Why won't White House support the troops?
[Phillip Carter,
Saturday December 29, 2007 at 2:16pm ]
At the 11th hour, the White House indicated that it would veto this year's National Defense Authorization Act because of a provision that would potentially expose the Iraqi government to legal liability in U.S. courts. The move caught everyone by surprise, because until yesterday, the administration had signaled that it would sign the massive defense policy bill. (Note: this is not an appropriations bill; it's the annual policy bill that authorizes military end strength and sets military policy, among other things.) Now, the White House says, it can't sign the bill. What gives?. . . The veto was an embarrassment for administration officials, who struggled on Friday to explain why they had not acted earlier to object to the provision, Section 1083 of a 1,300-page, $696 billion military authorization bill. It would expand the ability of Americans to seek financial compensation from countries that supported or sponsored terrorist acts, including Libya, Iran and Iraq under Saddam Hussein.Right... So what was the result of this last-minute turnabout?
It was unclear how the provision had been overlooked by White House lawyers. A senior administration official told reporters in a hastily arranged conference call that the bill’s consequences for Iraq came into “acute focus” only a week to 10 days ago — after Iraqi officials complained to the American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker. The White House said President Bush had recently spoken with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq about the consequences of the provision.
* * *
In a “statement of disapproval,” or pocket veto that lets the bill expire on Dec. 31, Mr. Bush said that the provision could result in preliminary injunctions freezing Iraqi assets in American banks — $20 billion to $30 billion, according to a senior administration official — and even affect commercial ventures with American businesses.
He also warned that it was written to revive dormant legal claims, including a $959 million judgment won by American pilots who were prisoners of war during the Persian Gulf war in 1991. The administration had declared the new government exempt from claims dating to Mr. Hussein’s government, which the United States overthrew in 2003.
“Exposing Iraq to such significant financial burdens would weaken the close partnership between the United States and Iraq during this critical period in Iraq’s history,” Mr. Bush said in his statement.
The decision left the Bush administration scrambling to promise that it would work with Congress to quickly restore dozens of new military and veterans programs once Congress returns to work in January.I just gotta say it — this is bullsh-t on so many levels.
Those included an added pay raise for service members, which would have taken effect on Tuesday, and improvements in veterans’ health benefits, which few elected officials on either side want to be seen opposing.
Mr. Bush’s veto surprised and infuriated Democratic lawmakers and even some Republicans, who complained that the White House had failed to raise its concerns earlier.
For starters, this shows some incredibly poor staff work by the folks in the White House and OMB who are charged with managing this legislation. Not to mention the DoD General Counsel's legislative office, which shepherds the annual defense authorization act through the legislative process. And who suffers here? Our troops and their families.
Next, this stinks as the kind of political hypocrisy that makes Americans hate Washington. After months, no, years of browbeating Democrats for putting politics ahead of the troops, the President has now chosen to do the same thing. He is delaying an urgent piece of DoD legislation with many important provisions, including a pay raise for military personnel and an end strength bump for the Army and Marines. That's flat-out wrong. We are at war and our troops need this legislation. A piece of legislation, I might add, that the White House supported until just recently. And hell, just weeks ago, the White House was excoriating Pelosi and Reed for playing politics with the troops' resources. How exactly is this any different?
On a third level, this veto stinks because it reflects the White House's deeply flawed view of law and legal processes. I understand the legal issue created by this bill with respect to Iraqi assets that may be attached by plaintiffs seeking reparations for the sins of the Saddam govt. I get it. But let's look a the plaintiffs here — Iraqi expatriates and former U.S. prisoners of war, to name but a few. They're a hell of a lot more sympathetic than the current cast of theo-kleptocrats who make up the Maliki government in Iraq today. That doesn't sit well with me. Nor does the general argument that we should be scared of legal processes, and hold the entire Department of Defense hostage because we're scared about the possible outcome from a handful of cases. Do we really have that little faith in our federal courts, or in the Justice Department's ability to represent the U.S. Government's interests? C'mon... get real. None of these arguments justifies holding up the DoD authorization bill and making our troops (and their families) suffer.
This whole veto is rotten. Our country needs this bill signed into law. The White House is holding the welfare of our troops and their families hostage while it fusses over one provision it should have caught earlier, and which pales in comparison to the importance of the omnibus legislation. That's just wrong.
