LONG DEPLOYMENTS, BENEFIT CUTS ERODE SUPPORT FOR PRESIDENT

Posted on Sun, Mar. 14, 2004
San Jose Mercury News
Many veterans reject Bush
LONG DEPLOYMENTS, BENEFIT CUTS ERODE SUPPORT FOR PRESIDENT
By William Douglas
Knight Ridder



WASHINGTON - When the Bush campaign asked James McKinnon to co-chair its
veterans steering committee in New Hampshire -- a job he held in 2000 -- the
56-year-old Vietnam veteran respectfully, but firmly, said no.

``I basically told them I was disappointed in his support of veterans,'' said
McKinnon, who served two tours in Vietnam with the Coast Guard. ``He's killing
the active-duty military. . . . Look at the reserves call-ups for Iraq, the
hardships. The National Guard -- the state militia -- is being used improperly.
I took the president at his word on Iraq, and now you can't find a single
report to back up or substantiate weapons of mass destruction.''

President Bush is seeking re-election as a ``war president'' whose decisive
leadership steered the military to victories in Afghanistan and Iraq. But as
guerrilla warfare drags on in both countries, casualties mount and the Army is
stretched ever thinner, many voters in or affiliated with the military are no
longer saluting the commander in chief.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or evidence that Saddam
Hussein was in league with Al-Qaida, lengthy deployments of active-duty
soldiers and reservists, and proposed cuts in veterans' benefits and perks to
military families are threatening to erode Bush's once-strong support among
military voters.

In the 2000 presidential election, absentee military ballots from overseas
helped deliver the narrow margin of victory that sent Bush into the White
House. So even a small defection of current and retired military people and
their dependents could spell trouble for Bush in 2004.

A bipartisan ``Battleground'' poll of likely voters conducted in September
found that Bush's approval rating among relatives of military personnel was
only 36 percent.

Military Families Speak Out, an anti-war group of relatives of deployed troops,
plans to observe the Iraq war's first anniversary this week with processions
outside Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and at Walter Reed Army Hospital in
Washington, D.C.

``I voted for Bush in 2000, and I'm not going to vote for him again,'' said
Jean Prewitt, a group member from Birmingham, Ala. Her 24-year-old son, Kelley,
was in the Army's 3rd Infantry Division when he was killed April 6 south of
Baghdad. ``I just feel deceived. He just kept screaming, screaming, weapons of
mass destruction, weapons of mass destruction, we've got to get in there. We
got in there and now there aren't any.''

Bush campaign officials say they expect military voters to return to the fold
because the president has delivered on his 2000 campaign promise that ``help is
on the way'' for underfunded, underpaid armed forces.

In his 2005 budget, Bush proposed pay increases for armed service members, and
the Pentagon has upgraded about 10 percent of its military housing.

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