This happened in Afghanistan, the country everyone says we should be fighting in.

This man didn’t have to do what he did, but he didn’t think about his own injuries and went back to rescue one of the two marines still in the blazes. The other marine was also rescued. This man is a hero, but will never admit it.

Courtesy of Soldiers Angels Germany, comes this compelling video.

Dramatic and moving images of US Army Paratroopers and Afghan Army soldiers being evacuated after a November 2007 ambush near Forward Operating Base Bella, home of Chosen Company, 2-503rd PIR, 173rd ABCT in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan.

The troops were on their way back from a meeting in a nearby village just two miles from OP Bella when they were attacked on 9 November. Five Soldiers from the 173rd ABCT and one Marine were killed. Eight more Sky Soldiers and 11 ANA were wounded.

Eight separate air crews subsequently conducted what was to become a 31-hour medevac mission involving multiple lifts.

The balance of the story of this heroic rescue may be found here.

McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” remains to this day one of the most memorable war poems ever written. It is a lasting legacy of the terrible battle in the Ypres salient in the spring of 1915. Here is the story of the making of that poem:
Although he had been a doctor for years and had served in the South African War, it was impossible to get used to the suffering, the screams, and the blood here, and Major John McCrae had seen and heard enough in his dressing station to last him a lifetime.

As a surgeon attached to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, Major McCrae, who had joined the McGill faculty in 1900 after graduating from the University of Toronto, had spent seventeen days treating injured men — Canadians, British, Indians, French, and Germans — in the Ypres salient.

It had been an ordeal that he had hardly thought possible. McCrae later wrote of it:

“I wish I could embody on paper some of the varied sensations of that seventeen days… Seventeen days of Hades! At the end of the first day if anyone had told us we had to spend seventeen days there, we would have folded our hands and said it could not have been done.”

One death particularly affected McCrae. A young friend and former student, Lieut. Alexis Helmer of Ottawa, had been killed by a shell burst on 2 May 1915. Lieutenant Helmer was buried later that day in the little cemetery outside McCrae’s dressing station, and McCrae had performed the funeral ceremony in the absence of the chaplain.

The next day, sitting on the back of an ambulance parked near the dressing station beside the Canal de l’Yser, just a few hundred yards north of Ypres, McCrae vented his anguish by composing a poem. The major was no stranger to writing, having authored several medical texts besides dabbling in poetry.

In the nearby cemetery, McCrae could see the wild poppies that sprang up in the ditches in that part of Europe, and he spent twenty minutes of precious rest time scribbling fifteen lines of verse in a notebook.

A young soldier watched him write it. Cyril Allinson, a twenty-two year old sergeant-major, was delivering mail that day when he spotted McCrae. The major looked up as Allinson approached, then went on writing while the sergeant-major stood there quietly. “His face was very tired but calm as we wrote,” Allinson recalled. “He looked around from time to time, his eyes straying to Helmer’s grave.”

When McCrae finished five minutes later, he took his mail from Allinson and, without saying a word, handed his pad to the young NCO. Allinson was moved by what he read:

“The poem was exactly an exact description of the scene in front of us both. He used the word blow in that line because the poppies actually were being blown that morning by a gentle east wind. It never occurred to me at that time that it would ever be published. It seemed to me just an exact description of the scene.”

In fact, it was very nearly not published. Dissatisfied with it, McCrae tossed the poem away, but a fellow officer retrieved it and sent it to newspapers in England. The Spectator, in London, rejected it, but Punch published it on 8 December 1915.

The NYT has an an article about Sarkozy visiting the US and the great promises he makes to us about being our friend.

I found the following quote interesting and almost insulting at the same time:

Mr. Sarkozy awarded the Legion of Honor on Tuesday to seven World War II veterans, including Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Democrat of Hawaii, who, as a 20-year-old lieutenant, lost an arm leading an attack in Italy in 1945.

The reason I find it insulting is that seven veterans were awarded the Legion of Honor, the highest civilian award France has.

