Update:
Mr. Cheney — instead of bringing up the food stamps canard — may want to talk to his Republican friends in the Senate to truly support the troops.
The Hill:
Senate Republicans stopped Democrats from advancing a bill that would have expanded healthcare and education programs for veterans.
In a 56-41 vote Thursday, the motion to waive a budget point of order against the bill failed, as Democrats fell short of the 60 votes needed to overcome the Republican roadblock.
Read more here
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Original Post:
On Monday, former Vice President Dick Cheney lambasted the Obama administration’s proposal to shrink the Army to its smallest size in 74 years. This, notwithstanding the Defense Department’s vows to retain a technological edge and the ability to respond to crises anywhere on the globe, confronting a “more volatile, more unpredictable” threat with a more nimble military.
This is the man who, when a young man of military service age, had more important things to do — “…had other priorities…than military service.”
This is the man who, along with his co-president and his secretary of defense took our country into a disastrous, unnecessary war on false premises — a war that raged on for nearly eight years; a war that killed nearly 4,500 and injured more than 32,000 of our men and women in uniform and a war that nearly bankrupted our country.*
This is the man who filled 527 pages with words in his “In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir” in an effort to salvage his legacy, but, in March 2008, when asked by ABC News’ Martha Raddatz what he thought about polls that indicated two-thirds of Americans believed that the war in Iraq was not worth fighting and that the cost in lives was not worth the gains, Cheney offered one single, little, disdainful word: “So?”
This is the same man who, a few years later, in August 2011, when asked by NBC’s Jamie Gangel whether we should still be using enhanced interrogation, flatly answered “Yes,” and to the question whether he had any regrets, coldly and stubbornly answered “No regrets.”
So, you may say, even though this man has not served a day in the military, even though he may have taken our nation to war on false pretenses and with disastrous consequences, etc., etc., why can’t he criticize the proposed defense cuts?
Yes he can, but it would be more credible and effective if Cheney would have done so in a logical, factual, reasoned and, above all, fair manner.
Instead, Cheney accused the president of caring more about giving out food stamps than about a strong military or about supporting our troops:
“And I think the whole thing is not driven by any change in world circumstances, it is driven by budget considerations…[Obama] would much rather spend the money on food stamps than he would on a strong military or support for our troops,” Cheney said during an interview on Fox News’ “Hannity.”
Cheney forgot to mention, however, that military families rely so much on the food stamp program that those families redeemed more than $100 million in food stamps on military bases in 2013.
The Huffington Post reports:
In the first half of fiscal 2013, however, those eligible to shop in military commissaries — which include disabled veterans and others with military identification — cashed in nearly $53 million in food stamps, according to data provided to The Huffington Post by the Defense Commissary Agency. In 2011, more than 5,000 “active duty military” relied on the government aid.
A September report by nonprofit think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated that at least 900,000 veterans received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program assistance, or food stamps, each month.
On Feb. 7, the president signed the farm bill into law, cutting $8.6 billion from food stamp funding over the next 10 years.
As I have said before, “One thing we can say about Mr. Cheney, he may be a man of very few words, but those few words are certainly consistent, and consistently wrong.”
But don’t take my word for it.
Listen to a highly decorated Army Major General who served more than 30 years in the United States Army in combat and post-combat assignments in Iraq, Bosnia and Somalia, respond on SiriusXM Progress early Wednesday to Cheney’s baseless comments made on Fox News.
“It’s unfortunate that he has not followed the …model of his former boss, President Bush, and gone off quietly to write his memoir”, Major General Eaton said.
He continued: “Vice President Cheney is one of the architects of the worst foreign policy disaster of the 21st century. The decision to attack Iraq, and to do so in such an incompetent manner, does not give him a platform to say anything about the foreign policy…of today.”
Listen here.
On the proposed defense cuts, Eaton has said that the Obama administration is balancing the need to cut spending after two major wars with the continuing need to keep Americans safe, according to the Stars and Stripes.
“A reduction in the size of the Army can be in line with U.S. national interests and address national security priorities,” Eaton said. “However, inherent with such reductions, risk goes up, and we owe it to our troops to mitigate that risk.”
* According to a study reported by Reuters in May 2013, “The US war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest…”
Lead photo:Albert H. Teich / Shutterstock.com“> www.shutterstock.com
