Wow. What candor — from a man who desperately avoided serving his country. I’m sure all 4,000 service members that have died as a result of the Cheney/Bush Iraq misadventure really wanted to be there.
“The president carries the biggest burden, obviously,” Cheney said. “He’s the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm’s way for the rest of us.”Oh, so he’s still pimping the idea that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, or that he and Dear Leader did the old bait-and-switch on those who enlisted?[ABC News’ White House correspondent Martha] Raddatz noted that some soldiers, Air Force members, and Marines have been on multiple deployments and have been sent back to Iraq because of the stop-loss policy — an involuntary extension of a service member’s enlistment contract. The Army alone says 58,000 US soldiers have been redeployed to war because of the stop-loss policy.
“When you talk about an all-volunteer force, some of these soldiers, airmen, Marines have been on two, three, four, some of them more than that, deployments,” Raddatz said. “Do you think when they volunteered they had any idea that there would be so many deployments or stop-loss? Some of those who want to get out can’t because of stop-loss?”
…”A lot of men and women sign up because sometimes they will see developments,” Cheney said. “For example, 9/11 stimulated a lot of folks to volunteer for the military because they wanted to be involved in defending the country.”
38 Responses to “Darth Cheney: the 4,000 dead signed up for it”
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“…we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm’s way for the rest of us.”
…so Grandpa Darth, if you needed somebody to test out your shotgun technique, would that be okay because “…voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm’s way for the rest of us”?
Or do you need the most transparently thin excuse for sending them off to be uselessly killed and maimed to keep your conscious (currently sitting in Satan’s vault in Hell) clear?
That man is so hollow he echoes when he talks…
This cold heartless bastard can look at this report (which actually has 8 unconfirmed additional deaths)
http://icasualties.org/oif/
and just think of it as a box score. They’re not people; their families and friends don’t matter. Cheney’s not personally invested, so it doesn’t matter diddly-squat to him. His gravestone should read:
Dick Cheney
“SO?”
One of those soldiers was a 22 year old from about 50 miles away. A kid, a neighbor half my age. Young enough to be my own son. How something like this young man’s death DOESN’T sadden a person for his family’s loss or anger one for the utter senselessness of their and his loss is beyond me.
He’s evil. We need to impeach him and W for high crimes, misdemeanors, and treason, convict them, and then send them on to the Hague where they can swing by the neck until dead for their war crimes.
Then every fucking penny we’ve given to Halliburton and it’s subsidiaries should be returned. Oil companies should be hit with a profiteering tax for being run by such complete bastards.
Nothing will bring those 4000 back. Nothing will bring back all the Iraqis we’ve killed, maimed and displaced.
Actually enforcing our laws will help make it a bit better, though.
Quote from Cheney’s boss, on MSNBC as of 13 minutes ago from AP:
Aw fuck. He’s gonna attack Iran.
Fucking chicken hawks. “So glad we have people who’ll volunteer to go into danger so I and my family and friends never have to.”
If they didn’t want to get blasted to hell by an IED, they shouldn’t have been traipsing around in those short fatigues!
“I vow so long as I am president to make sure that those lives were not lost in vain.”
Yup, by killing off a bunch more of them. Nice.
Well, their lives weren’t lost in vain b/c Cheney was only worth $2 million when the Supreme Court gave him the vice presidency and now he’s worth over $100 million. Halliburton was in the red, and that’s better, too. Oil was only $23/bbl so all the oil magnates were just having to suck it up and wear outfits twice or *horrors* three times.
The war fixed all that! It hasn’t been in vain for Dick and W and pals!
In the April 3 issue of the New York Review of Books, Michael Massing talks to soldiers in Fort Drum to get the rest of the story.
“The president carries the biggest burden, obviously.”
Oh, I think you could go to a VA hospital and find plenty of guys who might not agree with that statement.
Dear Mr Cheney,
Today Mainers are learning of yet another one of our soldiers losing his life in Iraq. He was a graduate of Telstar High School in Bethel, a small school of 300 students.
Since November, 3 other students and a recent graduate have also died in 2 separate car accidents.
Five young people in one very small community. Can you imagine the pain, the anguish, the numbness of this community?
