Interesting...there are nine veterans of Mess O'Potamia planning runs for congress next year, and eight of them are Democrats.
Over the din of a bustling downtown coffee shop, the 41-year-old infantry officer and lawyer leans across the table, and outlines his latest mission.
''You either have to buy into the rhetoric or stand up. I am standing up."
Lentz, who as a major in the 82d Airborne helped to rebuild the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, is running for Congress. He is one of at least nine veterans vying to become the first soldiers of the post-9/11 military to be elected to the House of Representatives, according to party leaders.
They say their experience makes them well-suited to help successfully extricate the United States from Iraq and to more effectively fight the war on terrorism, which they fear is being lost in the Muslim world's court of public opinion.
Eight of the nine are running as Democrats. At least three are lawyers. Most went to the front lines from the Reserves or the National Guard. Some have been recruited for office by party leaders; others say they are trying to get the national parties to pay attention to them.
It seems to me, and you know me the idiot bastard optimist that I am, but the national committees of our party should not be ignoring these folks...they ignored Paul Hackett until the netroots constituency brought him out as a formidable candidate, and look what he accomplished in the solidly red OH-2.
If the status quo seat holders are feeling a little threatened by these folks, fuck 'em. Perhaps it's time to look for new blood, men and women who are already proven to be unafraid of a fight and a little adversity in reaching their goals and taking care of their troops and now the folks "back home".
...
Regardless of political party, most say they are running against the current political order, which they believe has failed to collaborate on a unified strategy.How do we get these guys to talk to us so we can start spreading the word that we want to help? I really, really, have no problem tossing out a Democrat who has sucked up to the 1600 Crew for their personal gain/access/whatever and supported all the policied of Mess O'Potamia without question if they are going to be challenged by someone who has been there and bought the T-shirt.
I do read my email...
posted by Jo Fish on 11.28.05 at 09:47 AM
Comments:
You know the drill: send money. Find out their campaign committees' addresses and send money.
Re Paul Hackett: after watching Jean Schmidt's insane outburst after Murtha's bomb, I have to wonder how many of the good burgers of Cincinnati will still vote for her next year, no matter how loyal a party functionary she has been.
posted by: Mike on 11.28.05 at 12:39 PM [permalink]
Rite On Lt!!! I ran across several of the Cunningham kind of officers and just like the enlisted, there's always that 10% that are idiots, bullies, assholes and dingbats in general...
Usually they get found out and removed but again some like the "DICK errrr Duke" manage to coast along on their bullshit until the wheels come off...
I have served under some fine officers, and would do it again even being older than dirt.
I have been following you and the rest of this band of brothers for quite a while, and from what I have managed to deduce, there isn't a person in your team that I wouldn't be proud to serve with...
The Duke will probably die in prison, and it serves him right! He is a traitorous, treasonous son of a bitch who made a profit off the very people whom he was sworn to protect... That's us! Plain and simple! I for one don't give a rats ass what happens to him or any other repig son of a bitch who has put on of my brothers and sisters in harms way. Fuck em all, piss and punk is too good for these sleazy sons of bitches!
Yes Jo, if one of these would please run against LIEberman it would be nice.
posted by: Mr.Murder on 11.29.05 at 04:49 AM [permalink]
Paul Hackett until the netroots constituency brought him out as a formidable candidate, and look what he accomplished in the solidly red OH-2.
yes, but look at the platform Hackett had to adopt to be competitive. It's Republican-lite. If he had run on a Democratic platform, he'd a been shellacked. As it is, he was merely whipped.
Between that and the Ohio GOP's scandal problems, that's the only reason Hackett did what he did--and he still lost. Anyone thinking they can replicate that throughout the country is sadly mistaken.
posted by: bean on 11.29.05 at 02:53 PM [permalink]
Keep dreamin', Bean. Hackett is against gun control, but he's for protecting ANWAR, equal rights for gays, ratcheting down the drug war and abortion rights. And he's a trial lawyer.
You'll tell us when Bush is proven right on Iraq, won't you?
posted by: Tony on 11.29.05 at 04:11 PM [permalink]
And he's a trial lawyer.
And that's a good thing? And just read the Duelfer Report about Saddam's nuclear intentions, as well as FactCheck.org (http://www.factcheck.org/article358.html) that shows the moonbat Left is overreaching in its charges against Bush, as well as the Senate Intelligence Comittee report about how Joe Wilson is a bag-o-shit liar, etc., the British Butler Commission, etc., etc.
As always, the Loony Left will be looking like idiots once history gives us the long view of events. Remember, it was moonbats like you who doomed several generations of Vietnamese to "re-education camps" and other Communist thuggery.
posted by: bean on 11.29.05 at 04:25 PM [permalink]
Oh, and this, from the rare truth-telling Democrat, Joe Lieberman. Note, especially, the last paragraph:
"Progress is visible and practical. In the Kurdish North, there is continuing security and growing prosperity. The primarily Shiite South remains largely free of terrorism, receives much more electric power and other public services than it did under Saddam, and is experiencing greater economic activity.
"None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.
"The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.
"Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory."
posted by: bean on 11.29.05 at 04:52 PM [permalink]
"As always, the Loony Left will be looking like idiots once history gives us the long view of events. Remember, it was moonbats like you who doomed several generations of Vietnamese to "re-education camps" and other Communist thuggery." bean
Damn, how could we have wasted all the effort by the neocons for their valant fighting in Nam. Wait, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Delay, Frist, Santorium, Wolfowitz (and on, and on, and on, and on, and on...) didn't help fight the conflict in Vietnam. But we can still blame liberal veterans who did. Can't blame the government for not CONVINCING the American public what a great idea it was!!! Communist thuggery? OH!!! Bean means, I think, that GW is bringing the GREAT FIGHT to the Chinese. Whoops my bad, he's just confirming the announcement during the first night of his visit that China had agreed to buy 70 new 737 jets from Boeing. And, bean, why is it that the neocons are getting us into debt with COMMUNISTS??? And if liberating people from dictators is really what the neocons are doing, why didn't we free the people of Kuwait in 91? (Oh, they're YOUR kind of dictators.) How does Bush spell freedom?... oil, that is, black gold, Texas Tea.