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frequently ..........
news item, May 1 , 2007
"Today, two retired Generals who led troops in Iraq
expressed outrage at President Bush's veto
of the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Health, and
Iraq Accountability Act. "
Retired Maj. Gen. John Batiste : " The President
vetoed our troops and the American people.
His stubborn commitment to a failed strategy in
Iraq is incomprehensible. He committed our great
military to a failed strategy in violation of
the basic principles of war. His failure to
mobilize the nation to defeat worldwide Islamic
extremism is tragic. We deserve more
from our Commander-In-Chief and his administration."
Retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton :
" This administration and the previously Republican-
controlled legislature have been the
most caustic agents against America's
Armed Forces in memory. Less than a year ago,
the Republicans imposed great hardship on the
Army and Marine Corps by their
failure to pass a necessary funding language.
This time, the President of the United States
is holding our soldiers hostage to his ego.
More than ever apparent, only the Army and
the Marine Corps are at war - alone,
without their President's support. "
Heavy stuff . Tim
Wasn't the whole point of the GOP project since back in the years of Saint Ronnie to emphasize that government was Bad? The Enemy? The real red-blooded Amurricans didn't need no stinkin' guvvamint handouts, just deregulation and an open road?
Well, gee. Make the point that government is bad and is it a surprise that when you do get in power you govern badly? I'm shocked. Shocked!
Cliff's Notes Version: I would opine that this has less to do with supporting or not supporting anyone and mre to do with the incapacity of the Bush crew to led four privates to the latrine. Lazy, partisan, greedy incapability has been the hallmark of this Administration since it's debut. IMO it was only the fortuitous coincidence of 9/11 that prevented Mr. Bush from going down in the history books as the least effective, most inert President since Franklin Pierce. Now, post-9/11, he is instead challenging Jaes Buchanan for the title of Worst Preznit Evah.
Somehow, I'm not all that thrilled by that distinction...
Gee, Phil, ya think????
One can only read this crap and hope - against hope; not to mention against seven years of experience - that some significant portion of the American public (I've lost hope that our elected Representatives will do squat to even criticize this idiot Administration) will finally wake up and see through the fog of self-serving crap the Bush regime has been serving up with regard to virtually anything relating to the military. Their whole approach has always been:
"Support the troops = Support Bush Adminstration policies"
With the occasional interjection of "support the mission" to avoid charges of too-blatant politicization.
I don't think you've gone far enough, Phil. OMB in this administration has been the gatekeeper. That's true for every White House to some extent (and why there's an actual nonprofit called "OMB Watch" to chronicle the agency's misadventures over the past two decades), but it's particularly true in this one.
For much of the Bush presidency, the man at the helm of OMB's counsel was Phillip Perry. The name won't ring a bell to most in here, but he's the son-in-law of OVP's Cheney.
So, the gatekeeper to the gatekeeper was literally married to the Cheneys (through Elizabeth Cheney Perry, formerly the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs -- no, I'm not kidding, there really was a Cheney at that post).
Perry knew all the players -- having served as Bush's "policy coordinator" during the transition in 2000 --and understood exactly how to quash legislation or regulation the administration didn't like. He later staked out a similar position within the nascent DHS.
Phil is a highly regarded administrative law attorney (frankly, the regulatory stuff bores the living poop out of me), so he knows exactly the role OMB can play killing legislation or regulation. The firm from which Perry came -- Latham &Watkins -- also is well known within DC as a major player.
If everyone wanted to point to a man who had been at DOJ, OMB and, later, DHS sitting in judgement over how policies would be hashed out by regulations or internal policing, Phil Perry probably would be in front of a lot of fingers.
Outside DoD, this administration has used OMB as a very powerful dam to stop regulations and policies big interests of the White HOuse didn't wish to see implemented. OMB doesn't do anything in this administration incompetently. They know exactly what they're doing, and why.
On a completely different subject, this is what's being discussed today by all the in-kids.
BTW: the essay's contention that "Egypt is the only nation-state in the Middle East" is wrong. Consider Iraq's neighbor to the east.
I've seen it at several other places, so I thought I'd add it here too.
"The Fighting Liberal"
>>>>>>You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.
What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.
The Founding Fathers, as flawed as they were, slaveowners and pornographers, smugglers and terrorists, understood one thing, a man's path to God needed no help from the state. Is the religion of these conservatives so fragile that they need the state to prop it up, to tell us how to pray and think? Is that what they stand for? Is that their America?
