The excerpted Stripes letter below kicks Bush's ass on the day he holds a press conference professing his concern for the troops. In case you statesiders haven't heard, there will be no more taxpayer funding of "welcome home" celebrations for redeploying troops, supposedly because the US budget can't sustain it. If troops' families want to celebrate, they must find a way to finance it themselves, even for potlucks.
Bush has made massive, above 70%, "reallocations" of all FY 2007 DoD funding that is non-defense related. Where do you suppose all that money is going?
Fund welcome-home parties
In his State of the Union speech, President Bush touted a booming U.S. economy. So why are we now being told that the U.S. can’t afford welcome-home family reunions for our soldiers returning from downrange deployments?
These soldiers and their families have made great sacrifices, and it’s inexcusable that their sacrifices mean so little to their commander in chief. It’s unbelievable that Bush thinks our military families should have potluck welcome-home celebrations.
Just how much money is the cancellation of these reunions going to save in Bush’s $700 billion defense spending package? Why does it seem more and more of the Department of Defense’s share of the budgetary pie is being diverted from projects that Vice President Dick Cheney’s Halliburton and George H.W. Bush’s Carlyle Group don’t profit from?
I’ve got one recommendation: Finance welcome-home activities with the unspent $20 million that Bush’s 109th Congress reportedly set aside in its defense spending bill last October for a "victory celebration" over Iraq.
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