{"id":21705,"date":"2011-01-03T08:58:50","date_gmt":"2011-01-03T12:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=21705"},"modified":"2011-01-03T08:58:50","modified_gmt":"2011-01-03T12:58:50","slug":"iraq-war-veterans-in-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=21705","title":{"rendered":"Iraq war veterans in Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stars & Stripes’ Leo Shane<\/a> has conversations with the eight Iraq veterans elected to Congress this season and their commitment to their fellow soldiers and Marines;<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you\u2019ll see the House Armed Services Committee become more of a war committee than it has been in the last few years,\u201d said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., who served with the Marines in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to be more focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. And we need to make the military a leaner, meaner fighting machine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunter and Colorado Republican Rep. Mike Coffman are the only two returning Iraq veterans in the House, but they\u2019ll be joined by six freshman lawmakers with current war experience, including three who\u2019ve been appointed to the House Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve been in the military, you can take policy proposals and think about how that change is going to play out, not from an academic standpoint but from an experience standpoint,\u201d said Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., one of those three newcomers and a major in the Army Reserve.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt helps to understand what troops go through, what families go through on deployment. As someone who is still talking to those troops, that\u2019s a perspective that can help across the board.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fellow freshman committee member Florida Rep. Allen West, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, said he hopes to spearhead efforts to review the military\u2019s rules of engagement in Afghanistan as soon as the new legislative session begins, calling some of the restrictions on battlefield troops unfair and unsafe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith some of the rules we\u2019ve placed on them, we might as well start handing out traffic tickets at the Daytona 500,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll push for oversight hearings on that right away, because we need to listen to the complaints of the troops on the ground.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think with Hunter and West in the lead, we’re going to see some common sense coming out Congress for the first time. Still, they have to remember that Congress legislates and the President executes. The military has only one commander-in-chief and Congress can’t try to drive this war from the backseat like the last few legislative sessions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stars & Stripes’ Leo Shane has conversations with the eight Iraq veterans elected to Congress this … Iraq war veterans in Congress<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,7,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-terror-war","category-veterans-in-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}