"Financial Friendly Fire"

I am getting damn sick and tired of Bush sycophants saying that everyone who doesn't march mindlessly in lockstep with Bush about Iraq is somehow unpatriotic, and doesn't "support the troops."

Here's how the Bush Administration "supports the troops":

His hand had been blown off in Iraq, his body pierced by shrapnel. He could not walk. Robert Loria was flown home for a long recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he tried to bear up against intense physical pain and reimagine his life's possibilities.

The last thing on his mind, he said, was whether the Army had correctly adjusted his pay rate -- downgrading it because he was out of the war zone -- or whether his combat gear had been accounted for properly: his Kevlar helmet, his suspenders, his rucksack.

But nine months after Loria was wounded, the Army garnished his wages and then, as he prepared to leave the service, hit him with a $6,200 debt. That was just before last Christmas, and several lawmakers scrambled to help. This spring, a collection agency started calling. He owed another $646 for military housing.

"I was shocked," recalled Loria, now 28 and medically retired from the Army. "After everything that went on, they still had the nerve to ask me for money."

This is what the Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans are doing to the kids they're sending over to die in a war based on lies, a war with no concrete mission, a war with no exit plan, a war without end -- they're nickel and diming them to death.

This is reprehensible, it's inexcusable, and we need to be shouting from the rooftops that this is what the Republicans are doing to them. Because the way it looks now, the ONLY way to support the troops is to oppose their commander-in-chief.