Politicians support our troops - REALLY they do!

You don't believe me? CJ over at A Soldier's Perspective doesn't believe that either! He has more than a *few* words on a proposed bill that on the surface sounds as if the pols really, really DO have our troops' well-being at heart:

Bill Seeks To Ease Troop/Family Stresses

February 18th, 2009 by CJ

I love how the representatives in this country try to sneak in defeat under the guise of "caring for the troops". Such is the case with legislation sponsored by Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) and a dozen other legislators, one of whom is a Repugnican, Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC).

It is the sense of Congress that the optimal minimum period between the most recent previous deployment of a unit of the Armed Forces…and a subsequent deployment of the unit in support of a covered military operation should be equal to or longer than twice the period of such most recent previous deployment.

The bill, H.R. 1052, mandates a minimum dwell time between deployments of AT LEAST twice the length of time as the previous deployment. For example, if a unit is deployed for 15 months, they must have 30 months of dwell time before they can get deployed again. Some of you are probably saying, "CJ, that's GREAT! How wonderful for our troops!" Yes, how wonderful for our troops…and how catastrophic for our mission.

This bill is nothing more than an effort to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through attrition. You see, if our units are required to dwell twice the length of a deployment, common math will tell you that pretty soon we won't have troops to send into the combat theater. Thanks to slicing of military personnel in the 90's, our military simply doesn't have enough people to sustain that sort of law. But, the purpose isn't really to take care of our troops and ensure they're getting enough time back home. The purpose is to end the war. And they know that. They can't just come out and say it, so they have to use the cover of "troop support" to get something like this passed.

Personally, I don't think this bill will survive committee, much less a real vote. The only hope it has is to be added to another bill that has absolutely nothing to do with defense in secret, kind of how they slipped in all the junk into the 1100+ page stimulus and we're only NOW finding - now that it's law....

And CJ has more, as he decodes the latest "support the troops" bill. Go here and read it all.