Letter To John Kerry... Options

[realdeal]

Letter to John Kerry

August 25, 2004

Senator John Kerry
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Kerry,

We are pleased to welcome your campaign representatives to Texas today. We honor all our veterans, all whom have worn the uniform and served our country. We also honor the military and National Guard troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today. We are very proud of all of them and believe they deserve our full support.

That’s why so many veterans are troubled by your vote AGAINST funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, after you voted FOR sending them into battle. And that’s why we are so concerned about the comments you made AFTER you came home from Vietnam. You accused your fellow veterans of terrible atrocities – and, to this day, you have never apologized. Even last night, you claimed to be proud of your post-war condemnation of our actions.

We’re proud of our service in Vietnam. We served honorably in Vietnam and we were deeply hurt and offended by your comments when you came home.

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up. There is no double standard for our right to free speech. We all earned it.

You said in 1992 “we do not need to divide America over who served and how.” Yet you and your surrogates continue to criticize President Bush for his service as a fighter pilot in the National Guard.

We are veterans too – and proud to support President Bush. He’s been a strong leader, with a record of outstanding support for our veterans and for our troops in combat. He’s made sure that our troops in combat have the equipment and support they need to accomplish their mission.

He has increased the VA health care budget more than 40% since 2001 – in fact, during his four years in office, President Bush has increased veterans funding twice as much as the previous administration did in eight years ($22 billion over 4 years compared to $10 billion over 8.) And he’s praised the service of all who served our country, including your service in Vietnam.

We urge you to condemn the double standard that you and your campaign have enforced regarding a veteran’s right to openly express their feelings about your activities on return from Vietnam.

Sincerely,

Texas State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Duncan Hunter
Rep. Sam Johnson
Lt. General David Palmer
Robert O'Malley, Medal of Honor Recipient
James Fleming, Medal of Honor Recipient
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Castle (Ret.)

[Druid]

Your right Hoods the fate of the free world and me stubbing my two is nowhere near the same lines.
So lets look again at your comment of 1,800,000 jobs have been lost.
You can see this claimed on almost every anti-bush site.
One small problem with it, it's not really true or at least it's very misleading.

Everyone keeps spewing the same comments about jobs because it's a good shocker and most people don't understand where the numbers come from and what they mean. Most people who read "1,800,000 jobs have been lost." automatically think because of Bush 1,800,000 are now out of work.
Well here are a few facts.
Since the Bush came into office there have been 2.4 million jobs created.
So the reality is, net jobs have increased. This is job growth during a recession which we now know Bush inherited. BTW I'm not blaming Clinton for the recession either, as I've already said the economy is cyclic in nature. If the economy didn't have it's ups and downs we would have terrible inflation.

Lets look at some other economic indicators.
Unemployment is now at 5.6 percent which is below the 5.8 percent through the 90's
We just had the largest single quater of growth in 20 years.
Jobless claims are 10 percent below the average of the last 25 years and still falling.