I can.
I hope my atheist beliefs are wrong and that there is a special chamber in Hell for you, sir.
My brother’s response, in an email to me this morning: “I wonder, if we hit this guy with holy water, will he melt into a puddle of evil and crude oil?”
‘Thank God there were courageous people willing to serve because they laid the foundation for peace for generations to come,’
You know that W believes that he is the “courageous people”. Not the soldiers, but he, the President who knows he lied to send them into harm’s way.
He’s so courageous that he’s doing soft-shoe routines to show his complete lack of fear to the media!
Plus, he’s bringing about the Rapture, y’all!
It’s the real economic stimulus package–see, all the good Christian folk will be Raptured up, and all their swag will be left behind for the poor, uninsured, and highly-pigmented!
He’s like Lincoln, ya know.
“Aw fuck. He’s gonna attack Iran.”
Caren, you’re gonna hate this one:
So does this mean that the right wing has to STFU about the cops, firefighters, airline pilots, and flight attendants who died on 9/11 because, after all, they were just doing the job they signed up for?
Myself, I always thought it was a bad thing for someone to be killed in the line of duty, but I guess my tiny little lady-brain can’t handle the amount of denial and projection and contradiction needed to declare that if people signed up voluntarily to be in the military, that means we can use them however we want.
I heard soldiers talk about being hard-pressed to pay the rent, of having a child and being without health care, of yearning to escape a depressing town or oppressive family, of wanting to get out and see the world.
Exactly. For many, it’s the only way to get the bills paid, the only way to learn a trade, the only way to be able to afford any kind of college education, and the only way to get the hell out of the sticks.
I don’t believe for one moment that everyone who enlists knows exactly what they’re volunteering for: recruiters are notorious for lying about benefits and frequency of deployments. They’ll tell you anything to get you to enlist.
Okay, this headline on AP made me nauseous:
“Bush Sympathetic as War Toll Hits 4,000″
Isn’t this about as meaningful as “Ted Bundy Sympathetic to Families of Victims”?
And up until this time it was a complete mystery why he had the popularity rating of anal warts.
“Isn’t this about as meaningful as “Ted Bundy Sympathetic to Families of Victims”?
Difference between Bush and Ted Bundy:
One is responsible for the deaths of some unknown number of innocent victims.
And the other was executed in the electric chair…
Difference between Bush and Ted Bundy:
One is responsible for the deaths of some unknown number of innocent victims.
And the other was executed in the electric chair…
I’m sure all right-thinking people have seen this, but here it is again anyway.
“I’m sure all right-thinking people have seen this, but here it is again anyway.”
That was funny. But it would have been a hell of a lot funnier if it wasn’t so true…
Yeah, right.
At first I thought it was going to say Betrayus knew Iranis fired a volley of mortars at the Twin Towers.
What? Like that’s a stretch? 9-11! 9-11! Everything’s tied back to 9-11!
I want my country back. I really want it back.
Dick Cheney (and the rest of that foul White House) makes me wish there was a Hell.
Jezzus Christ I hate that guy.
(And all his fucking enablers too. I’m lookin’ at you, Mary Asshole Cheney.)
— someone brought up Cheney’s gravestone: it would be an act of civil merit to deface it on Memorial Day. Every goddamn year, for as many years as we have casualties.
Anyone remember Bush laughing at the first plane hitting the WTC tower? Mocking a woman on death row? Joking about lawless contractors in Iraq? Showing a little video at the White House Press Correspondents dinner joking about not finding WMDs?
He’s a sociopath and carries no burden whatsoever.
Anyone else caught this film?
http://www.bodyofwar.com/
phenomenal anti-war statement
Gen. David Petraeus, commanding general of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq, says he has evidence that Iran trained, equipped and funded insurgents who fired a volley of mortars and rockets at the protected Green Zone in Baghdad.
Would this be before or after they successfully hid the WMD, general?
Yesterday I heard the newscaster on NPR talking about the 4000 count, thought about Cheney’s “So?”, and had to pull over so I could cry.
What a despicable individual he is. Truly.
Yesterday I heard the newscaster on NPR talking about the 4000 count, thought about Cheney’s “So?”, and had to pull over so I could cry.
