Voting in the military . . .

CBFTW, a blogger in the U.S. Army and stationed in Iraq, talks about voting in the military:

. . . I can't say anything negative about my Commander In Chief, so I wont. But I also can't vote for a person who threw his medals at the White House. You just don't do something like that. Like, if I did something like that, to protest this war, that would be a total slap in the face to all my brothers in my Platoon, all the people serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the people who lost their lives here, all the POW's, all the Vets, all the guys in all the other branches, and all my Drill Sgt's at Benning, and I wouldn't do something like that to them. It's hard enough as it is. Disagree with me all you want on this, but that's just how I feel.

The soldiers I know in the Army who are voting for Kerry in this election (which is a lot more than people would think) are voting for him because they're pissed off at Bush. They're pissed off because of Stop Loss, tour extensions, underestimating the amount of troops needed for Iraq, the Weapons of Mass destruction thing, the legitimacy of coming to Iraq, and they feel Kerry might also get us out of here faster. Stuff like that.

The soldiers I know who are voting for Bush are voting for him because they support him 110% on his Global War On Terrorism, and there is no shadow of a doubt that we did the right thing coming to Iraq. They feel Bush is doing a great job so far out here. A lot of the guys remember what happened to the military the last time a Democrat was in office. The guys I know who served in the military during the Clinton years, tell me all sorts of horror stories about the budget cuts. How they couldn't get any good training done, because they had no money for ammunition or anything. In training, if they ran out of bullets to fire, they would yell "Bang! Bang! Bang!" or yell "Budget Cuts! Budget Cuts! Budget Cuts!" to simulate shots being fired. Since Bush has been in office, we've never had those kinds of problems and there has been nothing but improvements in the military, we've had a couple small pay raises, and the quality of life has gone extremely up for people in the military.