White House mobilizes the military ... for politics.

The GOP is at it again. Using every trick they can to trick and scare the public into voting Republican. Here they plan on using Vetrans from the Iraq war to talk about it.

By they way, did you know that using active military personel for politics is illegal?

Robert Schlesinger writes:

Active-duty military personnel are not supposed to engage in partisan political activies, right? Right: They are, in fact, legally prohibited from partisan political activities, according to DoD regulations which you can find here and here.

Someone may have forgotten to alert the eager beavers in the White House political affairs office.

Conservative columnist Robert Novak reported the following in his column today:

...public with its war message. Raul Damas, associate director of political affairs at the White House, has been on the phone directly to Republican county chairmen to arrange local speeches by active duty military personnel to talk about their experiences in Iraq.

Huh?

According to the DoD regs, examples of prohibited activities by active-duty military include: A "member on active duty shall not speak before a partisan political gathering, including any gathering that promotes a partisan political party, candidate, or cause."

Without knowing the details of these arrangements it's impossible to say whether the letter of the law is being broken here. But the White House -- by extension the commander-in-chief himself (is that unitary government?) -- arranging for active-duty military to speak at GOP events certainly seems like a clear violation of the law's spirit.

And sounds like something the GOP loves to do. They'd love it even better if it could make them some money at the same time.

The article can be found here:
White House mobilizes the military ... for politics.

Technorati tags: White House, GOP, Republican, Military, Robert Novak, Iraq