{"id":9635,"date":"2007-01-16T13:15:08","date_gmt":"2007-01-16T18:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9635.html"},"modified":"2007-01-16T13:15:08","modified_gmt":"2007-01-16T18:15:08","slug":"grumbling-in-the-ranks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/grumbling-in-the-ranks\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Grumbling in the Ranks’"},"content":{"rendered":"

We can add several hundred U.S. troops<\/a> to the growing list of opponents of the president’s policy in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Vocal opposition to President’s Bush’s strategy of sending more than 20,000 additional troops to help secure Iraq has grown to include some of the troops themselves.<\/p>\n

A group of more than 50 active-duty military officers will deliver a petition to Congress on Tuesday signed by about 1,000 troops calling for an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. “Any troop increase over here will just produce more sitting ducks, more targets,” said Sergeant Ronn Cantu, who is serving in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Under the 1988 Military Whistleblower Protection Act, active duty military, National Guard, and Reservists may communicate with any member of Congress without fear of reprisal, even if copies of the communication are sent to others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, I appreciate the fact that a petition signed by 1,000 active-duty troops against the war could probably be countered by an equally big petition on the other side. But let’s not forget that the latest Military Times poll<\/a>, which questioned 6,000 randomly selected active-duty members and found barely one in three service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, and only 38% of those surveyed said they wanted to see more troops sent to Iraq. In other words, men and women in uniform are pretty much where civilians are in terms of opinions on the war.<\/p>\n

I’m curious, though, how the right deals with news like this. Are U.S. troops “soft,” in conservatives’ opinion? Do our soldiers advocate “defeat and retreat” and “cut and run” policies? Do they lack commitment to “victory”? Do they prefer that we fight terrorists “here,” instead of “there”?<\/p>\n

Free prize for the first to find a conservative sincerely asking why the troops hate America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We can add several hundred U.S. troops to the growing list of opponents of the president’s policy in Iraq. Vocal opposition to President’s Bush’s strategy of sending more than 20,000 additional troops to help secure Iraq has grown to include some of the troops themselves. A group of more than 50 active-duty military officers will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}