Soldiers not real thrilled w/ Cheney (Q&A session)

I'm thinking IF we end up seeing this session on TV, it will be withOUT audio.

http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHENEY?SITE=TXSAE&SECTION=MIDEAST&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2005-12-18-15-22-39

Facing tough questions from battle-weary troops, Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday cited signs of progress in Iraq and signaled that force changes could come in 2006.

"From our perspective, we don't see much as far as gains," said Marine Cpl. Bradley Warren, the first to question Cheney in a round-table discussion with about 30 military members. "We're looking at small-picture stuff, not many gains. I was wondering what it looks like from the big side of the mountain - how Iraq's looking." Cheney replied that remarkable progress has been made in the last year and a half.

Another Marine, Cpl. R.P. Zapella, asked, "Sir, what are the benefits of doing all this work to get Iraq on its feet?"

<snip>

Shouts of "hooah!" from the audience interrupted Cheney a few times, but mostly the service members listened intently. When he delivered the applause line, "We're in this fight to win. These colors don't run," the only sound was a lone whistle.

go fuck yourself, you insolent twit.

I can't believe this. Among the many charges should be criminal negligence.

Treating them like potted plants on a stage.

Sending them off to fight with old equipment, bad supply lines, no kevlar, bad food. Jesus, the effen ROMANS did better than this.

Cutting their benefits, fighting pay raises, turning grieving families out of military housing.

Disgusting doesn't even BEGIN to describe these people.

forces as a 'government issued' back-drop for their fascist propaganda is my thought as well; get your dumb, crony covered ass out here in the real world w, for a proper give & take
:eyes:

:rofl: :thumbsup:

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

:hi:

I wish there was a way to get all those excellent points on a bumper sticker. :thumbsup:

Potted plants; junior's stage decorations. :mad:

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now for the rest of the US to follow their example.

Imagine sending the Dick, of all people, to talk with the troops in Iraq. He's the bastard that put them in harm's way for no reason (without armor, no less)! And are the troops aware of the way the Cheney administration has cut their benefits and pay? If not, Ed'll tell 'em.

Imagine what the rest are saying/thinking and what THEY would have asked
Draft Dodger Dick.

chickenhawks would have us believe. In fact, the next time someone trots out the "how dare you demoralize our troops"line, hit back with "how dare you imply our troops are stupid!".

As if we want people that dumb protecting us? eyes:

and Bush cannot grant him this power either :)

Anyone in the military that's not totally brain-dead should know this.

he's spewing this garbage to the troops?

From our perspective, we don't see much as far as gains," said Marine Cpl. Bradley Warren, the first to question Cheney in a round-table discussion with about 30 military members. "We're looking at small-picture stuff, not many gains. I was wondering what it looks like from the big side of the mountain - how Iraq's looking."

Cheney replied that remarkable progress has been made in the last year and a half.

"I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we'll see that the year '05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq," the vice president said. "We're getting the job done. It's hard to tell that from watching the news. But I guess we don't pay that much attention to the news."


Is Cpl. Warren the liberal media?

"...His next visit was to Taji Air Base, where he saw tanks that Iraqis had rebuilt and watched while they practiced a vehicle sweep at a security checkpoint.

U.S. forces guarded Cheney with weapons at the ready while Iraqi soldiers, who had no weapons, held their arms out as if they were carrying imaginary guns."

WOW. Someone calls that training the Iraqis? WTF!

especially in the midst of crowing about how we're training these troops and how ready they are to take over.

hogwash.

We need a Stripes, Catch 22, MASH, or Dr. Strangelove movie right about now, because I'm tired of watching these ham actors in office and want to see a good performance.

or is it Level Three.

Well, I would, but it looks like Cheney doesn't trust them Iraqis like I do.

as Saddam's imaginary WMD. In fact, this fits my theory that the reason it's taking so long to train these guys is that the Army doesn't WANT to train them, because they know the Iraqi security force is heavily infiltratedby insurgents on the one hand and Shi'a militia on the other. If they train them and give them decent weapons, there's basically nothing to stop the Iraqis from turning those nice, new guns on American troops. Same thing happened in Vietnam.

They knew each other. Just lop off the top brass and promote some lower ranked officers to head things up.

