Supporting The Troops-- For Real

Bumper stickers & flag pins are not as good as body armor

Below is an ad that VoteVets made and deployed to help Virginia voters get to know the real Senator George Allen. Allen is a very reactionary Republican who could never screech "Support the troops" loudly enough... but his voting record against our troops spoke even more loudly than his hype machine. This ad was widely credited for helping force George Allen to give up his Senate seat to Jim Webb.

But it wasn't just George Allen who voted against body armor for the troops who he voted to send to Iraq. Among the other Republican senators up for re-election in November who stood with George Allen, George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain-- and against our troops-- were Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Pat Roberts (R-KS), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Cornyn (R-TX), Liddy Dole (R-NC), Mitch McConnell (R-KS), John Sununu, and Gordon Smith (R-OR).

Gordon Smith? The guy who claims to have broken with Bush and opposed the war? Well... once he started seeing polls that showed that Oregon voters planned to dump him for his rubber stamp posture towards Bush's war agenda, he started voting with the Democrats-- but only on non-binding resolutions and once it was too late to do anything about it. As for the troops he voted to send to Iraq... his position was that they could buy their own damn body armor. It was the same position as all the far right extremists. As I mentioned earlier, I got to spend some time yesterday seeing Jeff Merkley, Smith's opponent. I asked him if Smith ever justified any of these bizarre votes. “The problem with Gordon Smith and George Bush is that they were far too fast to go to war and far too slow to take care of our veterans and men and women in uniform when they returned home. On this vote and on so many others, Senator Smith stood with Republicans and George Bush and our troops paid a price. We need to change Washington D.C. so that our government always gives our troops the resources they need in battle and the services they deserve when they return home.”

Suppose we can get VoteVets to re-do the ad for another senator this year. Who would you vote for?