{"id":22490,"date":"2011-03-04T14:16:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-04T18:16:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=22490"},"modified":"2011-03-04T14:23:03","modified_gmt":"2011-03-04T18:23:03","slug":"milbank-troops-need-equipment-let-em-drink-beer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=22490","title":{"rendered":"Milbank: Troops need equipment? Let ’em drink beer."},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t agree much with Washington Post’s Dana Milbank<\/a>. I had a brief talk with him one day a few years ago and he’s a personable enough fellow, but his writing have the liberal left leanings you’d expect from a Post columnist. But he wrote an excellent piece last night in the Post. <\/p>\n

It’s about the hearings yesterday in Congress in which Secretary of Defense gates pleaded with Congress to provide money for force protection in Afghanistan;<\/p>\n

The money has been held up because it would come from a project benefiting a major contributor to the committee chairman, Bill Young (R-Fla.).<\/p>\n

“Mr. Chairman, our troops need this force-protection equipment, and they need it now,” Gates pleaded. “Every day that goes by without this equipment, the lives of our troops are at greater risk.” He urged action “today” on the funds, admonishing: “We should not put American lives at risk to protect specific programs or contractors.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So how did the committee respond to Gates’ plea? Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) asked Gates’ how the Pentagon felt about his bill to let underage troops drink beer. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) and Norm Dicks (D-WA) spent their time presenting to the committee the suitability of their respective constituent aircraft companies for a Pentagon contract. Milbank lists other issues more important than Congress’ inability to fund force protection needs;<\/p>\n

Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) complained about the war in Afghanistan. Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) opined about creating a no-fly zone over Libya. Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) had thoughts about the presidential helicopter. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gates merely wanted Congress to shift money, not appropriate more money. But, committee chairman, Bill Young (R-Fla.) isn’t listening to Gates.<\/p>\n

Why? Because Young objects to the money being taken away from the Army’s Humvee program. Never mind that the Army has more Humvees than it wants. They are manufactured by AM General – which happens to be Young’s third-largest campaign contributor.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t agree much with Washington Post’s Dana Milbank. I had a brief talk with him … Milbank: Troops need equipment? Let ’em drink beer.<\/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":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress-sucks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22490","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=22490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22490\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}