One of those seven was my mother’s first cousin, Charles Norman Shay, who was a medic who landed on the beach on D-Day and was awarded the silver star and three bronze stars.

Our tribe sent more men per capita to serve during World War II than any other tribe in the US.

Charlie was one of them and should have been recognized in this story as well as a senator.

So let me quote to you from Indiancountry.com some of Charlie’s story:

Charles Norman Shay received remarkable news the day he returned to his Penobscot reservation home in Maine from a journey to Omaha Beach and other battlefields where he soldiered as a young combat medic in the Second World War: During his first official visit to the United States Nov. 6, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France was expected to award him an honorary knighthood in the Legion d’Honneur, established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802. It is a fitting honor for a man who acted heroically in the war - and whose ancestors include Penobscot Chief Madockawando, whose daughter married a French baron in the 17th century.

In early October, the 83-year-old tribal elder returned to Normandy, his first entry since the invasion of 1944. He found his way to a 16th century manor in Crepon, a few miles from the coast, where he received a grand dinner from an honored host.

Sixty-three years ago, Shay had received a sharply different welcome to Normandy: a hail of bullets and shrapnel amid the smoke and noise of explosions and screams of wounded comrades.

Shay drove to the seacoast and gestured to the face of a low-slung dune. ”This was full of men. The tide was coming in real fast. Wounded men were unable to move to dry ground. The water was red,” he said, referring to D-Day.

At the time, Private Shay was a combat medic attached to a battalion in the 1st Infantry Division’s 16th Regiment. On June 5, 1944, his platoon boarded a troop transport ship for a night crossing of the English Channel - part of a large armada heading for the Normandy coast in stormy weather. At sea, Shay had one of the most memorable reunions of his life: a surprise encounter with Melvin Neptune, a battle-hardened 25-year-old from his own small reservation. Also in the Big Red One, Neptune formed part of the 26th Regiment, scheduled to land a dozen hours after Charles would face his baptism by fire. Avoiding talking about impending bloodshed, both Penobscots reminisced about home and said goodbye. In the months ahead, they would always be within 15 miles of one another, but did not meet again during the war.

Before dawn, some 12 miles offshore, the ships stopped and the assault troops climbed into landing crafts. As they moved towards the coast, naval artillery began bombing German military positions. The enemy had placed large obstacles on the sea floor near the shore, forcing the first wave of troops to disembark 400 yards from the beach. Jumping from the ramp, Shay landed in water up to his waist.

”Even before the ramps went down, all hell had broken loose on the ships. Some were hit before they hit the water - with machine gun fire, mortars, gunshots. It was every man for himself. We used the obstacles as much as we could for protection. I don’t know how I made it to the beach. It was complete chaos. On the beach there was a 3- to 4-foot-high dune where we could get some shelter. Once I was on the shore and in cover of the embankment, I took care of the wounded in the area where I was.”

Glancing toward the sea, Shay spotted many corpses rolling in the surf and lying on the beach. Wounded soldiers were about to drown in the rising tide.

”I went back to the water and pulled them up to the shoreline. I pulled as many as I could until I was exhausted. Then I paused and began again, until I couldn’t do more. I have no idea how many I saved.” He did this under an ongoing barrage of fire.

Late that day, separated from his platoon and dazed by the brutal reality of war, Shay staggered from the beach to an uphill trail, passing dead Americans and Germans. Unbeknownst to him, his friend Neptune crossed his path when the 26th Regiment marched up the same wooded gully to the hedgerow country swarming with enemy snipers. Charles remembers spending the night alone somewhere. The following morning, he found the regimental medical aid station set up in a tent in Coleville sur Mer. He also reconnected with his own F Company, finding that only two of its nine officers and 112 of the original 218 soldiers were present for duty. It was among the hardest-hit companies in a regiment that suffered nearly 1,000 casualties at Omaha, including 34 medics, seven of whom were killed. Weeks later, while the fighting continued, Shay and the other men were awarded with the Silver Star.

