Talk about yer blatant partisanship...
Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Ca, actually told Hannity & Colmes that it's not Geo W Bush that should get any credit for the successes in Iraq, but rather Bill Clinton. Huh? Yep.
Addressing the 101st Airborne's elimination of Uday and Qusay Hussein he said:
"When President Clinton put together a magnificent military and handed it over to Bush, that's the person who deserves our credit."
Clinton "put together" our military? The way I remember it, Clinton slashed the defense budget because "the Cold War is over."
Of course the weapon system upgrades gave us an arsenal that is more accurate than the first generation smart-bombs of the Desert Storm era due to technology available to defense contractors, and the recommendations of the Pentagon. Clinton, as any President could reasonably have been expected to, signed off on these upgrades.
But Clinton's most profound legacy is that he decimated the CIA's ability to gather Intelligence by forbidding agents from engaging persons of shady character.
Now, explain to me how we're going to gather information about shady characters without getting involved with shady characters. Why are we relying on British Intel about Saddam's dealings with Niger? Because Bill Clinton handcuffed the CIA for eight years.
All this aside, Brad Sherman's claim that it's Clinton, not Bush, who needs to congratulated on the successes (but, presumably, Bush will be blamed for any set-backs), is, he admits, a purely partisan stance.
He told Sean Hannity that he would give credit to Bush only "if you can show me where you congratulated – or whether Bush congratulated – President Clinton on whatever successes we had, and especially on the magnificent nature of what he turned over to him."
I'd be the first to congratulate Bill Clinton on the military successes of Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, etc if I thought that we had any national interest in the success of those missions. (see: Nixon Doctrine.)
Posted by Tuning Spork at July 27, 2003 03:16 PMI joined the Army when Jimmy Carter was President, and retired during the Clinton Administration. So I can testify at first hand that the level of morale, preparedness, and presidential support hit rock bottom when these 2 Democrats were in office!
If it weren't for Frank J.'s contest, I would not have known that you have a blog site of your own. One thing I really like is the imagination people use when selecting names for their sites.
Posted by: Bloodthirsty Warmonger at July 31, 2003 11:09 AMHi B.W.! Good to see 'round these parts!
I served in the Air Force in the '80s and heard horror stories of the malaise-ridden morale during the Carter years. I can only imagine what it was like under a that anti-defense spending (but pro-defense deploying) draft-dodger. >*shiver*
Posted by: Tuning Spork at July 31, 2003 06:18 PMIt was not for nothing that the Army of the 1970's was known as the "hollow army." I have the utmost admiration for the soldiers who stayed in and worked hard to reconstruct the training and disciplinary standards that had nearly been destroyed by the Vietnam War.
Posted by: Bloodthirsty Warmonger at August 1, 2003 07:25 PM