Stop Debating Distractions. Cut Off Funding Now!

Back from the march to end the war, where one of the best speakers I heard was Tim Robbins who said, "We're here today for the same reason that you're here. It's our job. We're Americans."

He then told a story that I can hardly credit, but it must be true. He said that on the train this morning he'd talked with a young woman whose 20-year-old brother had just been sent to Iraq. In order to implement Bush's escalation, however, he'd received not the standard 12 weeks of training but A MERE TWO WEEKS. Are we really sending American soldiers into harm's way with a mere two weeks of training? Apparently. That makes no sense to me. That's the sort of thing that you do when the enemy is two or three weeks from your border; you round up the farmers and the teen-age boys and you show them how to aim and fire and you send them off to defend their homes. That's not what you do when you're the United States of America engaged in a war of choice millions of miles from home. There can't be a single serious general who thinks this is good practice.

How do you even learn how to fire a gun in a mere two weeks? Surely there's NO time for training concerning the Iraqi culture so that you can understand the people you're supposedly going to be simultaneously "liberating" and fighting. Why should we be surprised if green, untried soldiers sent into a horrific war with only fourteen days' worth of training crack under the pressure, massacre Iraqis, torture, rape, and generally act the way any scared teenager with no training would act in such a situation?

Shame on the Bush junta and shame on every Congressperson who doesn't vote immediately to cut off funding for this exercise in insanity. Bring our troops home now. Stop the escalation immediately. Clearly, we don't have the (trained) troops for it.