I WANT TO URGE EVERY SINGLE DWT READER TO SUPPORT OUR TROOPS... RIGHT NOW

An old friend of mine-- a political independent from Maine-- was always spewing all this hatred for our guys in the military. He was never sympathetic to their plight and always felt that they got what they deserved. He seemed more against them than against wars or even war-makers, something that I picked up a little from Donovan's 60s cover of Buffy St. Marie's "Universal Soldier" too. I never understood it and argued about it with him over the years, but he could never quite get it through his Libertarian-oriented brain that many-- most?-- of the volunteers have been forced into the military because of bad finances and dreadful economic opportunities in their communities. My friend arrived in California from the backwoods of Maine with no money and no education and managed to finish high school, college and a masters degree on his own. His attitude is that if he can do it, everyone can. That's where he's wrong; not everyone can.

My own view was more pragmatic than my Maine friend's or Ms St. Marie's. These men and women are doing a socially legitimate job and until Man comes up with a way to make their line of work unnecessary, we should treat them with the dignity and respect anyone conscientiously doing a tough and dangerous job deserves.

When Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rove, Rumsfeld and the rest of the gang of criminals who have been at the helm of our government in these dark times are finally brought before the bar of Justice, I hope their grotesque disregard for and mistreatment of our soldiers are thoroughly examined. I think many people-- of all political stripes-- started catching on when, through the hysterical din of nationalistic palaver and warmongering, we all watched in horror as John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, Cheney and ultimately Bush, pushed aside the Geneva Conventions, which are, after all, in place to protect all soldiers (including our own). I didn't see a single military man defend the Bush Regime on this tragic and disgraceful episode, one that, alone, should have led to his immediate impeachment. (I still think the Congress should impeach Gonzales for his role in this at once.)

Today's Washington Post paints another side, a less abstract side, of the same disrespect with which the Bush Regime misuses our military men and women. "Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses. This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where [Army Spec. Jeremy] Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

That's not abstract. And the people responsible-- and responsible for making it worse and worse-- use the hateful refrain "support our troops" as a weapon against anyone who challenges the policies that have brought so many young American men and women so low. Today John Aravosis at AMERICAblog is launching a campaign to really support our troops, the actual flesh and blood soldiers, not the militaristic policies of the small clique of criminal war profiteers around Bush and Cheney.

This is beyond sickening. We have to sit back and listen to GOP members of Congress, George Bush's White House, and that pig General Petraeus dare to tell us how WE'RE the ones turning our backs on the troops, when all three of them knew this was going on under their watch and none of them lifted a finger to fix it.

Our soldiers were lied to about this war, they were lied to about their enlistment, they were never given a plan for victory or the numbers of troops they needed, they still don't have the armor they need for their vehicles. And now, the young men and women wounded and maimed for our country are living in government-run pig-stys not fit for farm animals. The American Taliban and the detainees in Guantanamo get better conditions than this, all courtesy of the Republicans.

The Republicans want to talk about treason? They want to talk about slowly bleeding our troops to death? Fine. Forget the agenda Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid had planned. It's high time we helped our troops. And if the Republicans won't do it, then we will. Let's ensure that the American people and our troops know which party got them into this mess, and which party is getting them out of it. Let the hearings and investigation and legislation begin until we fix these problems once and for all.

Jesus' General has joined Aravosis, and, in fact, his all-American patriotic site is where I found the graphic above. Bush, the most callously and viciously and criminally anti-military of any U.S. leader in American history, has replaced every general who has opposed his idiotic and destructive policies. And now he's found the perfect Republican lackey, an ambitious and fascist hack who is more at home on Fox News than on the battle field, this pathetic Petraeus-- rhymes with Betray US-- creature. While Petraeus shills for the Republican Party on Fox, wounded American troops are suffering the ultimate indignity of being treated like disposable garbage in their own country. I hope Madame DeFarge has noted down the General's name for future use.


We'll have to leave Madame DeFarge to keep track of the John Yoos and General Patraeusii for now. We we need to do right now is make sure Democratic politicians, and the Republicans who actually do care about these men and women, get off their backsides and raise and huge hue and cry over this. Please read the whole piece in the Post that I linked above and think about contacting your representatives about making this a PRIORITY. Not one day should go by while these men and women should be forced by the malevolent Bush Regime to undergo this kind of treatment. Bush should be thrown out of the White House like the stinking sack of trash he's proven himself to be-- and made to do whatever he does from his pig farm in Crawford-- in order to make room for the wounded soldiers in the Pennsylvania Avenue digs he's been disgracing for 6 years. (When your call your congressional rep, put that a little more moderately.)