Thursday, May 8, 2008

Gun to their heads ...

Via our pal Montag, seems DoD is using soldiers' pay as leverage over Congress to pass the latest war appropriation:

In an announcement that puts troops and their families in the middle of a political dispute, a Pentagon spokesman said Tuesday that the Army will not be able to pay soldiers after June 15 unless Congress approves an emergency war funding bill.

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How about putting war expenditures on the federal budget instead of trying to pay for them out of the petty cash box? How about giving us some idea of how the money will be spent and how much more you'll need until we get out of there? As the Chimp likes to say when he pushes his tax cuts "it's the taxpayers' money". This war started out as a 6 month, $50 billion effort. Five years and hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of dollars later, not to mention over 4000 US lives, and they're holding the soldiers hostage for appropriations. Nothing is beneath these assholes.

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[Rep. John] Murtha said there is no threat to military paychecks and that it is inappropriate for the Pentagon to try to involve soldiers and their families in a political dispute over how much money is needed to pay for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and exactly when the money is needed.

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Murtha said threatening paychecks is a mistake. “It is unacceptable for them to say something like that,” he said. “It is unacceptable for the Pentagon to make a political statement like that, scaring troops and their families in time of war. [my em]

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20 January can't come soon enough.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

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