After Normandy, Shay continued serving as a medic in the battles of Mons (Belgium); Aachen and Huertgen Forest Battle (Germany); and the Battle of the Bulge (Ardennes) - earning an additional four Bronze Battle stars. Always on the front line, he treated a never-ending stream of wounded comrades. He was called ”Doc” by fellow soldiers, but typically, he said, ”If you were an Indian, other soldiers referred to you as ‘chief.”’

On March 25, 1945, after crossing the Rhine River near Remagen, Shay was captured by German troops in a rural hamlet and spent the last month of the war as a prisoner of war. Taken for interrogation, he recalls, ”I gave only my name, rank and serial number. My interrogator asked me my nationality - maybe he thought I looked different. I told him I was American Indian.”

In the weeks that followed, the German army continued its retreat, forcing Shay and other captives to move at night. On April 18, the camp guards were suddenly gone and American troops arrived. Liberated, Shay returned to the Penobscot reservation, where he finally saw Neptune again. But they never spoke of their wartime experiences.

Shay did not speak of the war to anyone until 2004, when he said he was disappointed to have missed the 60-year anniversary of the D-Day landings. His comment launched plans for the recently completed Normandy pilgrimage. During the journey, the Penobscot veteran performed a silent spiritual ceremony on Omaha Beach, burning tobacco, sage and sweetgrass in honor of comrades who lie buried in the vast American cemetery on the ridge above the sea. Earlier, while walking along the shore, he had turned his eyes to the stones underfoot, polished by countless tides. Picking up and discarding one after another, he selected one as a keepsake. He walked to the water’s edge, rinsed the smooth round stone, and said he intended to engrave it for Neptune’s son, since his comrade passed away a few years ago. When he turned the stone over, there was a small circle on its face - the mark of Gluskabe, the Penobscot tribe’s legendary culture hero.

With all due respect to Indiancountry.com I have quoted the entire piece and hope they don’t mind as I have lost the original link, but had emailed the story to some of my friends.

I just want his story and that of the other five told as well as Inouye’s story.

There are no words to add to this excellent article by Jeff Emanuel except to those who perished, may you Rest in Peace, and to those who survived may you know the thanks, prayers and thoughts of many Americans are with you.

(There are restrictions on reprinting or reproducing portions of this piece, but it is well worth the read, so if you have the time, please do.)

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Peter Pace had his say before he left the spotlight today.

In a parting shot to Bush administration opponents and antiwar protesters, newly retired Marine Gen. Peter Pace on Monday scolded Americans who use the war debate to try to debase the efforts of military leaders and civilian decision-makers.

Delivering his last speech as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pace said he is proud to live in a country in which military leaders are required to answer difficult questions from the press and Congress, but when that conversation turns belligerent and destructive, the foundation of democracy is lost.

“Our democracy is strengthened by divergent views and dialogue about those views when that dialogue is conducted in a civil manner, in a gentlemanly way, in a way that allows people to argue on the merits of what they believe and to understand that what they believe is part of the answer and if they have the willingness to cooperate to find the right answer for our country,” he said during a Pentagon ceremony held at nearby Fort Myers.

“And what worries me is that in some instances right now we have individuals who are more interested in making somebody else look bad than they are in finding the right solution. They are more interested in letting their personal venom come forward instead of talking about how do we get from where we are to where we need to be,” the general continued….

…”I just want everyone to understand that this dialogue is not about ‘Can we vote our way out of a war.’ We have an enemy who has declared war on us. We are in a war. They want to stop us from living the way we want to live our lives.

“So the dialogue is not about ‘Are we in a war’ but how and where and when to best fight that war to preserve our freedom and to preserve our way of life and to do so with the least damage to our own society and the least damage to those who we’re fighting against so we can put the pieces back together on the end of this. We will prevail. There’s no doubt about that.”

Well said, sir! Because of partisanship we have lost a great military leader.

