Eric Massa’s Statement on the Mast Family’s Situation
Unlike Mr. Kuhl who has yet to comment, Eric Massa immediatly responded to my request for a comment on the terrible situation the Mast Family of Corning is now facing…
I had received a note from a friend that sent me immediately to the site to read the posting about this deployment. Tragically, this is the real human, local, cost of voting for this surge. Our military is tapped out and anyone who does not believe that can please find some other explanation for sending a new mother whose husband is already in combat into Iraq. This war is now cutting through the very bone of the US military in a way that those of us who spent years in the military know all to well. It is ironic that constituents are forced to try and find help from the very Washington politicians who are voting to send these young people into an escalation of the war. When John Kuhl stood up and stated he was against the “stop loss” program that extends soldiers in combat zones and then stated the very next week that he was against politicians micro managing the war his self contradictions were clear to anyone who was listening. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer are listening because they have grown tired of the same old Rubber stamp for George Bush votes in Congress.
Yesterday, we saw yet another rubber stamp get slapped on the Congressional record with John Kuhl voting against working families with his flip-flopping rubber stamp of George Bushs’ threatened veto of the Employee Free Choice Bill. Add that to the almost criminal closing of the in-patient mental heath VA facility and the string of votes against this District starts to look pretty clear.
Our military is over committed to a strategy that has even Senators like John McCain “mistakenly” using vocabulary words like “wasted”. When this President and his rubber stamps in Congress realize that they have committed huge blunders with this surge. Perhaps John Kuhl should go to Iraq again, this time staying of the same tour of duty as the young soldier who has to leave a new born baby with a parent. How about it, 16 months instead of 16 hours?
Eric Massa
Has anyone considered that if she is breastfeeding this baby she may have a legal leg to stand on ?
Valid point… I don’t know if it’s gotten to legal matters yet (or if it will), but I would have to think that would bring an exemption… Granted I’m not a lawyer though…
I’d wondered about that myself. More and more it looks like breastfeeding is critical to optimal childhood development; disease resistance benefits have been known for years, but there are other benefits that aren’t as well known. Sadly, this is an area where military policy will need to play catch up. You can’t have female career soldiers without making concessions for the biological demands of motherhood.
Unfortunately, some people do volunteer for military service and maybe it takes seeing a movie like The War Tapes to fully understand the thought process of some people, who on the surface are overly patriotic and who feel the need to serve their country.
I wish everyone would see the War Tapes because just about everyone in the film is pro-Bush and pro-war and yet they still come away from the war not knowing exactly what they were doing in Iraq.
Some have the best intentions of protecting our county and some simply need to release pent up aggression.
I’m very suspicious of this story about both parents of a newborn ending up in Iraq. I don’t believe our government is that screwed up!