The Soldiers and the Congressmen

The weather forecast for Baghdad is for highs around 109degF.

Every day, the soldiers go out and do their jobs. They wear long-sleeved shirts, long trousers, boots and gloves. They put on a helmet, body armor and strap on the rest of their "battle rattle." And then they go to work. They risk their bodies and their lives because it is what they agreed to do. Thousands of them have come home in steel-gray boxes. Thousands have come home without parts of their bodies. Many, many thousands have suffered closed-head brain injuries that will hamper them for the rest of their lives. Hundreds of thousands will suffer the psychological wounds of war for decades.

And yet they leave their bases each day and go do the job that they were sent there to do.

A fresh-caught PFC makes $1,587.90 a month, a Spec 4 makes $1,758.90. A new 2LT hardly is rolling in dough at $2,555.70 a month. For being in a combat zone, the pay is tax-free and the government gives them an extra $225 or so. That is what they get paid to risk their lives, their limbs and their health.

Congressmen and Senators are paid $14,108.33 a month. They have the best health care system in the world and they pay nothing for it. They are not at personal risk, the most that can happen to them is that the voters fire them at the next election cycle. They risk far, far less than those soldiers do each and every day in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So the idea that 105 Democrats in the House caved on the FISA bill because they were afraid of losing their jobs rubs me the wrong way.

I expected the Republicans to vote the way that they did, they are nothing if not loyal to their party and if Der Monkey Fuhrer orders them to go goose-step down to the floor of the House and vote a certain way, they will. (The real surprise was that one GOP congressman voted the other way, Rep. Johnson of IL- either he has a real pair or he was drunk as hell.) If the Bush Administration ordered the GOP congresscritters to vote to rip up the Constitution, they would. They are just lackeys and henchmen, minions with no free will.

But I expected the Democrats to stand up for freedom, for liberty, for the rule of law and for the Constitution. That is what we send them to do almost two years ago.

When given the choice between having a back-stabbing "friend" or an enemy, I will pick having an enemy every time, for at least I can trust them to be what they are.

The 105 rat-fuck weasels are backstabbing the Constitution, not for glory, not for personal gain, but because they are abject cowards. We do not need friends such as those.

They should all be flogged.