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08/17/2005: Earth to wingnuts: it isn't just Cindy....
From the AP: Parents of fallen Marine make plea to Bush
The day after burying their son, parents of a fallen Marine urged President Bush to either send more reinforcements to Iraq or withdraw U.S. troops altogether.Of course, Bush's problem vis a vis this plea is pretty simple. He can't put more troops on the ground in Iraq without a draft. The Army is broken; while re-enlistments are keeping up with goals for now, just about every active duty soldier has done two tours in Iraq. Requiring soldiers to do a third tour there is going to seriously affect re-enlistments. Further, the Army is under quota for new enlistments for this fiscal year, because some young people are exercising a healthy degree of self-protective instincts, and because a lot of parents are either (for underage recruits) refusing permission for their children to serve or placing pressure on their children not to enlist.
"We feel you either have to fight this war right or get out," Rosemary Palmer, mother of Lance Cpl. Edward Schroeder II, said Tuesday.
Schroeder, 23, died two weeks ago in a roadside explosion, one of 16 Ohio-based Marines killed recently in Iraq.
The soldier's father said his son and other Marines were being misused as a stabilizing force in Iraq.
"Our comments are not just those of grieving parents," Paul Schroeder said in front of the couple's home. "They are based on anger, Mr. President, not grief. Anger is an honest emotion when someone's family has been violated."
Palmer accused the president of refusing to make changes in a war gone bad. "Whether he leads them out by putting more troops on the ground or pulling them out - he can't just let it continue," she said.
White House spokesman Allen Abney declined comment other than to refer to remarks Bush made last week.
On the other hand, Bush can't call for a draft. That would be political suicide. Why, it would be asking the citizens of this country to sacrifice, and the one thing that Bush steadfastly refuses to do is ask anyone, other than members of the armed services and their families, to sacrifice anything for him to play out his childish fantasies of being the all-conquering "war president". (And the fact that Bush actually finds the nerve to threaten Iran with military action when it's a good question whether the U.S. Army would be up to an invasion of Rhode Island at this time (thanks to his and Rumsfeld's colossal incompetence), makes one seriously wonder if Bush is drinking again.)
It's a pretty good bet that right now, Bush is painfully aware of what the phrase, "between a rock and a hard place" means.
Len on 08.17.05 @ 12:12 PM CST
