California Conservative

Hillary Clinton’s faux concern over body armor has been exposed. Newsmax says that Mrs. Clinton didn’t show up for the Senate Armed Service Committee meeting where one of the main subjects was body armor. Here’s some great slam quotes from the article:

• Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, for instance, testified that the Pentagon had tried to beef up body armor, but “in many cases we found [the troops] didn’t wear it because it was too heavy.”
• “We must not burden our soldiers with weight to the point that they become ineffective and susceptible to other dangers,” explained Maj. Gen. Stephen Speakes, the Army’s director of force development.
• Marine Sgt. Jared McNerney actually modeled the kind of up-armored uniform Clinton indicated she preferred. But Sgt. McNerney explained that if he was forced to carry that much weight, it could get him killed. “I’m climbing walls, I’m jumping through windows,” McNerney complained. “What I need most is mobility.” With the heavier gear, he said, “I can barely extend my arms over my head.”

It sounds to me like the people who matter most in this situation (the soldiers) have reasons why they don’t wear the “up-armored uniform Clinton indicated she preferred.” Had Mrs. Clinton done better research, she might’ve known that. By taking a cheapshot at President Bush without knowing the full story, she showed herself to be a showboat, not a serious legislator.

Mrs. Clinton’s uninformed diatribe also speaks to another problem with her. If she’s going to be commander-in-chief, which I obviously don’t want to happen, she’ll need to be better informed on her own. Without knowing this sort of thing on her own, how can she ask the third, fourth and fifth level questions of the military people that’ll be briefing her?

Can we trust someone with such a shallow understanding of military to be making life-and-death type of decisions that are expected of commanders-in-chief? If I’m a soldier, I wouldn’t want her in charge if that’s the level of her understanding.

“Sen. Clinton had a long planned day of events with her constituents in New York and wasn’t able to attend the short-notice briefing attended by the chairman and two members of the minority,” Hillary spokesman Philippe Reines told the Washington Times. “Her defense aide attended, and she’s going to continue to work hard to make sure that our men and women in uniform get the resources they need,” he explained.

Now that’s the worst cop-out I’ve heard in ages. She’s got time to take cheapshots at the commander-in-chief and to appear at a fundraiser with a subversive like Harry Belafonte, who called President Bush “the world greatest terrorist” on a visit to thuggish dictator Hugo Chavez but she doesn’t have time to get briefed on such an important issue? Not only is that a lousy cop-out but it’s also a picture of her prioritizing abilities.

UPDATE:
Michelle Malkin asks, “Where Was Hillary?”
More background here.

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRing

This entry was posted on Friday, January 13th, 2006 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Foreign Policy, Hillary, Iraq, Military. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.