OLD TOWN - Benoit J. Bouchard, 95, died Aug. 6, 2007, in Orono. Benoit was born April 11, 1912, in Old Town, the son of John and Henedine (St. Pierre) Bouchard. He graduated from Old Town High School in 1931 and Washington State Normal School, Machias, in 1934. He received his bachelor’s degree from Farmington State Teachers’ College and a master’s degree from the University of Maine. His first teaching position was in East New Portland, where he taught for three years. In 1937, he returned to Old Town to teach the sixth grade at the Herbert Gray school and was made principal of that school in 1938. Ben served in that position until his retirement in 1972. After his retirement, until he reached age 80, he substituted in Old Town schools in all grades from kindergarten through high school. He loved children. In all, he gave 55 years of devoted service to the youth of Old Town. During his years as principal, Ben brought many innovations into his school. He started annual operettas, which were mammoth musical productions held yearly in the city hall. Then, his sixth grade class produced a marionette show every year for several years. He introduced the Parent/Teacher’s Association, PTA, in his school and this was soon adopted in all the elementary schools in Old Town. Ben was a fine musician and played both the violin and trombone. In his high school days he was a member of both the orchestra and the band. In college, he was an active member of the Kappa Delta Phi fraternity. He earned his way through college by giving violin lessons and playing for dances. After college he was connected with two musical organizations, one an orchestra, which was composed of members of the Bouchard family and the other the Duffy orchestra in Orono.

I’ve heard it’s what you do with the dash in your life that matters. This obituary of Mr. Bouchard doesn’t begin to talk about what he did with the dash in his life.

From kindergarten through sixth grade Mr. Bouchard was the principal of Herbert Gray school, where Guss and I attended, as well as our aunts, uncle and mothers.

He walked with a big limp, which I found out recently was from polio.

He played his violin for us in class. Did I mention that in addition to being the principal he taught sixth grade half a day?

He was a stickler for penmanship and I fear he would be horrified by my lack of good penmanship. He taught us other topics too.

How well I remember the marionette show we put on! It was the most fun I had ever had up to that point. Everyone had a part.

He was a great teacher and a kind man. He once told me he played in my grandfather’s orchestra, and knowing someone who knew my grandfather made me feel special.

He loved Studebakers and I cannot think of a day when I didn’t see a Studebaker in the parking lot of our school.

He had a stroke several years ago and was in a nursing home where he was the life of the party.

On Monday he took a bad turn and on Tuesday afternoon at 2 o’clock he went home to Heaven. He left behind 2 children and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His beloved wife predeceased him by sixteen months.

Mr. Bouchard, some fifty plus years later your dash is still making a difference in my life. The world is a sadder place now that you have left it. I’m going to miss you.

It’s about time.
Women have always been harder workers than men. Men are always making a mess and women are always left to pick it up. They work all day, then come home and become waiters for the children and us and will never make what they are truly worth. On the other hand, Men do less and demand more.
Think about it. If it weren’t for your wife, mother or girlfriend, where would you be? Probably in a corner sucking your thumb.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, young women who live in New York and several of the nation’s other largest cities who work full time have forged ahead of men in wages.
The analysis was prepared by Andrew A. Beveridge, a demographer at Queens College, who first reported his findings in Gotham Gazette, published online by the Citizens Union Foundation. It shows that women of all educational levels from 21 to 30 living in New York City and working full time made 117 percent of men’s wages, and even more in Dallas, 120 percent. Nationwide, that group of women made much less: 89 percent of the average full-time pay for men.

This doesn’t apply to all men or women.

Story

While barbecuing some chicken a man heard the cries of a seven year old boy for help. He went to investigate and found a teen-aged boy raping the younger boy. He yelled to his mom to call the police, which she did, and then he punched the pervert in the face, wrestled with him and held him down.

His mom came along and stuck the barbecue fork in his butt for good measure.

An outdoor barbeque became a rescue mission this weekend when John Jennings heard cries for help coming from a young boy behind his house. Jennings and his mom showed FOX 4’s Saul Garza how they used whatever was at hand to stop a suspected rapist in his tracks until police arrived.

Watch the local news video here.

