Making the Case

The News Hour has a transcript posted of last night's interviews with Jon Soltz and Stan Coerr, both veterans of the Iraq war. Coerr is a Bush supporter, Soltz backs John Kerry.

Here are excerpts from Soltz's remarks:

John Kerry's the only one of the two candidates running for president who understands my war, the war I fought in Iraq, who understands what it's like to be far from your family in a war that... let's be honest, the truth has not been told. John Kerry's the only one of the two candidates who has the ability to put our direction on course...

the first thing we need to note here is that the president is a failed commander- in-chief. President Bush sent soldiers like me to die for weapons that we can't find.

If that doesn't prove that he's failed his last four years as president, frankly, I'm not sure what does. Sen. Kerry is the only one of the two candidates who has the credibility to bring allies to our side.

Our force levels in Iraq are so high that soldiers like myself, who spent, you know, an entire year... or some of them have spent entire years in Iraq, have come home for a year, and are now going back. 43 percent of Operation Iraqi Freedom Three is going to be guard and reserve forces...

And I'll tell you what, going it alone hurt soldiers like me. Going it alone burdened our American army to a point where we've had to back draft people in our military.

I went to war because of this backdoor draft. Even though my time was up, I still went, and I did my duty. But the American public has a right to know the truth about this war...

It was a dark day for me when I had to return home from the war in Iraq, have some bad dreams, go to my veterans hospital only to find out that the same man who sent me to war has turned his back on me when I came home, and decided that he was going to close our veterans hospital here in Pittsburgh on Highland Drive.

He's turned his back on his veterans and he's led our country in the wrong direction in Iraq...

My unit did not have body armor when we went to Iraq. When we got on the ground, I went from Kuwait to Baghdad in a convoy. Baghdad's very different from the southern part of the country where there's a British contingent...

And when we went to Baghdad, I heard my president tell our country that our mission was accomplished, and that same night I had two RPG's flung at my convoy and one of my trucks blown up. He clearly wasn't leveling with the American public. And then when I was in Baghdad, we started losing soldiers every day.

Every day we went out, there was combat. And when one of my soldiers died, I had to hear my commander-in-chief so eloquently entice my enemy with, "Bring it on," a deep sorrow day for me as an officer inside Iraq...

If John Kerry is a traitor, then so am I. John Kerry fought for his right to come home and question his war in Vietnam; 12,000 Americans died after he testified in the senate. And I fought for my right to question this president's policies in Iraq.

It was a dark day for me when I had to go to the hospital in Germany to see one of my soldiers who was blown up. For the first time in my life, you know, I cried in uniform. I had to look at this guy and I had to say to him, you know, "I hope that this is worth it." ...

The fact of the matter is this administration is not being truthful with the war in Iraq. They've continually tried to tie it to al-Qaida. We've committed 85 percent of our ground army. Soldiers like me have died for weapons we can't find.

And they let Osama bin Laden run around in Afghanistan with zero of our ten military divisions not allocated to that. They failed us. They failed our soldiers. They failed our men and women in uniform.

They won't support mandatory funding for veterans health care. They won't support, you know, giving Iraqi veterans more than a two-year claim against the VA system. We know that these soldiers are going to have problems with PTSD. They won't sign a real concurrent receipt. They're closing our veterans hospitals, and they've broken our army to a point where we had to stop loss people in past their time.

It is time for them to level with the American public.

OK, so that was a pretty lengthy excerpt--and I didn't include any of Coerr's remarks, although you can link to the entire segment above and look for yourself. But Mr. Stoltz was eloquent in his statements, and deserves to have his voice heard. In particular, I was glad to finally see some focus paid to the horrible way in which George W. Bush treats veterans. He sees them literally as throw-away soldiers, good for cannon fodder in order to salve his ego (because he won't admit he's wrong) and annoyances upon returning home. Bush's "thanks" to our men and women in uniform is to deny them healthcare--while he exposes them to Depleted Uranium overseas.

Call it compassionate conservatism.