How about Dems use a new language???

Alright, I'm following this whole hubbaloo about the failure of the military to adequately outfit our troops, or for that matter, our failure to send adequate numbers out there, like this is any big surprise. Talking Points Memo has a couple of blurbs about this and the "official" Congressional Republican response.

Two issues.

First of all, how is it that the Republicans have managed to bottle this issue up and not have it made an election year issue? It's been talked about for nearly 2 years now. There were stories dating back to the start of the war about the fact that families were sending body armor to their kids since it wasn't being provided by the military. That's unconscionable. Our failure to send enough troops to the fight has led to the trouble we're in now, and when General Shinseki pointed this out, he was forced out of the military.

Of course, none of this is by coincidence, in fact, it's by design. Donald Rumsfeld had been fighting for years to remake the military as a smaller, more lightly armed and mobile force. Since he took office he has been trying to remake the military in that fashion. We should give him full credit for succeeding. It's nice, of course, when the Republicans actually succeed at something they set out to do, it's just a pity that it so often ends up being the absolutely wrong thing to do. This has to be the most typical situation of this president, he sees the world as he wants it to be, not as it is, and acts accordingly. Simply put, believing is seeing, rather than the other way around.

Point number 2 is this: Why are the Dems calling for "hearings," and "heads to roll," and other language of a responsible, yet irrelevant opposition. It's time to call a spade a spade. The Republicans hate the military, they hate the soldiers in uniform. They love the uniform, the trappings of military and the power it entails, but they hate the soldiers actually doing the fighting. They aren't insensitive, they weren't unprepared, they don't care how many die because they have contempt for working Americans, whether they work at Walmart and want them to shoulder an ever greater share of our nation's burdens for less money and benefits to help lower the burden of the wealthiest, or whether they work in the military for even paltrier pay and less benefits. Only now, they want to put these people in danger because they just don't care, they are, in point - ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-SOLDIER, AND UNPATRIOTIC.

It's time we shouted this out from the highest rooftops, instead of speaking of them like they really care and just messed up. They don't care, and don't let the starting point of their arguments be that they do care, and how they messed up inadvertantly. Make them defend their patriotism on TV, radio and any other medium they appear. Let's put ads on TV about how they hate the working troops. It's time to stop fighting with kid's gloves.