By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
August 24, 2000
Due to a major telephone disruption in my area this analysis, which was published yesterday, is being re-posted, since most readers were unable to access Original Sources
The Rocky Mountain News reports today, following a speech given in Colorado to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, that:
Colorado Democratic Chairman Tim Knaus called on Bush to respond in front of VFW members to allegations raised last week in the Boston Globe that Bush essentially skipped out on his last year of duty in the Texas Air National Guard to dabble in politics."If he wants the support of Colorado's veterans, he is going to have to tell them why he should be allowed to get away with missing a year of duty," Knaus said.
Incredible! Knaus has supported and defended Bill Clinton for eight years, a man who left the country to evade the draft, spending part of the time he was supposed to be serving in the military in Russia bad-mouthing America and he asks BUSH about "missing a year of duty?"
Only, Bush didn't miss a year of duty. After flying for eighteen months he asked for and received a transfer to Alabama to work on a friend's Senate campaign.
Today's Washington Post lead story billed Al Gore's speech to the same VFW group in Milwaukee that George W. Bush addressed on Monday as "Gore Rebuts Bush attack. It says in part that:
"In response to Bush's accusation that the Pentagon has suffered a period of 'long neglect,' Gore declared: 'Our military is the strongest and the best in the entire world.'
If all you had to go on, and that all most Americans do have to go on, that report might lead you to believe that George W. Bush had America's military was NOT the strongest and the best in the entire world, wouldn't you? You might also think, from what Gore said, that the military has NOT suffered a period of "long neglect" under Clinton/Gore. And, of course, Gore didn't say the military has not declined - he just left you with that mistaken impression.
A second article in the Washington Post, in case you didn't get their point on the first one, was billed as "Bush Finds Himself on the Defensive:"
"After five months in firm command of the presidential race, Texas Gov. George W. Bush suddenly finds himself on the defensive, behind in polls and struggling to fend off attacks on his policies."
Tracking down exactly what George W. Bush said about the military at the VFW meeting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Monday took some sleuthing. No report I could find gave more than a clue or two about what Bush said. I eventually found an article and the audio of the speech on the Journal Sentinel at http://www.newsdirectory.com/go/?f=&r=wi&u=www.jsonline.com.
What George W. actually said in his speech was:
"The facts are startling and they are real. The current President inherited a military ready for the dangers and challenges facing the nation. The next president will inherit a military in decline. It still with out peer, without equal in the world but it is not without problems. "I will rebuild the military power of the United states"
So, actually, Al Gore almost quoted George W. Bush when he said, "Our military is the strongest and the best in the entire world."
While Al Gore left the impression that there were no problems in the military, George W. said:
"But the best intentions and the highest morale are undermined by back-to-back deployments, poor pay, shortages of spare parts and equipment and rapidly declining readiness. Our "Commitments have tripled while forces have been reduced by 40%. We are doing much more than we were doing 10 years ago it with much less."
He pointed out that when Clinton and Gore took office in January 1993 there were 85 combat units battle ready units where today there are only 65. A guided missile destroyer of the U.S. Navy turned back to base for lack of money. Twenty-one warships are in need of maintenance but the Navy is
"short on money, maintenance and weapons, it's short on sailors. … "Our men and women in uniform and their families are the foundation of America's military readiness. In a survey last year of 1000 officers and enlisted personnel more than half said they were dissatisfied and intended to leave the service when their current term of enlistment was up. I don't care what is said in a political campaign. These are signs of a military in decline and we must do something about it." Dick Cheney and I have a message for those in uniform …help is on the way. . We are going to restore morale in the US military and treat American soldiers, sailors and marines with the respect they have earned. America's soldiers must have confidence that if asked to serve and sacrifice the cause will be worthy and our support for them total."
This is about the closest any candidate has come to dealing directly with one of the 800 pound gorillas I mentioned recently that is being ignored by the current presidential debate - the bombing of Yugoslavia. It is becoming increasingly obvious that the 79 days of bombing was a mission in which members of the Armed forces were asked to serve a mission in which they could not have confidence that the cause was worthy. It was not a worthy cause. They were lied to in an effort to convince them that the bombs they were dropping on hospitals, schools, TV stations, and factories were somehow "humanitarian" bombs and therefore it didn't make any difference how many people they killed.
