Support the Troops, Mr. President

Congress has passed an “emergency” supplemental spending bill for the Iraq war. The word “emergency” is code for “not in the official budget so that I can pretend to be cutting the deficit” but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, congress has come up with the funds to keep the boys armed and dressed and fed. Whew! Wait, what’s that? Oh, the president is going to veto it because it includes a timeline for withdrawal. Wow. Poor kids over there are going to have to eat bugs, shoot rubber bands at insurgents and use cafeteria trays for body armor. And think of all the camels we’re going to have to steal for transportation once they run out of gas for the Humvees. Great. As if it wasn’t bad enough for them already.

Of course, I’m kidding. The funding doesn’t run out until like July or something. And even if it did - and this is key - the troops wouldn’t stay there fighting with potato guns. They would just come home. Cutting off funding is not abandoning 150,000 kids to wander the desert until they die of thirst. But once again, we’re off-topic. My point on this is - do you remember when Kerry lost an election because he voted against funding the war? Why is it that Bush gets a pass on this? Kerry’s vote was completely symbolic because the vote wasn’t close in the first place. So why can Bush veto the funding with one slash of his pen and it’s perfectly dandy?

Furthermore, ignoring the timeline aspect of this bill, Bush claims that he will not sign a war funding bill with unrelated expenditures (pork) in it. I mean, this is war we’re talking about here! What he meant was he won’t sign a bill with Democratic pork in it. As you can see from this article in the Washington Post every war funding bill has been chock full of unrelated spending, sometimes in the billions of dollars. So you know, same old pants on fire routine.