Kids: Why Die For Oil, Car, Nuke Kings, Greed and Profits?

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/01/1591/

Kids: Why Die For Oil, Car, Nuke Kings, Greed and Profits?
by Howard Friel


Among the list of lies proffered by the Bush administration for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, “Support the Troops” has been the most transparently dishonest. Yet, the Democrat-controlled Congress could not muster the votes to expose the most exposable lie of all by cutting off funds to the administration for Iraq. The Democrats, however, have been formally surrendering to President Bush on Iraq since at least October 2002. “WMD” was the first surrender. The “Iraq-Al Qaeda Connection” was the second. “Support the Troops” was the third, this time to a president with a 30 percent approval rating.

When, as USA Today recently reported, the president “challenged lawmakers to prove their support for troops in Iraq by agreeing to more war spending,” the Democrats surely could have stood up to this one. It’s not as if this is the first time, as my friend Paul Shoul’s Vietnam-era photograph reminds us, when the White House wanted to send young Americans abroad to fight a lawless and aggressive war.Kidsa

Here is a small sample of reports that the Democrats in Congress could have cited in response to the president’s request to continue war funding for “the benefit of the troops”:

* In April 2007, Carole Whelan, the state coordinator of the Maine Chapter of Military Families Speak Out (MFSO), reported: “The funding has most benefited the weapons industry, whose CEO income has skyrocketed to an average of over $7 million per year. The value of Cheney’s Halliburton stock options has not merely doubled or tripled but multiplied by a factor of 32.” (The Bangor Daily News, April 6, 2007)

* Also in April 2007, Ivan Goldman, an MFSO member, wrote a letter to Sen. Carl Levin (D–Mich.): “My son is in the 4th Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, at Ft. Stewart, GA, in training for his second deployment to Iraq no later than July. He did his first tour of 11 months with the 18th Airborne Corps out of Ft. Bragg. My son joined the Army to serve his country, not to be part of a moronic effort to save the ruined legacy of this blind fool in the White House…. Don’t let Bush kill any more of our sons. Please don’t fund this madness. Stand up to him for us. When you feel yourself faltering, remember the thousands of our maimed, destroyed kids.” (Military Families Speak Out, www.mfso,org)

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One way that the US Congress can stop the war in Iraq is to pass a “Truth For the Troops Act,” which would require military recruiters to stop lying to American kids who want to serve their country rather than the president’s “ruined legacy,” the vice-president’s stock options, and the salaries of war-industry CEOs.