May 7, 2008; Nationwide -- With the House of Representatives preparing to take up legislation that would fund the continuation of the war in Iraq well into 2009, Military Families Speak Out issued the following statement calling on Members of Congress to reject the House Leadership's strategy supporting the continuation of the war in Iraq.
As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi prepares to implement a strategy that will fund the Iraq war through 2008 and into the first term of the next president, Military Families Speak Out members across the country and on military bases around the world are outraged at this massive betrayal of our loved ones, all of our troops, our families, this nation and the people of Iraq. This strategy is designed to allow Congress to avoid a potentially embarrassing vote in the weeks and months leading up to the election in November, and to prevent a new president from having to ask for war funding in his/her first months in office. It is a cruel maneuver being done on the backs, bodies, and spirits of our troops.
The pain that continuing the war will cause military families, our loved ones, and the people of Iraq is incalculable. Military and Gold Star families know the real cost of this war. We know that more than 4,000 U.S. troops and over one million Iraqi children, women, and men have already died in a war that should never have happened -- and every day this war continues, more will be killed and more will sustain devastating, lifelong physical and psychological injuries. We know that many of our troops are on their third, fourth, fifth and now sixth deployments; and that being sent into combat again and again takes a severe toll on their bodies and their minds. As a result, suicide rates among troops returning from Iraq are sky-rocketing -- with the Director of the National Institute for Mental Health recently suggesting that suicide may be claiming the lives of more troops serving in and returning from Iraq than enemy fire. The lives at stake and the lives that have already been sacrificed are the lives of our sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives. They are our hearts.
We are angered at this betrayal by Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues who took control of Congress on a promise to end the war in Iraq. We are sick and tired of Congress members who tell us how much they hate this war and then turn around and continue to fund it.
Speaker Pelosi and other Congressional leaders want to sweeten this deadly pill of the war funding by adding money to help more Veterans go to college and toothless provisions calling for a timetable for troop withdrawals that they know President Bush will veto or use signing statements to ignore. None of that changes the fact that a vote for this bill is a vote to continue funding an illegal, immoral, unjust and unjustifiable war. Military Families Speak Out calls on Members of Congress to reject the House Leadership's strategy, oppose any bill that provides funding to continue the war in Iraq, and to support full funding for the safe and swift return of U.S. troops to their home duty stations, and for the care they need when they get home. We remind all in Congress that funding this war is not "funding our troops" – it is killing our troops.
For more information about Military Families Speak Out, please visit
www.mfso.org ; for moreinformation about the chapter Gold Star Families Speak Out see
www.gsfso.org
Moratorium Day #9 : May 16, 2008 - 76 Iraq Moratorium Day #9 Events
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