Dick Cheney’s Prediction about to Come True
Mon Apr 28, 2008 at 10:40:34 AM PDT
Dick Cheney said this on August 2, 2000:
For eight years, Clinton and Gore have extended our military commitments while depleting our military power. Rarely has so much been demanded of our armed forces, and so little given to them in return. George W. Bush and I are going to change that, too. I have seen our military at its finest, with the best equipment, the best training, and the best leadership. I'm proud of them. I have had the responsibility for their well-being. And I can promise them now, help is on the way. Soon, our men and women in uniform will once again have a commander in chief they can respect, one who understands their mission and restores their morale.
In the list of the "100 Most Ironic Comments Ever Made in Human History," Cheney’s remarks in 2000 are undoubtedly in the top half.
Fast forward nearly eight years and we get reports like this on a weekly basis:
"The once-mighty ‘King of Battle’" is a "dead branch walking," write the active-duty colonels in the five-page document obtained by National Journal. With "growing alarm," they describe "deterioration" in artillery readiness to perform its most basic missions. In training, "firing incidents (occur) during every rotation"; "crew drills are very slow, and any type of (disorder) halts operations"; and, absent instructor intervention, "most" cannon platoons would have fired in unsafe conditions, the memo says.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have drawn experienced artillery troops into other jobs--like infantry and transportation--where soldiers are badly needed, the authors write. Ninety percent of fire-support personnel have been reassigned, leaving behind fewer than 10 percent certified for the mission.
The National Journal piece from this past weekend is only one of many we’ve seen recently. Less than three weeks ago, the AP reported:
U.S. soldiers are committing suicide at record levels, young officers are abandoning their military careers, and the heavy use of forces in Iraq has made it harder for the military to fight conflicts that could arise elsewhere.
Unprecedented strains on the nation's all-volunteer military are threatening the health and readiness of the troops.
Less than a month before that, Army Vice Chief of Staff Richard Cody testified before Congress:
Given the current theater demand for Army forces, we are unable to provide a sustainable tempo of deployments for our Soldiers and Families. Soldiers, Families, support systems, and equipment are stretched and stressed by the demands of lengthy and repeated deployments, with insufficient recovery time. Equipment used repeatedly in harsh environments is wearing out more rapidly than programmed. Army support systems, designed for the pre-9/11 peacetime Army, are straining under the accumulation of stress from six years at war. Overall, our readiness is being consumed as fast as we build it.
According to the Washington Post, Cody even went so far as to say the following:
"I've never seen our lack of strategic depth be where it is today."
These are troubling times for the U.S. military. Having been so poorly led and administered by an incompetent Commander-in-Chief who has surrounded himself with hopelessly inept advisers, we now find ourselves in a situation quite the opposite of what Dick Cheney predicted in 2000. But, while most of what he said is depressingly laughable eight years later, he did utter something that holds true now more than ever:
And I can promise them now, help is on the way. Soon, our men and women in uniform will once again have a commander in chief they can respect, one who understands their mission and restores their morale.
So true, Dick. Once George W. Bush is removed from office, and once John McCain is defeated in his run for the Presidency, we’ll have exactly that. It’s just too bad that we’ve had to go through eight years and two wars to finally reach this point.
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