Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Passing the Buck. Again

Going into Iraq, we were told that it would be an in and out--six months. Maybe a year. No more than a few billion dollars. Three years, thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars later, GWB tells us that it will be "future presidents" who decides when the US will leave Iraq--notice the use of the plural. But the American people are not to worry because we ARE winning the war. We just have to trust him on that. Who knew that Paul Wolfowitz was floating a trial policy for the administration when he said that Iraq was no longer his problem?

Colin Powell once said about Iraq, "you break it, you buy it." Everyone but the little Mary Sunshines skipping through their fantasy land can see that it's broken. But we aren't changing course because that would mean admitting someone effed up. They're still killing us, but now they're killing each other, too. So our kids will be mopping it up as well as paying for it for years to come. Which means we might want to think about better compensation for the military. We might also want to find ways to make it a more attractive career option for the future. After all, why should Halliburton get all the money?

So a couple of suggestions:

1) Eliminate the federal income tax for all active-duty military personnel. After all, we pay them with tax money and ask them to put their lives on the line every day. This should NOT apply to any member of Congress, the federal judiciary or the administration. Especially not members of Congress, since they already have a lovely three day work week.

2) Offer the ability to assign GI Bill benefits to a family member after a pre-determined number of years of service or immediately, in the case of death or catastrophic injury.

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