Read more details here.

“Since he was down, I took the fork and stuck him and I told him, ‘Don’t you move,’” recalled Linda Rhodes. “He was struggling and I got mad and I stuck him again. I grabbed his belt and tied it around his legs and I pulled the belt tight so he couldn’t move. I took my foot and put it on him and said, ‘Don’t you move!’”

They held the suspect, 17-year-old Deshaun Ridge, until police arrived and make the arrest.

“They were citizens that jumped in, most definitely, and did a good deed,” said Joe Harn, spokesman for the Garland Police Department. “These people are heroes.”

“I stuck him in his butt!” Linda said, adding in a joking manner that the when she stuck him, the suspect was “done.”

“Yes, he was well done,” she laughed.

This story was released in February. What a wonderful thing to do.

Project Compassion (www.heropaintings.com), a humanitarian organization which provides gallery-quality oil portraits of fallen Americans in uniform to their next of kin at no cost, announced today that the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) has awarded its Commander-in-Chief’s Gold Medal of Merit Award for 2007 to Project Compassion. Stated the VFW’s letter notifying Project Compassion of this honor: “This award is presented to individuals to recognize exceptional service rendered to their country, community and mankind on a national or intertational level.”

Commander-in-Chief Gary Kurpius will recognize Kaziah Hancock, Founding Artist and President of Project Compassion on behalf of veterans and “all those serving in uniform” at the Business Session of its annual National Community Service/Legislative Conference Monday, March 5, 2007 in Washington, D.C.

The VFW honor comes on the heels of a similar major award from the American Legion Auxiliary, the largest patriotic women’s service organization in the world, with 900,000 members, which will present its 2007 Public Service Award to Ms. Hancock immediately following the VFW event the same day at its own annual convention, also in Washington, D.C.

Story

Wednesday I read a story in my hometown newspaper about a 22 year old young man who had been killed in Iraq.

It’s never pleasant to read these stories but I owe them the time to read about their death and/or funeral after what they have given to our country.

I was struck by the words of his father, quoted below:

Paul House told mourners that he imagined his son’s transition from a bloody battle in this world to the sublime peace of the next as a gradual and soothing realization.

“As you marched onward in battle, you noticed that your helmet feels weightless and that your armored vest feels like an angel took it off your shoulders,” House said. “You no longer hear the sound of gunfire and bombs. The hot sun is no longer beating on your weary body. You then look down at your feet and notice that the dust you were walking in has turned to gold.”

House imagined his son being welcomed into Heaven by Jesus with “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. You are safe with me at last. You have fulfilled your mission in life and will be at peace with me for eternity.”

I am humbled by this young man’s sacrifice and by his parents and brothers. May God keep him in His bosom for all eternity.

I received an email from my friend and former partner at HRP, COgirl, who has asked me to help get out the word to our readers to see if you will send some money over to Operation A/C.

If you saw the post yesterday about Michael Yon’s latest report you saw that it is extremely hot in Iraq and our troops are doing anything they can to stay as cool as is possible.

From Hang Right Politics and other blogs is a request to give money to this organization via Pay Pal to buy air conditioners for our men and women in this sweltering heat.

The following quote is from Black Five, a mil blog.

On Friday, June 22nd we will begin taking sign-ups from S4s (unit supply personnel) and entire deployed units who are in need of the air conditioners. We already have many units on the ground asking, and our inbox is stuffed with several hundred emails. I asked the people who run this war to help me and they flat out told me, “NO!”(They’re very good at that.)

The question is will you help us do this again? We got those 9,400 air conditioners to our troops in the past by the Grace of God and supporters who believed in us. We know it will once again happen that way this time around.

So we are asking for your financial support. You can go to www.operationac.com and donate by clicking the PayPal button. Or you can send us a check—we are a 501(c)3 non-profit company and our federal tax ID is 02-0699201.

Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, these are American men and women suffering in the heat of Iraq. See what you can do by going to Operation A/C and clicking on the Pay Pal button to help get as many air conditioners as possible to these great people.