Conservatism plays on fear and thrives on lies and dishonesty. I grew up with honest, decent conservatives and those people have been replaced by the party of greed. It is one thing to want less government interference and smaller, fiscally responsible government. It is another thing entirely to be a corporate whore, selling out to the highest bidder because the CEO fattens your campaign chest. They are building an America which cannot be sustained. One based on the benefit of the few at the cost of the many. The indifferent boss who hires too few people and works them to death or until they break down sick. Cheap labor capitalism has replaced common sense. "Globalism" which is really guise for exploitation, replaced fair trade, which is nothing like fair for the trapped semi-slaves of the maquliadoras. In the Texas border towns, hundreds of these women have been used as sex slaves and then apparently killed,the FBI powerless to do anything as the criminals sit in Mexico untouched by law.
For the better part of a decade, the conservatives made liberal a dirty word. Well, it isn't. It represents the best and most noble nature of what America stands for: equitable government services, old age pensions, health care, education, fair trials and humane imprisonment. It is the heart and soul of what made American different and better than other countries. Not only an escape from oppression, but the opportunity to thrive in a land free of tradition and the repression that can bring. We offered a democracy which didn't enshrine the rich and made them feel they had an obligation to their workers.
Bush and the people around him disdain that. They think, by accident of birth and circumstance, they were meant to rule the world and those who did not agree would suffer.
Liberal does not and has not meant weak until the conservatives said it did. Was Martin Luther King weak? Bobby Kennedy? Gene McCarthy? It was the liberals who remade this country and ended legal segregation and legal sexism. Not the conservatives, who wanted to hold on to the old ways.
It's time to regain the sprit of FDR and Truman and the people around them. People who believed in the public good over private gain. It is time to stop apologizing for being a liberal and be proud to fight for your beliefs. No more shying away or being defined by other people. Liberals believe in a strong defense and punishment for crime. But not preemption and pointless jail sentences. We believe no American should be turned away from a hospital because they are too poor or lack a proper legal defense. We believe that people should make enough from one job to live on, to spend time on raising their family. We believe that individuals and not the state should dictate who gets married and why. The best way to defend marriage is to expand, not restrict it.
It was the liberals who opposed the Nazis while the conservatives were plotting to get their brown shirts or fund Hitler. It was the liberals who warned about Spain and fought there, who joined the RAF to fight the Germans, who brought democracy to Germany and Japan. Let us not forget it was the conservatives who opposed defending America until the Germans sank our ships. They would have done nothing as Britain came under Nazi control. It was they who supported Joe McCarthy and his baseless, drink fueled claims.
Without liberals, there would be no modern America, just a Nazi satellite state. Liberals weak on defense? Liberals created America's defense. The conservatives only need vets at election time.
It is time to stop looking for an accomodation with the right. They want none for us. They want to win, at any price. So, you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?
<<<<<
I edited a bit for spelling, can't help myself.
The more that everyday folk see and understand the message of this, especially the last paragraph, the better off we'll all be, IMO.
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Dave, you're being way too kind to this administration. I don't know who put the offending phrase into the Defense bill but I do know that the OMB is supposed to stay on top of this sort of thing and there are LOTS of ways it could have kept this bill from making its way to the President's desk. Heads should be rolling all over the place after this one. Particularly Cheney's son-in-law, but the Bush trait of loyalty over everything else will probably keep anybody from getting more than a sternly worded memo.
Mark Pyruz: Good points, particularly about Baghdad. I figure the Sunni's are going to have to choose between having part of Baghdad and staying alive. For all of their internal factional fighting, the Shi'ites have done a good job of clearing the Sunni's out of most of Baghdad and are in a position to finish the job.
Nice catch, Basil. Gives a warm and fuzzy to this fightin' liberal. Conservatism. Humbug. Despite what clever wordsmiths such as George Will might say, American conservatism has always been about conserving only some wonderful institutions of the past such as slavery, child labor, no vote for women, no regulation of business, etc. For some reason conservatists don't seem to care much about conserving other institutions of the past, such as freedom for all, protection of children, womens' suffrage and the dignity of workers. All of the latter are pretty venerable by now, aren't they? And then there is that pesky fiscal responsibility thing. Conservatism is a fraud.
This nation needs a Dickens and a Norris right about now. Another Lewis, J.L. or S. wouldn't hurt either. Or a Roosevelt, T. or F.
