Portsmouth Area Vets Told Obama Supports Them, Romney Doesn't

The vice president of a National Security think tank told Portsmouth area veterans Thursday afternoon that President Barack Obama will treat them much better than Mitt Romney.

Michael Breen, a Portsmouth native who serves as the VP of the Truman National Security Project in Washington, D.C., led a veterans roundtable at the Obama for America-NH office on Brewery Lane in Portsmouth.

Point by point, Breen talked about how President Obama’s foreign policy and leadership on issues such as the Middle East are working. He also stressed that some of Romney’s recent statements show that he would not be an effective leader or champion for veterans.

“Governor Romney has made some troubling statements about veterans in the past,” said Breen, an Army veteran who served in the War in Iraq from 2003 to 2004.

Breen said that if the Republican Presidential frontrunner’s idea to privatize Veterans Administration benefits ever happened, veterans health care benefits would suffer.

During Romney's time as governor, Breen said Romney actually moved some state veterans benefits into the Massachusetts welfare program, which Breen said “is pretty offensive.”

Jeff Ballard of Brookfield, a combat medic who served with the New Hampshire Army National Guard in Afghanistan in 2010, agreed.

“He wants somebody to be able to make profits off of our service,” Ballard said. “We also need to make sure we send the message that “our service isn’t for sale and our sacrifices isn’t for sale.”

Ballard, who is running as a Democrat for the District 3 state Senate seat currently held by Republican Jeb Bradley of Wolfeboro, said President Obama proved to him that he knows what he is doing as far as the war in Afghanistan is concerned.

He recalled that when he served there, he and his fellow NH Army Guard soldiers couldn’t leave their base because it was not safe. He initially disagreed with the president’s decision to do the troop surge, but now supports it after seeing what a difference it made.

Breen said President Obama has also shown that he cares about veterans by expanding the G.I. Bill and extending VA benefits to more service members.

“As a result of what the president has done, over 500,000 vets who couldn’t get benefits, will now be able to get them. That’s incredible.”

Breen also said Romney’s recent statements on the campaign trail regarding Iran show that he would prefer to pick a fight with that country. Romney has also said that he views Russia as a National Security threat even though the Cold War ended in the early 1990s.

As positive a picture of President Obama’s leadership that Breen painted, some of the 12 Portsmouth area veterans who participated at the roundtable questioned some of the Obama administration’s decisions.

Lionel Ingram of Exeter, a Vietnam War veteran, wondered if the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, has clear goals and objectives after deciding to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The goals are missing,” he said.

Paul O’Connor, president of the Metal Trades Council at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, said the Obama administration needs to think about the future direction of the Department of Defense budget. He said the Navy fleet is underfunded and that Shipyard workers had to de-fuel two nuclear submarines and “cut them up and scrap them” because the Navy realized it didn’t haven enough money in its 10-year budget to operate those nuclear submarines.

O’Connor also said the proposal to cut $487 million from the Department of Defense budget “is not sustainable.”

“We’re cutting the size of our defense as the cost of maintaining our defense rises because of the level of sophistication of our equipment,” he added.

O’Connor said the DOD should rely more on the Shipyard workforce to help them identify the best places to cut the budget. He said the shipyard is “the best in the business regardless of the (USS Miami) fire that happened on one of our boats. That was a tragedy.”

Joan Jacobs, a member of the Portsmouth Democratic Committee, asked Breen to explain the difference between President Obama’s approach to Iran and Mitt Romney’s approach.

Breen said that while President Obama has spent the last three years building an international coalition to deal with Iran and used diplomacy and sanctions to pressure the Iranians to back away from trying to acquire nuclear weapons, the Romney campaign’s rhetoric has a more reckless tone.

Breen said Romney advisor John Bolton recently said he is happy the negotiations are not working. If the negotiations fail, Breen said the U.S. will have to act a year from now and abandoning negotiations in favor of another war in the Middle East is not what the country wants if it can be avoided.