As he diaried last night, Daily Kos regular and VoteVets activist The Angry Rakkasan gave today's Democratic response to Bush's weekly radio address. He wasn't able to post a diary on this for technical reasons, and he was heading out to a Daily Kos meetup, but he sent along some links to coverage of his response and I said I'd get them up.
A transcript and audio are available at the DNC website.
Army Times:
An Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran will give the Democratic response on July 14 to President Bush’s weekly radio aggress, expressing disagreement with the administration’s Iraq policies.
According to the text of the veteran’s remarks made available July 13, Brandon Friedman, a former infantry officer, will say: "It is time for the president and those in his party, including those running to be the next commander-in-chief, to support changing the mission in Iraq. For the sake of our national security, we must begin bringing the troops home."
President Bush’s radio remarks were not available in advance of his address.
Friedman says in his remarks that he stayed away from politics while in the military, but "now I can no longer remain silent as our commander-in-chief continually mismanages and degrades the military I have come to love."
Bloomberg:
Senate Republicans must vote with the Democratic majority in Congress to redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq, and President George W. Bush should support bringing the troops home, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan said.
Repeated deployments in Iraq have taken a "staggering toll" on U.S. military readiness, posing "a dangerous threat to our national security," Brandon Friedman, a former infantry officer in the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said in the Democratic Party's weekly radio address.
"The escalation of the Iraq war is failing and now the mission must change," said Friedman, who led a platoon into Afghanistan in 2002 to battle Taliban and al-Qaeda, and a year later commanded troops during the Iraq invasion.
AP:
In the Democratic response to Bush's radio address, Brandon Friedman, a former infantry officer in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, said it's past time for a transition to diplomatic efforts in Iraq that Democrats have long demanded.
"The fact is, the Iraq war has kept us from devoting assets we need to fight terrorists worldwide — as evidenced by the fact that Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and al-Qaida has been able to rebuild," Friedman said. "We need an effective offensive strategy that takes the fight to our real enemies abroad. And the best way to do that is to get our troops out of the middle of this civil war in Iraq."
He also wanted to let people know that:
I’ve also been told that NBC has picked up the story for all its affiliates for this evening (including Nightly News and MSNBC).
Pretty cool that the Democrats chose him, and it looks like he hit it out of the park.