Thanks for reprinting the Fighting Liberal piece. I hadn't seen it, and it really breaks the situation down to the basics.
Also, just stumbled across an organization called Active Duty Missionary, which apparently seeks to train soldiers to evangelize fellow soldiers. Their duty as Christians in the military, it seems.
I am unable to figure out how to drop a link in here, so just put it all together and add .com on the end if you want to take a look.
und voila!
Linkie!
I might have mentioned C.S. Lewis, Publius, and since PA NCO mentioned Christianity, this bit from Matt. 11 came to mind:
the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and violent men take it by force
Good people who have morality and decency will not be "violent" in turn, but will constantly peck away, speak up, even scream and yell and overturn tables and support those who want to run government with the same morality and decency.
BTW, I mentioned it in the "Korea" thread, but I recommend seeing "Charlie Wilson's War". Nude starlets at the beginning and "fuck" throughout, but a cool commentary on "how it all started".
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Wouldn't wanna see that, I believe.
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Support Dr. Ron Paul and save this great nation.
so we're burning through butlers - big deal.
we don't want to get sued by the serfs.
MSR: Thank you for the lead on what the in-kids are reading.
Waltzing Mathilda by the Pogues.
Dave, I once worked part time in the liaison shack on the Hill so if this comes across as "inside baseball" I apologize.
While it might seem as if this just suddenly "happened," it doesn't really happen like that. There is constant communication between the relevant committees (in this case, a joint committee) that shepherds through the legislation and the White House, most especially OMB.
Earmarks are one thing, and they often could go without notice (even to the joint House/Senate committee) in the bad ol' days. But the statutory and spending provisions discussed here would have been made known to the OMB staffers throughout the process, just as they would have been debated in committee before insertion.
During the Clinton administration, OMB was really on the ball. I will pay the Bush administration the unusual compliment of saying that OMB has hyper-on-the-ball. If there's any component of the federal bureaucracy where the White House put its best minds and cultivated a high degree of talent it was for OMB.
It's the old anecdote about Rogers Hornsby (I think). A rookie pitcher threw him a hard one and Hornsby didn't bite, leaving the bat on his shoulder. The umpire called "Ball!" He threw him another. "Ball!" He tossed a third. "Ball!"
"Ump," yelled the pitcher, "I've thrown three strikes! Can't you see that!"
And the umpire said, "When you actually throw a strike, Mr. Hornsby will let you know."
This is half-remembered and, to baseball purists, probably apocryphal, but I'll apply it by metaphor here: OMB under Bush just didn't make mistakes of incompetence. They're on legislation and regulations like hawks to a wounded mouse.
I wasn't there during the confection of this legislation, but I would lay better than even money that OMB knew of the insertion, warned the White House, and the policy directors at DoD, NSC and COS had to come up with a means to crippling a portion of the statute. They did so through veto, which highlighted the offending script, and the language probably will be excised very quickly.
I still think Jello Biafra and Frank Zappa are/were two great americans. My US heroes, along with many more.
Veterans of Iraq II and Afganistan are not eligible for lifetime medical care, so this does not apply. Bush vetoed the extension of your care eligibility period from two years to five years.
Offered with no comment.
I'm curious - do you think late-term exits have anything to do with this? That is, at this point, many of the best have already made their exit for civilian jobs or other campaigns, leaving less-than-optimal folks to do the coordination?
Ray
They can't even consistently fake support for serving troops, their dependents and veterans.
Al
Which, to my mind, is even less excusable than incompetence. An administration which has not bothered to find the means to restrain its private corporate contractors from shooting Iraqis, which seems to find no contradiction in alowing one ally to bomb the soverign territory of another "ally it is currently occupying, which seems to find no reason to scurry about and dig up the truth abot everything from WMDs to missing weapons to the scads of cash gone missing in the Bremer year... yet finds the free flow of Iraqi government cash so compelling that it needs to veto an entire appropriations bill to save their ever-so-grateful Shiite clients the embarassment of having their checkbooks leaned on by former POWs and ex-Saddamized ndividuals?
Well, fuck me.
I always knew that if Mr. Bush had to choose between running into a burning bank to save the cash and running into a burning orphanage to save the kiddies that it'd be flambe' de moppet, but there's a difference between knowing something and knowing something.
Gee. Guess what the outfit's priorities are? What a shock.
