Congressman Patrick Murphy, Democrat from Pennsylvania, knows how decisions made in Washington are felt by American soldiers in Iraq. He was a captain and paratrooper over there with the 82nd Airborne.
Now, as the only Iraq War veteran in Congress, he has written a no-holds-barred memoir. In it, he writes: "Soldiers on the ground are paying the price - picking up the pieces, the shambles of the president's failed plan."
Listen to an On Point discussion with Congressman Patrick J. Murphy and his Iraq story.
What do you think Congress should do about Iraq? Are you looking for the exit strategy, or to stay the course in Iraq?
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Comments: 11 ( 15 removed by On Point Webmaster )
They can take care of themselves
I don't see that happening when I read my daily newspaper. Looks like the Iraqis still need a little help................or maybe a lot of help.
Oh, and to our President and his chickenhawk advisors who believed that raising soldiers' pay from $16,000 to $18,000 was "unnecessary," do you have no shame?
Good comments.
Who makes $16k in the Army these days? I know lots of soldiers and the lowest I've heard in the past 3 years is $24k..........a single guy from Alabama.
I don't agree with Murphy's Liberal stance, but I'm happy a veteran is in office. He seems like a good guy..........just a little misguided....lol.
As to the reference to $16,000 base pay being raised to $18,000, that's straight out of the show. Ask Murphy, or do his comments not count because he is left of center even though he paid his dues during quality time on Ambush Alley? My problem with the Iraq War is that they are simply not worth the cost in lives and dollars it will take to fashion anything like a rational, non-Islam-poisoned, secular democracy out of that insane asylum. As soon as we leave, now or after McCain's 100, it will devolve into savagery again. So what's the point? Prove me wrong... Also, Al-Sadr stated yesterday that the six-month "cease fire" he declared, and which accounted for a sizeable percentage of the decrease in violence re: The Surge is about to expire and the game will be on again. How many more families are going to be getting letters? If the people of Iraq can't learn to live together, let them devour each other. As far as al-Queda building training bases and other facilities there in a failed Iraq, fixed locations have another name: targets. Daisy cutters anyone?
If they can't run a country either, then so be it. It's their country, they can do as they wish without the help of the US
$16k may be the "stated" base pay in the Army, but no one makes that amount. Everybody gets training in their specialty immediately and gets a bump. Like I said, the pay is low, but it isn't THAT low.
Its sorta like hearing that you can make $6 an hour flipping burgers at McDonalds. However, almost no McDonalds restaurants pay that wage. Most are $10 an hour or higher. In Honolulu, they pay $15 an hour.
Understand now?
but I actually like arabs and jews (most this side of hell) so let's start "CONSERVATIVE SOCIALISM" here in america.........{{P.G.e.s.e.}}. and BREED a better world PEACEFULLY not genocide.
IRAQ? BOOM)) a shipping canal through the Euphraites River;,caspian sea to Terran -Iran ?scam)))
INDIA as well as other "traditional" (europe) . ....$$$ travel for virtuos leaders is crittical . "A.N.N.Y.T. for the colonial world" the-e politically-sensitive SOLUTION!!!
like P.G.e.s.e. traditional poverty!!!