GOP barricades the troops in Iraq

Re “Changes to war strategy fail in Senate,” Sept. 20

I find it truly disgusting and hypocritical that the Senate Republicans have now stopped legislation that would give the troops serving in Iraq the same time at home as they would fighting overseas. The obstructionist Republican Party has made it clear that it won’t change the direction its failed leader has demanded.

No wonder Congress has an extremely low approval rating. I hope the American public remembers this in 2008, when these same politicians change their stripes and claim that they were for the rights of our service personnel all along, and shows this group the door.

Jack Kenna

Whittier

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In the previous Bush Congresses, even the slightest request by the Democrats for a compromise on any given bill raised the Republican cry of “obstructionism,” and when the Democrats threatened to filibuster appointments to high federal judgeships, cries of “up or down vote” and the “nuclear option” joined in the chorus.

We are now confronted with a Republican minority that continually blocks the will of the Senate majority on the major issues of our time with the threat of filibuster, most recently in preventing troops from Iraq necessary turn-around time.

Yet I hear not a word of complaint from the Senate leaders, to say nothing of the threat of the nuclear option. This difference in the willingness of the Republicans to take advantage of whatever tactical maneuvers are available to them, and the Democrats’ timidity even to raise a protest to these tactics, is disheartening to those of us committed to changing this nation’s direction.

Robert Silver

Los Angeles

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Poor Republicans. Another campaign slogan down the drain. “Family values” is a goner, and now so is “support the troops.”

Well, at least there’s still “stay the course.”

Kurt Page

Laguna Niguel