When it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
Would only add that we are talking about incompetence and lying when dealing with Cheney/Bush, so why believe their official version of the screwup? Love the bushwacking of the Reps in the Senate though, when will those fools ever learn, dealing with the "deciderer" is like going hunting with shotgun Dick, ya never know when your face might "accidently " get in the way of that 20 gauge.
So,"all about Iraq"? Probably not, although that might be part of it.
The NYT piece Phil mentions has this:
That disco being the former La Belle disco on Hauptsraße in Berlin-Friedenau. Given the complexity and dodgy background behind that case, not to mention that the designated fall guy is now our buddy in the great terror scam, why would anybody want to see that case reopenned in US court? Well besides the victims? Might get one of those "Clinton appointee judges" . . .
Anyway, off to the races. Guess what we're having here at the homestead for New Years Eve? Ham and blackeyes? Good guess, but no, . . . English Game Pie prepared expertly by a good friend of mine who is also an expert chef. . .
Have a great New Years and all the best for 2008!
I can accept incompetence at FEMA, OSD, CIA or any other alphabet agency overseen by perhaps the worst administration since Carter. What I would have a hard time believing is that OMB, where all the smart eggs were nested, is in any way incompetent.
I would be "excusable" for incompetence to raise its ugly head. But I have yet to see OMB prove incompetent at anything previously in this White House. It's exactly where they put the emphasis to destroy, delay or deny legislation or regulation from reaching the federal bureaucracy.
So I guess that answers your question, too, Ray. Although a lot of administration figures have left, the real scut work that's done at OMB and other places is by junior -- yet highly capable -- staffers. Some have been shuffled around, but many still remain. At OMB, they're particularly ideological. They always are.
Let me give you a very different scenario: Because it's a defense appropriations measure of great interest to Democrats (for veterans' benefits, which have been folded through Armed Services into the bill) and Republicans (for financing the war), it was going to be passed by a large margin.
It would have been very difficult for OMB to find ways of rewriting or otherwise obscuring Congressional intent through tweaking it at their level because defense spending is kind of a different animal, and obviously it had been vetted by OSD.
So there was a high level meeting coordinated by Bush's NSC and his Chief of Staff, along with domestic advisors, to determine how they could go forward with the statute as it stood.
They determined that it didn't really work, at least in regards to Iraq's unique domestic political problems. So they reached a decision they couldn't avoid -- veto. It should be interesting to see if a veto can withstand Congressional override. It might because it's the holiday recess, but they come back for some housekeeping and I get the feeling this will be at the top of both the GOP and Democratic agenda.
I'm not saying that in any way I condone the White House's decision, rather that I highly doubt that "incompetence" was the reason for it, and certainly not incompetence on the part of OMB.
In the press conference to which CPT Carter linked, there's an allusion to the fact that the offending language in the section the White House doesn't like came from the staff of Sen Lautenberg.
I've known Sen Lautenberg's staffers from the time he was last in Congress. On a matter about COIN and domestic security, I consulted with them about six months ago, so this is a staff I know quite well.
It is highly capable and not known for subterfuge. The suggestion that this was some late-minute surprise from Sen Lautenberg's office I find so unlikely as to charitably suggest the assertion is little better than a lie.
Neither the senator nor his staff pussy foot around. The amendment they scripted would have been touched upon with members of the relevant committees, on which his staffers serve, and their liaisons from the services, DoD, OMB and the White House's legislative minders.
If Sen Lautenberg takes the floor in debate, I would imagine he will let the administration have it for what I believe it a nasty and unfair smear. The four people watching on CSPAN will see quite a show.
I think DoD legal counsel knew about the amendment, as did the service liaisons and the liaisons from State and OMB. I believe that the decision to veto came after long discussions with POTUS' policy advisors and Iraqi authorities.
I have zero faith in the assertion that OMB dropped the ball. This was intentional.
You will see a whole lotta Texas and a whole lotta law school sheepskins present. Loyal to a tee, smart and committed to a fairly radical vision of federal governance.
The new director is a longtime Congressman. He knows exactly how that game is played.
Venal. Nice word, MSR. Fits this administration like a glove. And, hey, guys, in this case, I think MSR is telling it like it is. OMB is the go-to place for any president. It is always stocked with absolutely faithful, albeit very competent subalterns, who can be expected not to go off the reservation like a cabinet official might and to totally hew to the presidential line.
