Marine Corps Moms: "The Corps is Bush country"

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October 13, 2004

"The Corps is Bush country"

Here's a Boston Globe report from FOB Kalso where the 24th MEU is operating:

It is a measure of President Bush's unassailable popularity among the US Marines on this base that the only one who admitted that he supported John F. Kerry would say so only on condition of anonymity.

The 19-year-old private said he recently bought a copy of the film ''Fahrenheit 9/11," which questions Bush's rationale for going to war. ''If half the things in that movie are true, we're here for the wrong reasons."

With that exception, Marines freely boast that the Corps is Bush country.

''I think 'W' is the man," said First Lieutenant Andrew Thomas, 25, who still has not signed up to get his absentee ballot at Forward Operating Base Kalsu, an hour's drive south of Baghdad.

But Thomas said he had told one of his fellow Marines to remove a Bush-Cheney 2004 bumper sticker pasted on a Humvee on the base. ''We all want him to win, but that's wrong," Thomas said. ''The sticker's got to go."

The Hatch Act notwithstanding, Marines have strong opinions on this fall's election. USMC Capt. Leigh Dubie helps Marines file for absentee ballots.

''I told them if you want a voice in how the military is going to be in the future, this is your chance," she said.
Asked whether she expected Kerry to have any support, Dubie laughed.

''We crack jokes about that," she said. ''People say, 'We want to make sure we even have a military in four years, so we better vote for Bush.' "

Last weekend, my mother spent Saturday at the Pony Village Mall in North Bend, Oregon, gathering community support for Operation Santa. While there was near-unanimous community support, the local chairwoman of the Democratic Party stopped by to loudly voice her opinion of our military as "poor saps" who were misled about the war. While there is no indication that she's actually talked with troops or whether she's gaining her information from sources like Michael Moore, here's what another Marine had to say when interviewed:

McClusey -- the first in the unit to request his absentee ballot from Dubie -- said the nearly-uniform support he had encountered for Bush over Kerry did not translate into unanimous support for the invasion of Iraq.
''Even if the decision to come here was questionable, at least he had the guts to come over here," he said.

Whether or not Marines agree with Bush or not, they support him. And that translates into bad news for Kerry.

Posted by Deb at October 13, 2004 01:22 AM

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Comments

Maybe they support Bush because they are given a slanted veiwpoint. My son (1/) and I are very Patriotic and we do not support the president or his decision to go to war. How long do you think Bush would support the war if he had to send his daughter there, I am the one making a huge sacrifice and this is not my war.

Posted by: Yolanda at October 13, 2004 08:32 AM

I guess I have to say this in regards to the last comment.

I don't like the fact that my husband is away from us and has missed out on the new birth of his daughter.

My thought here is, if your son does not agree with the war, well why did he join the Corps. Because no matter what a Marines opinion is politically, his job working for the military is "when there is a job to do you will do it".

Like I said I don't agree with all that goes on, and I would like to see my husband back home NOW! It is the answer that my husband gives me everytime I ask " Why do you have to go?" and when my husband looks back and me and says "It is my job" those words and the way he says it make me respect his job and what he does. Because without my respect and support he can't feel confident in doing his job to come home safely to those he loves.

And politcally in my opinion, well I can't vote. And I don't know how you all pick out of the two? I would not know who to choose, both Kerry and Bush stand and represent things I feel are important. So I wish all of those voters the best of luck with thier decison making!!!

Your sons and daughters are in this Marine families prayers daily.

God Bless & Semper Fi

Tina

Posted by: Tina at October 13, 2004 12:53 PM

''Even if the decision to come here was questionable, at least he had the guts to come over here,"

HE went? That`s news to me! HE might be tuff, but he`s not smart enough, nay.

Posted by: polly at October 14, 2004 11:05 AM

I wish someone like President Bush was in charge when I was in Vietnam. Maybe things would have been different. I not only support President Bush I find it hard for any militray person to support a man who turned his back on his fellow military members while the war was still in progress.

Posted by: Ralph Easley at October 14, 2004 02:13 PM

The kind of people who refer to our military, OUR Marines, as "poor saps" are what you will get for leadership if Kerry wins this election. Whether going to Iraq was or wasn't the right thing to do is no longer relevant. Our guys are there, and they need the CiC who has the kahonees to get the job done. Bush has them. Kerry will either turn our military over to the UN, or just turn his back on them as he did when he left Vietnam.

