"I once believed that I served for a cause"...

[nostamj]

White House is ambushed by criticism from America's military community

<snip>

"I once believed that I served for a cause: 'To uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States'. Now I no longer believe that," Tim Predmore, a member of the 101st Airborne Division serving near Mosul, wrote in a blistering opinion piece this week for his home newspaper, the Peoria Journal Star in Illinois. "I can no longer justify my service for what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies."

The dissenters - many of whom have risked deep disapproval from the military establishment to voice their opinions - have set up websites with names such as Bring Them Home Now. They have cried foul at administration plans to cut veterans' benefits and scale back combat pay for troops still in Iraq. They were furious at President Bush for reacting to military deaths in Iraq with the phrase "bring 'em on".

And they have given politically embarrassing prominence to such issues as the inefficiency of civilian contractors hired to provide shelter, water and food - many of them contributors to the Bush campaign coffers - and a mystery outbreak of respiratory illnesses that many soldiers, despite official denials, believe is related to the use of depleted uranium munitions.

"It is time to speak out because our troops are still dying and our government is still lying," Candace Robison, a 27-year-old mother of two from Krum, Texas, and a politically active serviceman's wife, told a recent protest outside President Bush's Texas ranch. "Morale is at an all-time low and our heroes feel like they've been forgotten."

more
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=445128

http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/

[StopTheMorans]

1. It's a dupe

there was a thread on this a couple of hours ago with a link from the hoffmania blog to this article I believe.