Carol Shea Porter (D-NH 1)
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Once again, our (I’m so sorry to say) Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter has run afoul of NH’s military families with her blatant defeatist attitude with regards to the war in Iraq. This guest editorial submitted by Cathie Chevalier of Hudson, NH demonstrates once again why those of us who support the men and woman of the military and want the United States to prevail in the war are so ashamed of our US representative from here in NH’s 1st congressional district…
Carol Shea-Pompous
by Cathie Chevalier.On January 29, 2007 I e-mailed Ms. Porter to ask a straightforward, simple question – “Do you want us to win in Iraq?” Several weeks later I received a phone call from one of her staff members who informed me that Ms. Porter was backlogged with work and would contact me in the very near future with a response..A week ago at the annual state convention for the New Hampshire VFW and Ladies Auxiliary VFW I ran into Carol Shea-Porter, an interesting way to conclude my fourth term as the State Legislative Chairman for the Auxiliary. I told her that I needed to speak with her. I advised Ms. Porter that I had not received an answer to my question of five months earlier and told her what the question had been. I asked her, as I had in my e-mail, for a simple yes or no answer with no political doubletalk. I realize that this is a real challenge for any politician..Ms. Porter began with “Well you need to understand…” I stopped her there and again asked for a simple yes or no. This happened another couple of times before I guess she realized that career military wives do understand, don’t need to be patronized, and that I was not going to listen to a 20 minute dissertation that would still not culminate in a yes or no answer. She was frustrated by my persistence and her aide that was with her jumped into the conversation. He asked me rather rudely, “Why are you being so adversarial?” Hmm… I pay this woman’s hefty salary through my tax dollars, want 10 seconds of her time to simply answer yes or no, and all they want to do is waste my time..Concluding about 20 minutes of verbal wrangling, she finally gave me an answer which was “It’s impossible to win in Iraq.” Wow! Talk about emboldening our enemies and at the same time insulting our troops! She should get paid double for being able to do two things at once! I can’t imagine why I sounded “adversarial” with three sons who have worn the uniform of this country and a husband who spent over thirty years on active duty in the Marine Corps including three volunteer tours in Vietnam.
.Carol informed me that all of the military generals say that the war is impossible to win. (American generals?) She handed me a newspaper clipping as back up of her conclusion. I read the article five times searching for that phrase. Nowhere in that article are the words “impossible to win.” It did, however, say that the report that they were referring to in this June, 2007 article was released “…in January, before Bush announced his decision to send nearly 30,000 more troops to Iraq.”.She further advised me that she had polled New Hampshire troops when in Iraq and was informed by every one of them that they would “rather be home than in Iraq.” Well, duh…. I’d rather be in Hawaii than in New Hampshire in the winter..Her aide then informed me that the Zogby poll shows that 72% of our troops say we should not be in Iraq. I researched this one. This poll that he referred to was performed in February 2006 (I guess she and her staff really are backlogged) with 944 military personnel. Her aide forgot to mention that this poll asked the troops why they think some Americans favor rapid U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. The majority of those polled responded that “those people are unpatriotic” and that they “…do not believe that those Americans understand the need for the U.S. troops in Iraq.” People such as Carol Porter? The poll also showed that a majority of the troops surveyed said that the U.S. should “double both the number of troops and bombing missions in order to control the insurgency.”.I believe that New Hampshire veterans and their families should demand this woman be removed from the Armed Services Committee. She displays no faith in our troops which is detrimental to those serving as well as to those amazing family members who wait for them..One other point – I asked Ms. Porter when she was going to meet with the military mothers, blue and gold star. The meeting that had been scheduled originally with them was cancelled due to her scheduling difficulties. She told me she had extended an invitation to them but had not heard anything back. Yesterday I attended the OAR rally in support of our troops (which Shea-Porter did not). The Gold Star Mothers and Blue Star Mothers organizations were represented there and I discussed with them what Porter had told me. They said they have received no such invitation. One of them added “not from Carol Shea-Pompous.”.Cathie Chevalier