Apparently "support" for troops doesn't include adequate supplies or training

I must be stupid. That's clearly the only explanation. I must be stupid, because I simply cannot understand how something can be The Most Important Thing On Earth but not be worth providing adequate resources for. I wish I could comprehend it, but I can't.

President Bush keeps telling us the Iraq is the key to the War on Terror. I happen to disagree -- I believe that the invasion of Iraq was, in fact, a dangerous and inflammatory distraction from the proper way to handle violent extremism -- but President Bush keeps telling me I'm wrong, like when he said this in a radio address he made just a few weeks ago:

The security of the civilized world depends on victory in the war on terror, and that depends on victory in Iraq

The security of the civilized world! I'd say that's pretty important, so the President must be giving our military every possible resource to accomplish its goal, right? Even if it involves calling for sacrifice, perhaps suspending tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% of America, or encouraging big business to pitch in to the war effort, or simply publicly asking Americans to join the military? Since I don't see any of that happening, I guess our troops have must everything they need. Wait . . . they don't? They don't??

The pressures that the conflict in Iraq is putting on the Army are apparent amid the towering pine trees of southeast Georgia, where the Third Infantry Division is preparing for the likelihood that it will go back to Iraq for a third tour. Col. Tom James, who commands the division’s Second Brigade, acknowledged that his unit's equipment levels had fallen so low that it now had no tanks or other armored vehicles to use in training and that his soldiers were rated as largely untrained in attack and defense.

How Secretary Rumsfeld still has his job is beyond me. How President Bush has any supporters left is beyond me. How we're supposed to succeed at the Most Important Thing Ever while denying our soldiers the training and supplies they desperately need is beyond me. But like I said, I guess I'm just stupid.

On the other hand, if I'm not stpuid, it calls into question what, exactly, President Bush and Congressional Republicans -- who control the entire apparatus of the federal government, keep in mind -- think "support" for U.S. soldiers consists of . . . and why Republicans don't seem to care that President Bush is royally screwing both our military as we know it and, according to his own words, the security of the civilized world.