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Suggestions impugning Kerry's record on military voting seriously misconstrue the facts. In fact, Kerry (as an actual combat veteran) has been a sedulous supporter of the military, voting repeatedly to increase combat pay. The argument that his voting against the 87 billion dollar aid package evinces his ambivalence towards the military distorts the issue; Kerry was voting against the shameful way that the Bush administration conducted the post-war reconstruction plan, doling out no-bid contracts to friends and cronies (see the ongoing investigation into Halliburton's 7 billion dollar reconstruction contract if you are unfamiliar), not the troops themselves.
Bush's record, on the other hand, is more troubling. He willingilly sent troops into combat without adequate body armor, and banned the media from showing their coffins as they returned home. When democrats in the House introduced a provision to provide the troops with adequate equipment through rescinding Bush's tax cut to the top 1 percent, our president led the charge to defang it.
He voted to cut combat pay from 225 dollars to 150, reduce the family seperation allowance from 250 to 100, and he vetoed a measure to increase the reward for those killed in combat from 6,000 to 12,000 dollars.
It is a known fact that the US is well behind Europe in military pay, and Bush has done nothing to change this. In fact, the number of soldiers on food stamps has doubled under Bush's watch from Clinton levels.
While both candidates are for defense, the difference is that Kerry is for soldiers and that Bush is for contractors. And let's not even get into his shifting, mendacious justifications for war, which is a whole 'nother topic.
Oh yeah, let's go skins
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