At the rate they are they're training soldiers, we should be able to withdraw from Iraq in 30 years.

It's hard to train troops when you cannot trust them enough to hand them a weapon.

Run out of broomsticks?

They mean on the political front, in terms of creating the shell of an Iraqi government. There's been little substantive progress in training Iraqi security forces, and, if anything, reconstruction is actually going backwards. And then there's the constitution, which suspends women's rights until further notice and essentially writes the nation formerly known as Iraq off the map, and replaces it with Kurdistan, West Iranistan and Fuck-You-Sunnistan. They keep saying "there's been remarkable progress," but they never put it in concrete terms. What percentage of the Iraqi army is ready to rock n' roll? What percentage of planned reconstruction is complete? What percentage of the insurgency has been killed or captured? What improvements have there been in the Iraqi economy in terms of GDP and unemployment? They won't tell us, because the numbers are so abysmal. The only "progress" has been symbolic. Bushco doesn't do reality; they just do symbolism.

Don't you know that we just opened another school? Well at least we opened one a while ago, I think.

Of course that school would have been open if we hadn't invaded, and none of the students would have been killed in shock and awe, but just the same we opened another school!

They just keep letting him loose so they can say "we caught him"...again.

has only sporadic electricity and no running water.

They NEVER talk about the terrorists that they are making with their ham-fisted idiocy in Iraq.

And for some stupid reason, they think that conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan somehow pre-empts Osama from running crews in the United States.

As a matter of fact if we are to believe the President, OBL already has people in the United States ready to strike and it's only his illegal wire taps that keeps the attacks from happening.

Oh yes, and we have enough troops, but terrorists are pouring over the borders.

How can conservatives believe all this clearly contradictory nonsense???

...like the fucking chickenhawk he is. I can't imagine how these guys, who have had their lives turned inside-out by these incompetent civilians (read: ROYALTY) must feel inside about this ass.

Leaky Dick's color is YELLOW. And, IT RUNS. :grr:

how could these Qs be asked? lol

From the article:

"The daylong tour of Iraq was so shrouded in secrecy that even Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and President Jalal Talabani were kept in the dark. The prime minister said he was surprised when he showed up for what he thought was a meeting with the U.S. ambassador and saw Cheney."

Bush and Cheney have to sneak around for their whole lives. They KNOW there are people who think the world would be better off if they weren't in it.

after the 2nd Chimp in charge?

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney addresses a group of Marines at Al-Asad Air Base during a question and answer session Sunday, Dec. 18, 2005, in Iraq. Cheney, who made an unannounced visit to the region also met with Iraqi leaders and U.S. Military Command leaders to discuss security and the latest elections. (AP Photo/Lawrence Jackson, Pool)

It looks like he has full body armour on. Where the fuck is his helmut?

That extra-thick skull of his is bulletproof.

On the other hand, Dick Cheney ran five times from his responsibility during the Vietnam era.

Cheap, empty slogans and regurgitated rhetoric. That's all that bush and cheney have left to offer. When will our troops get what they deserve?

smells like a chickenhawk, looks like a chickenhawk--what ya know, it is a CHICKENHAWK!!!

We're JUST about to turn the corner.

Or something.

where have I heard that before? Turn the corner--sounds so Hoover, as in Herbert Hoover.

I most strongly protest Senator John Warner’s proposed secondary amendment (SA1598) to the Senate version of the 2006 National Defense Authorization Act which would negate Senator Bill Nelson’s SA762 which would repeal the $1 for $1 offset of military Survivors Benefits Program (SBP) annuities by VA Dependency Indemnification Compensation (DIC). As such, I request you ask Senator Warner to withdraw SA1598.

Based on the 2003 Statistics Report on the Military Retirement Fund, issued by the DoD Office of the Actuary, 56% of military retirees did not receive sufficient retired pay for the SBP annuity to exceed the DIC payment of $993 per month ... leaving their widows with no SBP annuity at all.

This 56% exclusion consists of 1.12 million retirees in the pay grades O1, W2-W1, and E7-E1. With the exception of pay grade E7, all of these pay grades would have necessarily been retired for medical disability with less than 20 years of service under title 10, Chapter 61, hence their retirement pay upon which SBP is based is further reduced. Those most in need are also those hardest hit by the VA DIC offset to SBP.

