Reply #53: a guess (I haven't read closely)... but forcing a dialogue on the

[salin]

realities and costs of the current bush military excursions.

While bushco pretend you can do and have it all - there are monetary and human resource costs to their policies. There are not enough resources for our current commitments. Making this an issue - forces two discussions...

1) the human resource realities of the bush policies (which in their rhetoric extends to many additional conflicts)... suddenly the whole dialogue of the perle/rummy/wolfie rhetoric (against NKorea, Syria, Iran etc)... has to include a discussion of troop resources. Normally one would think this discussion would be part of the public dialogue - but after three years of delusional policies sold as realities... this aspect of the 'costs' of these policies has gone absent since the firing of the head of the Army who challenged the prewar manning for Iraq. A flourish of discussion and whammo - never discussed again. This forces a shift in public discussion which is significant an important.

2) it changes what the meaning of "supporting ones troops" means. To us - supporting the troops means bringing them home out of harms way. But sadly - to the greater public there is a resonance of the theme. Now Kerry revives the talk of undermanning /undersupporting those who have already been committed to the ground - and equates getting adequate support to = supporting the troops. Puts the support the troop rhetoric of the bushies on their head.

Just answering from a public discourse/framing the issues vantage point - and what came to mind of how this could be used to push public discussion away from the simplist war rhetoric that until recently was giving blankets of cover to bushco.