My husband has me on a tight budget now, but he agreed this is a worthy cause and we have made a donation. Click the Pay Pal link on the top right corner of the Operation A/C site. The first thing you will see is your login but scroll above to put in a dollar figure or you will think your password doesn’t work. Then put in your login information.

This story in Indian Country gives me great pride in my tribe and in mine and Guss’ grandmother’s nephew, our mothers’ first cousin.

I didn’t know all of this about Charles Shay, and Melvin Neptune, but my heart swelled with pride as I read the article.

AUGUSTA, Me. - On the eve of June 6, 1944, Charles Norman Shay, a 19-year old Penobscot serving with the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, ran into his friend Melvin Neptune, a fellow Penobscot and member of the division’s 26th Regiment. They were on the ship that carried the troops to their rendezvous with German forces the next morning on what would become known as D-Day.

The two men did not see each other again until they returned home to Indian Island reservation after the war.

But 63 three years later, Shay, now 83, paid homage to the late Neptune during a ceremony at which Maine Gov. John Baldacci honored Shay and all of Maine’s Native veterans with a proclamation naming June 6, as Native American Veterans History Day.

”We did not discuss the campaign that was about to take place,” Shay recalled of the night before the historic allied invasion of France, ”but instead we talked about home and the young men and boys we grew up with and were wondering where they were and what they were now doing. From our small community of 500 individuals, 85 young men and women had volunteered for all branches of the military to fight for this country”

Shay’s unit was among the first to make the difficult landing on Omaha Beach. Pre-landing air bombardments and naval gunfire had not dislodged the German defenses from their positions on bluffs as high as 170 feet above the beach. During the hard-won battle that day, Shay’s division lost about 1,000 men.

Shay earned a Silver Star for his unselfish heroism that day, subordinating ”personal safety to the welfare of his comrades, [having] plunged repeatedly into the treacherous sea and carried critically wounded men to safety,” Baldacci read from the proclamation.

It’s no wonder Uncle Leo and Auntie Florence were so proud of their son.

Please read the entire story to see what this man has done in service to his country and is doing now to get Native Americans the recognition they deserve for serving our country.

I’m proud of you, Charlie! And I’m sure Guss is too.

As a side note: my mother’s funeral had to be put off one day due to Melvin Neptune re-marrying and using the church facilities. That’s fine since he was a hero too.

The story behind Taps

It all began in 1862 during the Civil War, when Union Army Captain Robert Ellicombe was with his men near Harrison’s Landing in Virginia. The Confederate Army was on the other side of the narrow strip of land.

During the night, Captain Ellicombe heard the moan of a soldier who lay mortally wounded on the field. Not knowing if it was a Union or Confederate soldier, the captain decided to risk his life and bring the stricken man back for medical attention. Crawling on his stomach through the gunfire, the captain reached the stricken soldier and began pulling him towards his encampment.

When the captain finally reached his own lines, he discovered it was actually a confederate soldier, but the soldier was dead. The captain lit a lantern. Suddenly, he caught his breath and went numb with shock. In the dim light, he saw the face of the soldier. It was his son. The boy had been studying music in the south when the war broke out. Without telling his father, he enlisted in the Confederate Army.

The following morning, heart broken, the father asked for permission of his superiors to give his son a full military burial despite his enemy status. His request was granted. The captain had asked if he could have a group of Army band members play a funeral dirge for the son at the funeral. That request was turned down since the soldier was a Confederate.

Out of respect for the father, they did say they could give him only one musician. The captain chose a bugler to play a series of musical notes he had found on a piece of paper in the pocket of his dead son’s uniform.

This wish was granted. This music was the haunting melody we now know as “Taps” that is used at all military funerals.
(This article is from the American Legion Newsletter.)

The US Military identified the remains of the US Soldier found in the Euphrates River as PFC Joseph Anzack, Jr.

The military confirmed Thursday that the body found a day earlier in the Euphrates River south of Baghdad was that of Pfc. Joseph Anzack Jr., who had been missing since militants ambushed his unit nearly two weeks ago.