To their credit, a much under reported phenomenon of the War with Yugoslavia was the number of bombs the American pilots dropped into the sea, rather than on civilians in Belgrade and other cities and towns.
George W. also mentioned the shortage of cruise missiles in the current American arsenal. And why are we short on cruise missiles? Because we used up most on them in the 79 days of bombing Yugoslavian schools, hospitals, TV stations, factories and even cemeteries. The Yugoslavian army returned home totally intact, in spite of false reports that the bombing from 13,000 feet on the intelligence provided by the KLA, a terrorist organization, that 10,000 or one quarter of the Yugoslavian soldiers were killed. According to Milosevic, the total number of military dead in Kosovo was 476, not 10,000, and almost 300 of those were killed in ground battles with the KLA, not by bombs.
I don't expect the situation with the military to become a major issue in this campaign. And the reason that it won't is because of the kind of false reporting we've witnessed in the last two days when both Bush and Gore spoke on the subject. George W. Bush will not be reported and the huge holes in Al Gore's statements about military preparedness will not be pointed out.
However, at some point, what should be truly sobering to the American people is the fact that Clinton/Gore attacked a nation the size of Kentucky, which contains 10 million people, with the might of our super-power status and advanced technology and the backing of the 750 million people in the NATO Alliance nations - and we lost. The bombing was begun because Milosevic would not agree to NATO having full authority over the entire nation of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. He bombed them with cruise missiles and bombs day and night for 79 days - and never achieved the objective - forcing Milosevic to sign the Rambouillet agreement allowing NATO the right to roam at will - at the expense of the Yugoslav government.
Somebody better start getting interested in our military preparedness, especially those small, rogue nations and terrorist groups, which Bush talked about. Under Clinton/Gore we not only maintained the high taxes designed to pay for wars, but increased them, while simultaneously cutting military spending to and beyond the bone and increasing the number of deployments. That leader appears to be George W. Bush who said in Milwaukee:
"As commander in chief I will give our military a clear sense of mission. America will be involved in the world but that doesn't' mean our military is the answer to every difficult foreign policy situation. It does not mean our military is a substitute for clear strategy. A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam. When American uses force in the world the cause must be just, the goal must be clear and the victory must be over whelming."I will order an immediate review of our overseas commitments in dozens of countries. I will keep our pledges to defend our friends against aggression but I will replace uncertain missions will well-defined objectives. And I understand this: Nothing could be better for morale than clarity and focus of the Commander in Chief. Should I be fortunate to earn this high office the mission of the military will be to fight and win wars and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place.
"We must be prepared for the challenges of the future. Using this window of opportunity to create the military of the future. We won't just spend more. We will spend it wisely. Our forces in the next century must be more agile, harder to find, easier to move, readily deployable, and lethal in action. The old war is over but our defense policy is trapped in cold war thinking. I propose a new policy. On Nuclear weapons, future threats will come not from a super power conflict but from rogue nations and terrorists. Even though the evil empire has passed, evil remains. I intend to deploy a missile defense system at the earliest possible date." …
"Now is the time not to defend outdated treaties but to defend the American people.
"We should not keep that which our planners say we do not need. America must seize the opportunity to build a safer world both to defend against threats and to reduce nuclear tension. I will end the confusion and chaos in handling top-secret nuclear information and other vital secrets. My administration will make our national labs secure again, our vital information secure and our nuclear secrets will be secret again. …
"The choices we make now in the quiet days of peace will determine future battles won or lost, young lives lost or squandered. Our opportunity is here to renew America's purpose for a new generation to extend America's peaceful influence across the world and across the years."
While that may sound boring to those who have never been through a war in which our very national existence was at stake, to those who remember the notion of once again having a president who thinks it's time to defend the American people, rather than every drug cartel in the world, is a refreshing thought.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com
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