Nah, they didn't blow it. They knew what they were doing. And they were reflecting you-know-who's wishes. So when Phil asks, "why won't the White House support the troops," instead of using the amorphous "White House," the real question is, "why won't the PRESIDENT support the troops?"
As I said earlier, whenever Mr. Bush takes an action, the question that leaps to mind is, "cui bono?"
While I have only the greatest respect for SEN Lautenberg and his staffers (highly capable), I don't know one way or the other whether the language that was added to the statute would harm or help US-Iraqi relations. POTUS' handlers seem to think it would.
I therefore take no stand on the merits of the statute, just suggesting that in this case the administration can't be charged with the crime of "incompetence," but rather "venality," at least as this OMB is typically involved in a bill (filthy lucre). I believe -- and this is just opinion -- that they knew the language was in the statute and couldn't either derail the bill before it got through joint committee or figure out a way to paper f*ck the result when it got to the president.
So the highest of his advising partners told him to veto it. I haven't seen State issue a statement on it, but if anyone has it would be interesting to see, considering that both State and OSD would have the most compelling reasons to ask for a veto if -- and this is a big "if" -- what the White House says is true is so.
I'm only an outsider here, but having down some time in the shack in Rayburn I have a strong concerns that the administration is peddling a pretty unconvincing line about Lautenberg willy-nilly adding legislation that could affect regional and national security. That just doesn't happen with his staff.
As it stands, the assertion that the White House is "incompetent" feeds into the Democratic message about the administration (FEMA, CIA, et al) and the White House's defense that it's just sometimes clueless (blame it on the bureaucracy or Lautenberg!), not evil.
In this case, I think the White House is a little evil and the Democrats not putting the onus where it really belongs, and that's on OMB and the inner circle really screwing this pooch in the most cynical way possible.
Another thing: The veto doesn't kill the bill. It will return in either the same form after another vote or after joint amendment to excise the language the White House doesn't like.
I feel pretty defensive about the Lautenberg stuff because I know that staff and they are first rate. If I'd been elected to Congress I'd say at a press conference, "The White House, I think, is lying."
But I'm not, so I'll just keep my mouth shut.
In what I'm going to start calling "What all the Cool Kids are Reading," I have to amend that because Roger Myerson (Nobel Prize) just published a nifty essay that argues for a more mulilateral approach to military force projection, using complex mathematics to make his point.
Happy New Year!
Oh? Not familiar with the term, "the buck stops here," I see. And please belay the "CINC" business. This is pure politics.
Perhaps he meant Cretin in Charge. If so, the acronym applies.
Al
I'm not in the White House inner circle (thankfully!), but he's always seemed a distracted delegator (not a "decider") who sends mixed messages to his subordinates and only rarely seems to take a tough stand on anything of any importance, and even then one usually mentions OVP's influence.
But I can neither divine the nature of the mysterious CINC any more than I can determine whether the foreign policy point his administration is making in this case is all that relevant. Or, relevant enough to scuttle some pretty important legislation.
For those judgments, I leave it to you.
I will borrow that "Cretin-In-Charge" line if I may when talking to my radical right wing brother in law. I always wondered what Bush's hat size was.
mike
Well, Mike, the man might actually have a pretty large hat size. In addition to the obvious self-love at play in this privileged scion of the upper classes, according to some of my friends in Texas, that uniquely Texan descriptor—"All Hat and No Cattle"—applies in spades to our "CINC."
You are right of course. When I wrote that about the hat size I was thinking of the story an old friend, a 1st-generation Lithuanian-American, told me. Apparently when his father was conscripted into the Soviet Army during WW2 the only mental testing they underwent was a brass ring about the diameter of a small grapefruit. A medical orderly placed the ring on your head and if it slipped down over your ears then you were classified as a cretin and were excused from military service. All passed as his father recalled. Those that were mentally retarded but with big heads were conscripted and sent to pick and shovel brigades.
mike
At least the pick and shovel brigades beat the NKVD penal battalions used for mine field clearing (by running full bore through them), or any other ad hoc just as suicidal missions, where reasonable survivability was concerned.
Fast Eddie, you might want to watch yourself with the whole NKVD mine clearing stuff. Ever hear the old Army joke about Marine mine detectors? Works better acted out, but it had something to do with covering one's ears and walking straight forward, taking big steps. Or something like that.