McCain Wants To Blackmail the Troops

John McCain was once a returning soldier – in fact a soldier returning from five-plus years as a POW who was a victim of the very torture techniques that he now embraces. But you would have to go far to top the reason that the befuddled Republican presidential wannabe is giving for not restoring the historic GI Bill to wartime levels:

It would encourage soldiers to shed their uniforms for college and civilian life.

Got that? McCain favors keeping the present crapola GI bill level of an average $9,500 a year no matter what college costs -- and its costs a heap more.

Like neary 10 million other veterans, I finished my college education on the GI Bill, but that was when it provided full tuition, housing, and living costs before being scaled back to a "peacetime" program in the mid 1980s that pays a flat sum.

So McCain is just fine if American troops stay in Iraq for 100 years, but adequately rewarding them for their sacrifices is wrong and he'll withhold support for a bipartisan bill to greatly expand educational benefits.

More here on what can only be termed a form of blackmail.