The Iraq Debate Continues

It sounds like the President will announce troop reductions in Iraq tonight when he addresses the nation on TV. Correctly, this is based on the recommendation by General David Petraeus. Some reports are saying there will be 21,500 combat forces and an undetermined number of support troops home by July. Around 5700 troops will be home by Christmas.

Of course, this will bring them back down to the pre-surge level, but these troops will not be replaced by more U.S. troops. They will look at further cuts sometime around March.

There has been some success in Iraq since the surge started, but the major problem I see now is with the political stability in the Iraq government.

Of course, the democrats are not happy. Next week they will try to pass legislation to see if they can derail the President’s plan. The democrats are being criticized from their supporters for not keeping their 2006 campaign promises to stop the war.

The Democratic response will be given by Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a West Point graduate. Reed was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. Psst, I think Reed received Jon Tester’s promised seat on Senate Appropriations Committee.

Presidential candidate John Edwards has purchased two minutes of time on MSNBC for a rebuttal. Maybe he received a good deal from MSNBC like moveon.org did from the New York Times?

Tough Times for Montana’s military and defense

While surfing through the web today, I came across a press release from Sen. Jon Tester saying: “The latest spending bill to come out of Congress will make Montana a national powerhouse when it comes to military research, development and training, Senators Max Baucus and Jon Tester announced today. The senators said they secured $30 million for various Montana projects in the Defense Appropriations Bill.”

Uh, wait a minute boys…I did a little research and checked some historical information. In 2005, Conrad Burns, who was actually on the defense appropriations subcommittee, secured over $60 million for Montana. That was the final amount passed and signed into law. I used 2005 because the 2006 appropriations were stopped by the democrats to help win the elections.

The funds mentioned in the Tester/Baucus press release have not been completely approved yet because they were just voted on in the appropriations committee and not by the full senate. This also means that Tester and Baucus have not cast one vote on the projects yet, because they are not a member of the appropriations committee.

Powerhouse in military research, development and training? Me thinks those days are long over. But that’s just me…