DNC Podcast: A Military Mom's Perspective on Bush's War Escalation

[madfloridian]

http://www.dnc.org/a/2007/01/dnc_podcast_a_m_1.php

This week, the DNC's Podcast hosted activist and military mom Nita Martin. Martin, the mother of two Marines who have served multiple tours in Iraq, highlighted the strains that the president's failed Iraq policy has placed on our already thinly stretched military and their families.

"Because I'm the mother of a marine in Iraq and another marine, I know what the reality is. And I watch things very carefully to see what's going on in terms of troop call ups. Just like there's nothing new in this 'new strategy,' these are not new troops that we're talking about. This is primarily a shell game where deployments are being extended and tours are being moved up and the Pentagon just announced that it has changed the rules for National Guard reserve deployments so that these groups can be deployed more often and for longer periods of time," said Martin.

Martin also blasted the Bush Administration over recent news reports that the additional troops will be sent to Iraq without better body armor now available.

"One would think that the greatest world power would be able to equip its Army. But what's happened is because there was no strategy and no after strategy in Iraq, it has become a graveyard for equipment. Any equipment we had when people come back from deployment is left there, and they don't have the equipment to redeploy properly. The idea was that, theoretically, they wouldn't need it. But they do...the idea that we can do all of these other things, and we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this war, and we're asking people to go over there and fight without the proper equipment to protect their lives I think is just criminal," said Martin.

Links to the podcast.

There's a great resource center about the Iraq War set up at the DNC.
It includes state by state info, a time line, news, and blogs about it.

http://www.dnc.org/a/iraq/