Another 15,000 survivors, after full restoration of the 55% SBP benefit in October 2007, will receive between $450/month or less from the repeal of the two-tiered SBP SS offset at age 62.

If we assume the same ratios exist among DIC recipients, 85% of them will receive virtually no improvements from the phased elimination of the Social Security offset. Note that the new DIC widows being created by the ongoing military combat operations are likely in the same ratio as the existing retirees.

A further blow to these DIC widows is that the “unused premiums” paid from tax exempt dollars will be returned to the survivors as a now taxed lump sum … often at a higher tax rate that if the taxes had been withheld when the premium was paid.

I ask you to urge Senator Warner to withdraw SA1598. I ask you to actively support Senator Nelson’s SA 762, which would provide immediate relief to all DIC recipients, not just the 15% to 20% with higher SBP annuities. SA 1598 is superfluous, since the Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission already has the charter to review and make recommendations on all veterans’ benefits.

The immediate elimination of the DIC offset is the right thing to do, let the Congress take this step, then let the VDBC recommend the amount of DIC that should be paid.

President Bush has been furnished a copy of this request.

PLEASE CONTINUE TO CONTACT SENATOR WARNER

Senator Warner's office is well aware of our efforts to have him withdraw his second degree amendment which would have the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission study the Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP)/Dependency Indemnity Compensation (DIC) offset.

However our participation was less than expected ... the last alert was sent to 1547 subscribers, 140 bounced (see comment at end of message), 1087 opened and read the alert, but only 532 actually followed through. Add our 500 responders to the 1500 responders reported by NAUS and we have at least 2000 follow throughs ... not to mention what the other organizations provided.

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/webreturn/?url=/usdr/issues/alert/?alertid=7970081

"Either this is more MSM spin, or some of these troops need to be "counseled" about what's expected of them when they meet someone like the Vice President. Or maybe some junior officer with RAT sympathies sabotaged the whole thing by rounding up a bunch of malcontents.

You don't ask questions like this, no matter what the "official" reason for the meeting is. You smile, shake his hand, and shut up. Anything else is disrespectful and plays into the hands of the enemy and their leftist supporters at home. Somebody's head ought to roll for this."

Yeah why don't they just shut up and die indefinitely, so Cheney's cronies can make more and more money? They don't make enough money in peacetime, let's be reasonable.

...like troops that aren't grateful to die for Cheney!

that it's not even sad at this point.

Is there a link to the original articles?

I've linked to that site (MySA) forever and the articles are always there a long time after my posts...LONG time. This one "was disappeared" less than 24 hrs after it went up.

HERE is another link, same article:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2005/12/18/international/i121811S43.DTL&type=printable

I wondered what had happened - Thanks!!

didn't scan the Afghanistan article very well...catch the part about Cheney's people bitching about having to go thru Afghan security???
Frigging bunch of bullies..do as we say not as we do when it comes to security measures, I guess. Imagine someone wanting to stroll into the White House and telling Secret Service "Oh, don't worry about my bags, my people have already searched them".

Poop on Cheney and his people, I started a thread earlier on their childish, self centered bullshit in the "new and improved" article.

more now than when they first invaded Iraq.

Other priorities...

When Warren asked that question, what i heard was "We don't see much good, what do you folks in the ivory tower see?" Then Cheney went off on some nonsense about the "great progress" being made.

The corporal wasn't throwing a softball, Dickie-boy. He was CRITICIZING you!
The Professor

to which Cheney also stated, "Unless of course, this administration is wearing them, then you'll see chicken hawk yella."

colors don't run," the only sound was a lone whistle.

That's probably because most of the the soldiers have internet and know the the complete sentence Cheney quoted is "We're in this fight to win. These colors don't run, or get 5 deferments."

the precise nature of the "other priorities" that prompted his five deferrals from service in Vietnam. I bet they constituted absolute monuments to patriotism and self-sacrifice. Or maybe not.

he has been wanting to do business there since he headed Halliburton. Was all in favor of lifting the sanctions so Halliburton & company could make money. Guess Saddam wasn't so bad after all if your willing to do business with him.