What a despicable individual he is. Truly.
These bastards never seem to give a flying fuck about the people they send off as canon fodder. I don’t know if there is such a thing as a just war, or even a necessary one (I guess having to defend your country against some attack might count).
All I know that every single dead soldier is one too many. So is every single civilian killed in a war. So is every single person traumatized or displaced in the course of a war. Not only in Iraq just now, but in any war on this planet.
Fuck. Iran is so much bigger than Iraq, and they have a BIG army. We simply do not have the (hu)manpower to fight them there so we don’t have to fight them here.
We’re gonna nuke ‘em. Cheney’s had a hard on for nuking–he’s always brought up ’strategic’ nukes as an option.
The Saudi Arabian paper just printed crap about how the gov’t is ready with plans in place in case of lethal fall out from Iran. Why would such a tightly controlled country print something like that (after a visit from Cheney) if it weren’t a real possibility.
If W nukes Iran, will impeachment be back on the table? B/c if he nukes Iran, China and Russia are going to kick our butts.
Fuckers. It blows my mind that the Commies may be the only ones who can stop this madness. China already owns our economy.
Here’s hoping it’s just a lack of sleep on my part, and that wiser heads will prevail.
A few fun facts comparing Iraq and Iran, from the CIA World Factbook:
Iraq has 432,000 square kilometers of land. Iran has 1,600,000.
Iraq has a population of 27 million. Iran has 65 million.
But, hey, the fact that we can’t control Iraq only proves that it’s a good idea to attack a larger country that has a larger population. Because if at first you don’t succeed, try try again!
What a f*cking chickenhawk. Too cowardly to serve, he delights in the extinction of those who are in our armed forces.
He and Bush want a return to the days of aristocracy. What they do is fine, what the peasants do is execrable.
He’ll need his SS protectors. Lots of ex-mil might just be ticked off or damaged enough to want payback.
Caren–I too get a nagging fear of China…
I have nightmares that Huckabee becomes president and China steps in, as they did in Tibet, to “liberate” us from theocracy… ::shivers::
What cold, unfeeling people we have in office. I heard the “So?” comment first on the Daily Show…my jaw dropped to. the. floor. That anyone who is supposed to owe their position to the people would show such open disdain for those people…My mind just boggles.
I have a friend whose husband joined the Army Reserves just before they got married, right after they discovered she was pregnant. What they thought was that he’d make a little money and be able to get some education, and provide for their new family. What they got was a tour in Iraq, and then a second stop-loss tour. How he survived, given that he wasn’t in the relatively safe area they told him he’d be in, I don’t know. He’s a young black man. If we go to Iran, he’ll probably be on the ground again, and I don’t know that he’ll make it.
So? So?! That’s all the VP can say?
I’m so angry I can hardly type.
This weekend, I went to my parent’s house for my mom’s b-day and for Easter, the first time our family would be all together since Christmas 2006. And you know what happened? My little brother got absolutely, horribly drunk on my mom’s birthday, the night before church. As in wake up the entire house, puke all over the floor drunk. The incident just about ruined the weekend.
Once he was sober enough to talk, we found out why he’d done such a boneheaded thing. Seems that he just found out that his good friend had gotten blown up in Iraq. He and his friends did what stupid, 22-year-old guys in the Midwest do: drink a lot. After finally telling us what happened, little brother cried, a lot, and it just about broke my heart.
And all Dick Cheney has to say is, “So?” Fuck him. He should go to South Dakota and tell my little brother that his friend was a volunteer and explain to my brother what, exactly, his friend died for. ‘Cuz he doesn’t understand it, and neither do I.
Does this asshole even know anyone who has died in this occupation? Does he care about anyone who has died in other wars? *rumbles off into incoherent angry ranting*
He typifies the attitude found in The Consumerist blog, that I am great and all must bow to my Entitled Greatliness. Be grateful wretches, for I am Customer, Destroyer of Commerce!
What gets me is that smirk he had on his face, as if he was thinking, “you really think I give a shit? how funny.”Karinna, big hugs and alot of tears… please wish your brother well. I am so, so sorry for his loss.