I thought I would share with you a recent exchange I had with a liberally-minded internet friend of mine.

He began like this, with a letter to a small group of carbon copy opinion-wielders like myself and my friend Pat Hurley:

A while back I made note of "wasteful government programs" and had forwarded an article highlighting how wasteful military spending really is (John McCain seems to think so too) and someone replied with the comment that at least "America has something to show for it.".......Well it appears that some of our soldiers will take issue with that. Let me get this right.......We spend billion and billions of taxpayers money and give some of these corporations "blank checks" and many of our soldiers feel they don't even have basics they need. Where is all that taxpayer money going?

To which, I replied...

As it turns out, the soldiers were coached by a reporter, and even the veracity of the claims is now in question. As a veteran of Desert Storm, Mogadishu/Somalia and Bosnia/Herzegovina, let me tell you how creative we are. At one point, we made our own washing machine for greasy uniforms out of a 50 gallon drum, some copper tubing and powered it off the 600 pound auxiliary stream drains and an LP air line. It certainly wasn’t newsworthy of the media back home: SAILORS USE REFUSE TO WASH CLOTHES, WHERE ARE OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS GOING?

You can read the reporter’s article that coached the soldiers here:

Even his own article is less inflammatory and acidic than the mainstream media who went for this like a pit bull on a bone.

None of the troop choppers I ever flew in were armored and the hull of the helo-carrier that I slept in was a half inch thick in most places. A cheap missile would make a good sized hole.

But you know, that didn’t make the news either, not when we took small arms fire and mortars from the beaches in Mogadishu, nor when we traversed the minefields of the Adriatic. It’s a tough job, and we volunteered to do it.

Whiny civilians... quit yer bitchin’ and quit inciting my fellow vets to question their chain of command. We have a job to do. Let us do it. The US Marine Corps are lethal wearing only underwear and brandishing only bare fists. That’s the winning attitude. Inspire decay within the ranks and we’ll fall apart, accomplish nothing.

It disgusts me to see whiny liberals say how much they support the troops while at the same time applaud the cowards who refused to run supplies through the desert, complaining that it was “too dangerous”. That kind of supporting the troops will get people killed, cripple our military.

And in response, he penned:

Michael,

I’m sure even if some of the soldiers were “coached” they wouldn’t have said what they did if it weren’t true. Retired general Tommy Franks was on Fox last night and he acknowledged that the military is deficient in many regards. This simply should NEVER be….given our military budget! And at the same time John McCain has expressed that the Pentagon has done a poor job in its accounting of military spending. My point is simply, this highlights the kind of waste, inefficiency and ineffectiveness that Republicans vow to rid Government of. Yet…..

Although I agree with him on some points, I am no lover of the wasted dollar let alone a billion or so of them... It was not the point I was making with respect to this incident. I concluded:

The fact of the matter is that we don’t know what was true and what was not. All, some, any of it. The soldiers, if they were told that these things were true, would have been incensed on the spot and would have enjoyed “sticking it to the brass”. I know I would have.

My point is, stop fomenting rebellion in the military. It is a taut spring under the best of conditions. You want to change things? Want to cut out the pork? Do it at home through your elected officials. Stop killing our troops, making their job harder, just for the sake of some fiery (and possible false) headlines that drive your ratings up so you can charge more for your advertising.

Posted by Michael at December 11, 2004 01:42 AM