In terms of how the right takes this, one thing the dKos community may not realize is how much the usually military-living right has nothing but contempt for Clinton-era generals.  The assumption is that anyone who got promoted under Bill Clinton had to be a feckless, immoral, wussy, America-hater at heart.  Especially those at the very top with somewhat political roles, like the CINCs (e.g., Zinni and Clark).

You certainly see this among the unwashed masses at places like FreeRepublic.  The sentiment there seems to be that an general who was willing to serve under Clinton instead of resigning or fragging him or something must be incompetent and/or traitorous.

Among the neocons, they too came in with a real contempt.  They thought there had been a real wussification of the military under Clinton, though they do blame Colin Powell for being an early source of that attitude.  Thus, the top generals were considered hopeless -- since Clinton had to be promoting the wrong guys, the guys at the top when Bush came in were thus worse than useless.  

This also figures into Abu Gharaib.  Well before 9/11 the neocons had worried alot about this wussification and thought the military needed to be pushed to become casualty-acceptant bad-asses who were too busy insipriing fear in our enemies to listen to the hand-wringing of a bunch of JAG laywers.