If you recall, we were attacked on 11 Sept. 2001. Maybe Saddam wasn't involved, but he was sponsoring terrorism as we all know. The UN was never going to do anything but profit from Saddam and his games. If Saddam had attacked us, then what? He killed hundreds of thousands of his own people. If we were attacked again, then Bush would be guilty of something. Right now, all he has done is what any decent leader of the FREE WORLD would do, protect his people.

As long as my son, as long as any of our sons and daughters are in the military, I pray we have a President who respects them. President Bush has that respect, he knows how well trained they are, and that they are the best. That's why he sent them. Not because they are "poor saps".

Posted by: devil_dogma at October 14, 2004 08:09 PM

EXACTLY.

How much support do you think your son, daughter, or husband will get from John Kerry? In 1991, all the conditions he says would have made him support this war were present, yet he voted AGAINST taking Saddam out - when we could have finished the job. It's people like him who undermined us then. And he's still undermining the military today. He wouldn't even vote for money to pay for supplies for the war. Only 4 Senators voted for the war but AGAINST the reconstruct (and the bulk of the reconstruction bill went for the military). Guess who two of those four were: Kerry and Edwards.

In 1998, my husband was packed and on the tarmac, but again we didn't go in. I will never understand why.

Saddam was financing the people who attacked the Cole, Khobar Towers, you-name-it. It's the MILITARY those nutjobs have been going after - your sons and daughters. You're fooling yourselves if you think they were really safe.

Kerry WAS military. He turned against his own. When our guys are over there, he's saying "wrong war, wrong time, wrong place". All that does is undermine the President and hurt morale.

He constantly disses our allies - he called the coalition "the phoniest thing I've ever seen" a "trumped-up, so-called coalition of the bribed and the coerced". But those are the nations who stood by us - who have shed blood with us. Instead, he sucks up to the nations like France and Germany who took bribes from Saddam. Who betrayed us. Who have openly said they'll NEVER send troops to Iraq. Even Kerry admitted that the other day.

The guy was only in Vietnam 4 months - as soon as he got back he was over in Paris meeting with the Viet Cong while we had POWs in Vietnamese prison camps. Sometime, try asking yourself just how you'd feel if that had been your son, daughter, or husband rotting away in a cell while Mr. Kerry was talking with the enemy during wartime?

Kinda puts a different face on his protest activities when you put it all in the present tense, doesn't it?

Posted by: Cassandra at October 15, 2004 09:32 AM

OOHRAH, Cassandra!!
My son is in Iraq now. If Kerry gets elected - Heaven forbid - I will be ten times more afraid than I am now. What Kerry has done in the last few months is exactly what he did in 1971. His mission is to turn public opinion against the war and our troops. Kerry and our enemies both know that's the only way the American military can be defeated, and that is what Kerry is about. He only cares about his own political agenda. He wants to rule the world. No real hero accepts a Purple Heart for a scratch, and he accepted 3 for 3 scratches. He never even went to a hospital!! He was never even absent from duty for his Purple Heart injuries, that's how pathetic he is. He only did 4 months because all the people who served with him couldn't stand him, and felt he was putting their lives in danger. And why won't he release his records? Bush had to. Why aren't the American people demanding the release of John Kerry's military records...ALL of them?

Posted by: devil_dogma at October 15, 2004 06:54 PM

Kerry supporter 10-20.... I am a Marine combat veteran with a real Purple Heart. I do not respect your views. What I do respect is your right to voice them, odious to me as they may be.

That said, I would sure like a hit off of the pipe you seem to have been attached to when formulating your world views. One example: "dialectic logic of fighting terrorists abroad so we don't have to fight them at home". I don't know where you are from but the last I heard New York City was part of the United States in September, 2001. As were our embassies in Africa and the USS Cole in Yemen etc.

Keep in mind now, Kerry voted to get it on with Saddam based on the same intelligence reports that Bush had. It appears that it was Saddam's desire to appear to have nuclear capabilities amongst his neighbors that clouded the issue. Which side should we err on? Remember now we are talking about maybe 80-100 thousand lives here. If for one second you believe that Saddam would not have provided Osama with a Suitcase Nuke to use against some target in the US then I am wasting my time trying to communicate with a fence post. Richard Laird

Posted by: Richard Laird at October 22, 2004 09:32 PM