What you say?!? Per none other than George Will:

They again voted to give the delegates to the House from Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands and the District of Columbia, and the resident commissioner from Puerto Rico, the right to vote in the House when it is sitting as the "Committee of the Whole," which is how it sits almost all the time. It is in that status that almost all debate about and amending of legislation occur. If these five votes decide the outcome of a vote in the Committee of the Whole, the matter at issue will be automatically revoted by the full House without those five participating. Still, these five faux members will have powers equal to those of real members on everything but final passage of bills, which often is more perfunctory than the process that leads to that.

I posted a video last week where an NBC news team interviewed  some troops who expressed sincere frustration to the growing feeling of betrayal they have concerning America's lackluster support.

"If they’re going to support us, support us all the way" was their simple and heartfelt message.

Well William Arkin of the WaPo responded and in essence told them you are lucky to have the people's respect at all, and you should be thankful for the paycheck we give you, so shut up and quit whining.  No that's not a quote, but it is damn hard not to read this any other way.

If you cannot handle a pissed off vet venting over this, look away now.  I may use a bad word or two.

The Troops Also Need to Support the American People

From the word go, he offends me.  Hey dipstick, the troops DO support the American people: with their lives.

Just DAYS after the Left had apoplectic fits over George Bush leaving the "-ic" off when referring to the Democrat Party, they local branch of that party proves his point (though he spinelessly denies it, and claims it was a honest mistake - oh well, my opinion of Mr. Bush is not glowing).

As Stefan Sharkansky noted over at Sound Politics noted yesterday:

The Senate Government Operations & Elections Committee holds a "public hearing" at 1:30pm today on several bills designed to cripple the people's Constitutional right to initiative:

SB 5181 - Requiring signature gatherers to wear identification.
SB 5182 - Requiring signature gatherers to sign initiative and referendum petitions.
SB 5356 - Prohibiting payment of petition signature gatherers on a per-signature basis.
SB 5392 - Increasing the initiative filing fee.
SB 5418 - Requiring ballot titles to indicate tax consequences of the ballot measure.
SJR 8205 - Relating to the constitutional provisions regarding initiatives and referendums.

Joe Biden announced today (for the 824th time) that he's running for President.  Find links about the man Forbes calls a windy foreign relations expert, as well as to an article that describes his controversial virulent outbreak of foot-in-mouth disease regarding fellow Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, here .

Seriously that it what it amounts to.  Hey enemy?  Kick back, here is when we will be gone. 

Apparently the enemy is too dumb to know how to win, so congress has decided to plan it for them.

Oddly (sarcasm) this round up of defeatism and surrender comes via the self congratulatory Daily Kos and Truth Dig:

S. 121, introduced on January 4th by Sen. Russ Feingold. The bill would give the Pentagon and State Dept. jointly 60 days to submit a plan for redeployment from Iraq, within 180 days from enactment. Cosponsors: Boxer.

S. 233, introduced on January 9th by Sen. Ted Kennedy. The bill would prohibit funds for any U.S. forces above the number of forces already there as of January 9, 2007, without a specific Congressional authorization for such increase. Cosponsors: Boxer, Brown, Harkin, Kerry, Leahy, Menendez, Sanders.

I used to be a Democrat and got this disturbing e-mail from U.S. Senator and Democrat Party Presidential Nominee Barack Obama's Exploratory Committee:

The time for waiting in Iraq is over. The days of our open-ended commitment must come to a close. And the need to bring this war to an end is here.

That is why today, I’m introducing the Iraq War De-escalation Act of 2007. This plan would not only place a cap on the number of troops in Iraq and stop the escalation, it would begin a phased redeployment of U.S. forces with the goal of removing of all U.S. combat forces from Iraq by March 31st, 2008 – consistent with the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that the President ignored.

It's a simple but potent message from the frontliners, the boots on the ground,

While the left may sing themselves to sleep each night comforted by their pseudo support mantra "Support the troops, not the war", the real troops are having none of it.

What the left does not get is that while they do not believe in the war, the troops do.  What the troops feel from their "support the troops, bring them home" chants is frustration that their nation does not believe in them and is abandoning support.

Watch the clip and see for yourself how the troops feel.

The question becomes can you support them and their ideals and not give them the support for the mission they are doing?  While the left sees no conflict, the troops feel it.  How can we support them and not equip them for success?  Oh sure, we give them armour, or guns.  Do we give them belief?  Trust? They also need the emotional support.

As many of you apparently missed, the "Peace Movement", sponsored by United For Peace, had a rally on Saturday to show the widespread support to bring the troops home now.

January 27th was an extraordinary outpouring for peace in Washington DC and in communities all around the country. On Saturday, the National Mall was filled with the voices of 500,000 people committed to doing their part to end the war in Iraq and bring all of the troops home. And the energy in this massive turnout was electric.

From the website, there are thousands of pictures of not quite 500,000 people at the rally. I have looked at literally hundreds of these pictures and I have yet to see one taken from anything other than ground level showing anything more than a few thousand people. I would have thought if there were 500,000 people at the rally, there would have been some overhead shots of the entire crowd. You would almost think that maybe there were not 500,000 people at the rally. It appears some think there may have been less.