification figures have been all over the place.Read More......
This is no small consideration. Given the fact that each candidate receives anywhere between eight in ten and nine in ten support from voters in his own party, any change in party identification trades point for point in the candidate's total support. My polls use a party weight of 39% Democrat, 35% Republican and 26% Independent. Thus in examining the Newsweek poll, add three points for Mr. Bush because of the percentage of Republicans in their poll, then add another 8% for Mr. Bush for the reduction in Democrats. It is not hard to see how we move from my two-point lead to their eleven-point lead for the President.
A tiny weekly newspaper that bills itself as President Bush's hometown paper has endorsed John Kerry for president, saying the Massachusetts senator will restore American dignity.Read More......
The Lone Star Iconoclast, which has a weekly circulation of 425, said in an editorial dated Sept. 29 that Texans should rate the candidates not by hometown or political party, but by where they intend to take the country.
"Four items trouble us the most about the Bush administration: his initiatives to disable the Social Security system, the deteriorating state of the American economy, a dangerous shift away from the basic freedoms established by our founding fathers, and his continuous mistakes regarding Iraq," the editorial said.
The Iconoclast, established in 2000, said it editorialized in support of the invasion of Iraq and publisher W. Leon Smith promoted Bush and the invasion in a BBC interview, believing Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
"Instead we were duped into following yet another privileged agenda," the editorial said.
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. . . Meanwhile, at Another Washington BarRead More......
• First daughter Jenna Bush was back at one of her favorite hangouts Saturday night, drinking in the atmosphere with about 20 friends at Smith's Point in Georgetown. A witness tells us the revelry included shots and beer. Without confirming specific libations consumed, owner Bo Blair told us yesterday, "It's a bar -- people drink." But: "No problems. Nothing out of the ordinary. . . . They're a really nice group. Jenna's super-sweet."
As the night wore on, the party-loving twin "started to cover her face with her hair," the witness says, elaborating on a report that appeared yesterday on AMERICAblog.org. As much as they love drinking themselves, those bloggers seem to love writing about drinking even more.
The number of Americans spending more than a quarter of their income on medical costs climbed from 11.6 million in 2000 to 14.3 million this year...
The news comes as many companies are dropping medical coverage entirely or trimming their benefit packages, while taxpayers are subsidizing millions of people below the poverty line who have enrolled in the state-run Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program, a separate survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found.
"The cost of family health insurance is rapidly approaching the gross earnings of a full-time minimum-wage worker," said Drew Altman, president and chief executive of the nonprofit foundation, which compiled the data.
From 2001 to 2004, the proportion of workers receiving health coverage through an employer fell from 65 percent to 61 percent, according to the latest Kaiser data. That decline translated into 5 million fewer jobs providing health benefits, with the sharpest drop in small businesses.
For four straight years, Americans have paid double-digit increases in health insurance premiums, bringing the price for a typical family of four to nearly $10,000. Premiums paid by workers in 26 states and the District climbed 40 percent, according to Families USA. Premium increases in Virginia and Maryland rose at a lower rate but were still 2.4 times the average rise in earnings.
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