Maybe They DO Listen To Me

Via Shakes (who I wish was still working for Edwards) comes this story about Every Republican's Least Favorite Marine:

Murtha hopes to choke off the 4-year-old war in Iraq by placing four conditions on combat funds through Sept. 30:

The Pentagon would have to certify that troops being sent to Iraq are "fully combat ready" with training and equipment; troops must have at least one year at home between combat deployments; combat assignments could not be extended beyond one year; a "stop-loss" program forcing soldiers to extend their enlistment periods would be prohibited.

"We're trying to force a redeployment not by taking money away, by redirecting money," Murtha said, adding he wants U.S. funds to be slanted more toward diplomacy and Iraq reconstruction.

Hmmmm... Sounds faintly familiar to me for some strange reason.

For one thing, the "surge" plan is doomed to fail unless and until they scrape up every single bit of necessary and required materiel from stateside and ship it over to the sandbox with all overdue haste. It won't make a bit of difference to send in another fifty thousand, hundred thousand, two hundred thousand pairs of boots, plus the people to stand in them, if they don't have the gear they need. This is a must, period, ad infinitum, ad astra, ad nauseum.

Second, all talk of preemptively cutting funding must cease. Instead, we should actually stop diverting funds from the troops stationed in Iraq in the first place. We're putting more and more money into the Iraqi infrastructure than we are into the actual needs of the people fighting. This, as they say, is a Bad Idea. Fund them right, feed them right, equip them right. You want to show your support of the troops? Then do it where it counts. No more "I support my troops so I'm pulling them back home" garbage.

Has John Murtha been sneaking peeks into this blog without me noticing it? If he has, or if any Member of Congress does so, please feel free to hire me on. If you don't need a blogger, then pass word on to your interested colleagues. I could really use a better job, and don't have hardly any documented skeletons in my archives.

Couldn't do much better than that, could you?