17 September 2004

Bingo from William Saletan

of Slate.com. A straight-forward piece on the hypocrisy of George W. Bush.

This week, President Bush and Sen. John Kerry addressed the annual conference of the National Guard Association. Neither man talked about Bush's service in the Guard, and the officers in attendance made clear that they wanted to hear about Iraq, not Vietnam. But one issue leads to the other. Bush's abuse of the Guard in Iraq is what makes his abuse of the Guard during Vietnam an important consideration in this election.
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In short, Bush has pulled Guard troops away from their homeland security duties to fight and die in a war unrelated to the service for which they enlisted. A guardsman who did less than he signed up for is coercing other guardsmen to do more than they signed up for.
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Kerry brought them a different message. "Far too many of you have been on the ground for far too long, much longer than was expected or promised," he reminded them Thursday. "Many of you are our first responders here at home: fire fighters, police officers, and emergency medical technicians. To take you out of your communities is to take down our critical first line of defense.
That's no way to protect America."

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