I happened upon Mike Huckabee's show this evening and he showed two clips: one of Bush being

[soldier19Ka]

15. One of "those" troops.

As a SSG in the U.S. Military, I would like to enlighten you on a few things. 1) We did love Bush. 2) Soldiers don't have political parties in combat, we have a Commander in Chief. Regardless of their political orientation, they are evaluated based upon how we are treated IN THEATER. Much like any leader, their troops judge them based upon how they lead. Quite frankly, for someone like you who refers to us as "them" being sent off to battle unprepared, I can deduce one fact at least. YOU WERE NEVER THERE!!! Know what else that tells me? You don't know jack about what you are talking about. You have sat under a blanket of freedom and digested what the media machine has fed you. People like you applaud us coming home when you don't have the faintest idea that leaving a job when it is only 90 percent finished tears us apart inside. Another thing you probably don't know is that we ACCEPT going to war with what you have. You did get one thing right though, we were unprepared. We didn't have the supply chain we needed. We didn't have the armor we needed. This was largely due to Clinton disassembling every significant support unit the U.S. Military had at it's disposal to guarantee our preparedness. Now, back on point, Bush gave us what we had. Bush allowed funding for our civilian counterparts to arm us with the tools necessary to defeat a dynamic enemy that was constantly innovative and met every countermeasure we could deploy against their methods. Some facts to back all of this up: (considering I served under both CIC's) Under Bush I never had orders come down to me to issue my men that stated "Don't shoot back when fired upon without a 300m clear backdrop. Have them fire at the ground instead." WTF??? Seriously?? Don't return fire? Here's another charmer: Under Bush we never had to worry about our CIC signing some SOFA that gave the power to the IA and the IP to arrest and detain us if they deemed our actions illegal. (We rapidly produced a countermeasure for this which was a laminated card in Farsi as well as Arabic that said in no uncertain terms "If you attempt to so much as touch myself or one of my soldiers I will consider it an act or war and paint the ground with what currently resides beneath your skull."
In conclusion, please allow me to clarify. "They" aren't your troops. "They" are MY troops. "They" were Bush's troops. Obama refused to wear OUR flag on his lapel because he said it showed support for the Iraq war. I was over there when I read that statement. Let me make this perfectly clear. We don't have politics, we don't have agendas, we have a mission. Lead us, follow us, or stfu and get the F*#K out of our way but for God's sake.......don't pretend to understand us or care for us and damn sure don't use US as some political statement such as the one that spawned this thread. Hooah?