A commanding officer identified the remains recovered from the river, but DNA tests were still pending, military officials told Anzack’s family.

“They told us, ‘We’re sorry to inform you the body we found has been identified as Joe,”‘ the soldier’s aunt, Debbie Anzack, said Wednesday. “I’m in disbelief.”

How it breaks my heart to hear of any of our heroes killed over there, and how I sympathize with those who carry the burden of notifying the families of the lost.

Rest in peace, PFC Anzack, and may God comfort your family in the knowledge you will all be reuninted one day never to be separated again.

Instead of doing the Constitutional thing and voting to defund the war Congress has decided to let our soldiers die by a thousand cuts.

The Democrats still want to tie supplemental funding to withdrawal dates while knowing the president will veto it. This time we have waivable timelines, whatever their definition of “waivable” is.

We are over 100 days from the president’s request for supplemental funding and we haven’t made any progress on it whatsoever.

We are way past the critical point and I feel so bad for the soldiers who put their lives at risk every day and this is the thanks they get.

Negotiations for emergency war funds stalled as soon as they began yesterday, with both the White House and the Democrat-led Congress immediately rejecting the other’s modest concessions.

After emerging from an hourlong Capitol Hill meeting, President Bush’s chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, said the Democrats’ offer of waivable timelines for withdrawing troops from Iraq were unacceptable.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the White House’s proposal of policy benchmarks, backed up by the threat of cutting off aid to Iraq, was too weak.

The Democratic leaders, who say they will continue to push for an end to the war in Iraq, plan to draft a funding bill over the weekend and pass it by the end of next week, before Congress takes a weeklong Memorial Day break beginning May 28.

“Whether [the president] vetoes the bill or not is up to him,” said Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat. “We have a responsibility to the American people, and we’re going to live up to that every minute of the next week.”

Mr. Bush vetoed the $124 billion bill Congress sent him last month because it included a pullout timetable, and he has made it clear he will veto any measure that restricts funds or dictates military strategy.

“Whether waivable or not, timelines send exactly the wrong signal to our adversaries, to our allies and, most importantly, to the troops in the field,” Mr. Bolten said. “The president is the one who has the authority to act as commander in chief. He needs to be the one making those decisions.”

The Republican National Committee released internal poll results yesterday that showed the majority of voters siding with Mr. Bush in the funding standoff, though the country remains deeply divided over the war.

About 60 percent say war funds should not come with a pullout timetable, and 32 percent say Congress should withhold funds until the president agrees to a withdrawal schedule, according to the poll. It also showed that 56 percent of voters say that setting a withdrawal date lets the enemy know when they can win.

But both sides vowed to stand firm in the tussle over $100 billion to pay for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan until the end of the fiscal year.

I’m tired of the same old rhetoric and I’m sick of our soldiers having to bend over and get a kick in the pants from their own government.

This is not a large blog and probably never will be, but we have many people who visit every day and don’t make comments.

I’m asking you to contact your Congressman on Monday and tell him or her it’s time to get a bill through that can be passed for the sake of our troops who didn’t ask to be in this situation.

If you don’t know the name or telephone number of your Congressman go here.

You can find information on how to contact your senators here, and you can find contact information for the White House switchboard here.

Everyone claims to support the troops. Now let’s see some action and stop with the lip service.

And if you want to show some personal support for the troops go here and give a couple of $25 donations to make a soldier’s life a little more pleasant. So you give up a couple of meals out. It will be worth it.

If you give to the USO you probably will want to know what your gift will do. Check the FAQs as the link I gave you is only from the receipt of what I sent and not the original information.

One question you will probably have is asked and answered here:

What items are included in the packages?

Generally, the care package contains, at a minimum, one prepaid international calling card, a disposable camera, toiletries, sunscreen and a generic message of support from the sender. Other items that are donated from manufacturers are included so that the maximum weight of each package is approximately 2 lbs. The retail value of each package generally is between $50 and $75.