A little on what it is about:

Officer Candidate Phil Van Treuren believes that the United States military is the greatest defender of freedom and the most virtuous humanitarian force in the world, and he maintains MilTracker to track the good news about our armed forces.

MilTracker

READ GOOD NEWS FOR ONCE.

You keep saying things without backing your words.

I will step out on a limb, and will say I don’t have hte numbers, but will look if i have to, but I will say the MAJORITY of the troops want to finish thier mission FIRST.

“That would be both coasts if you’re looking at a map”

tell me what have you done to support the troops?

Do you actually read the reactions of troops and talk to any of them?

Before you start quoting one or 2 that hate bush that I know you will scour looking for to post, I am talking about more than one or two you will dig around and try and bring up…I will talk about those one or two also, but I am talking about the majority of troops.

I understand the unity that that type of support demonstrates but for me, it shouldn’t be riding in the front seat.

From the very onset people that think (if I may include myself) as we do, said the political aspect was the only thing that would be a “problem”. Another reason to be reasonable instead of political, as if that required explanation.

I just shake my head at the lot of them.

- Argument: We would not control the security at the ports, so we would be more vulnerable.

- Truth: Dubai had agreed to adopt our increased security standards at all their other world wide ports, ports like Shanghai which are a 1000 times more vulnerable than ours are. The threat isn’t from what gets unloaded here, the real threat is what gets put on board there. So we’ve lost thte chance to know whats going on at the other end of the shipping route, the real threat. Dubai was even willing to spend its own money to make the changes. so as a result we’ve lost that visability and we’re less secure.

- Argument: Incoming shipping of containres is a super threat.

- Truth: No ones going to gain possession of an Atomic device and then let it go in the uncontrolled environment of a shipping container. Detonating it in a port wouldn’t be a huge stopping point, since any one of our ports would not stop things that much. Detonating it offshore would have even less effect. They’d bring it in country on a truck across the border and detonate it in a populated area, or by plane, landing in some isolated area and then moving it to a high population area. This argument is just fear mongering on an uninformed public.

- Argument: Same with biological weapons.

- Truth: The last thing anyone that wants to attack us with bio weapons would do is put it in a shipping container. They will try to mail it or again bring it in country by truck or plane, where they can unleash it in a large population center. Another stupid argument.

- Argument: Dubai as an owner of the port would have access tyo the security program.

- Truth: Of course they would have. At their own ports where they have any control of things. What were they going to do, blow up their own ports. More stupid than could be believed.

- Dubai was even going to pay for the increased security requirements we set as a requirement out of their own pockets.

- So we basically lost the security visability and control we would have had at no expense to us, and insulted a trading partner who has been loading and unloading all of our miltary ships and cargo in the Iraqi campaign since the beginning.

- Thank you to all the bloviating partisan BS of both sides of the aisle. With leadership like this who needs enemies.

- Bang

- You can bet they won’t get that chance again, so I doubt you’ll see anymore than the usual backing away thats normal for any election year, particularly with a final term President.

- Remember that even though they’re in the same party, Congressional Republicans should be independent anyway. Its not the job of Congress to serve at the will and pleasure of the Executive. We just tend to assume they will.

- Bang