Three Way News
Your Source. For everything. Really.
Contributors
- Hammer
- Jambo
- Libby Mae
Current Poll
Recurring features
Hammer's Favorites
- Dobson v. Sponge-Bob
- Calvin, the nest egg
- Pat's predictions
- Bachmann spins Cupertino
- 205 atheists assume the bench
- Fox spins Oil for Food
- Fact check: highest taxed state
- Gen. Myers v. Reality
- Janice Rogers Brown
- Killing Field
- Kline hates Big Bird
- Vote Luca Brasi!
- Cornyn's Stalinist Supreme Court
- Rumsfeld's hidden metrics
Jambo's Favories
- Dolphin research updates
- We all shine on
- If you have to write...
- Columnist NY Times should have
- Truth about taxes
- Fourth of July
- Movie objects
- Lost in supermarket
- Dysfunctional Farmer Labor party
- Punks you hated
- Some preacher from east
- Winning issues
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Bad time to brag
Smilin' Norm Coleman has poor timing. Here's his Norm's Notes from December 30, bragging up the bang up job he and his party are doing for our troops:
I have also worked to support our troops over the past year through a number of initiatives. First, I successfully worked with National Guard and other members of the Minnesota delegation to minimize the impact of Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommendations that would have severely affected military installations in Duluth and Grand Forks. Proposals to eliminate aircraft, and possibly close the base, would have had adverse affects on Minnesota -- a state that consistently leads the nation in both National Guard recruiting and retention. During this year, I also supported measures to improve the quality of life for our service members, including a 3 percent pay raise for military personnel and the extension of permanent Tricare health coverage to all members of the National Guard and Reserve.
I'm sure keeping the bases open pleases some troops. I'm sure all the troops appreciate a 3% pay raise. There's also an increased death benefit for soldiers who are killed in action. That's a comfort, I'm sure to their families. If Norm and his party really want to support our troops, though, maybe they could make sure fewer of them qualify for KIA benefits:
A secret Pentagon study has found that as many as 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to the upper body could have survived if they had had extra body armor. Such armor has been available since 2003, but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
...The Marine Corps said it asked for the data in August 2004; but it needed to pay the medical examiner $107,000 to have the data analyzed. Marine officials said financing and other delays had resulted in the study's not starting until December 2004. It finally began receiving the information by June 2005. The shortfalls in bulletproof vests are just one of the armor problems the Pentagon continues to struggle with as the war in Iraq approaches the three-year mark, The Times has found in a continuing examination of the military procurement system.
If Smilin' Norm really wants to support American troops, he could spend some time investigating the Pentagon procurement system to discover why we can't provide appropriate armor for troops after years of war.
