Recently, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and four-star Marine Peter Pace is incompetent. When asked about this comment, the Senate majority leader just said: “I think we should just drop it.”
Senator Reid, who has never spent one day in a military uniform, thinks that he has the credibility to insult General Peter Pace, who has four stars and is also a Vietnam vet. Reid said that he told the general to his face that he had performed poorly as an advisor on the Iraq war. This was according to an online Fox news article.
Senator Reid also said: “I believe that General Pace would not be if he had come forward to be reappointed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. It wouldn’t have happened and I’m not going to get into what I said or didn’t say. There is a long list of people including Senators (Carl) Levin and (Jack ) Reed and others who have talked about General Pace long before I did. I think we should just drop it. The fact is, he’s not going to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, for which I’m happy.”
The Senate Majority Leader also stated a few weeks ago that the Iraq war was lost, and the troop surge a failure, even though it has not yet been fully enacted.
General Pace is a United States Naval Academy Graduate. He graduated in 1967 and rose through the ranks from a Marine rifle platoon commander in Vietnam to the highest ranking American military officer in 2005. He was dubbed “perfect Pete” by fellow officers.
According to another online article, Pace’s not being nominated has nothing to do with his performance as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It instead has everything to do with what he symbolizes: American leadership while fighting a difficult war in Iraq.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Bush also knew that Pace’s reconfirmation hearings would have been turned into a congressional circus with poll-driven politicians focusing less on Pace’s performance and plans for the present and future prosecution fo the war, and more on what has gone wrong in Iraq.
Also, according to the same online article, Pace is a strong symbol of the Bush White House. So in Harry Reid’s opinion, Pace must go.
White House Spokesman Tony Snow said: ”What they (Bush and Gates) decided to do was to spare the general and also the American public the kind of spectacle that I think in some ways explains the low esteem with which people regard the entire political class in Washington, especially in Congress."
Snow also added: “I think the president has constantly stood up for General Pace, and has also made it clear that he values Pace’s forty years of service to this country.”
Fox News also learned that the decision not to reappoint Pace to a second term was based not only on Democratic objections to the chairman, but also to Republican desires to avoid a fight on Capitol hill.
Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member John Warner (R-Va.) revealed that he and fellow committee Republicans had conveyed to Defense Secretary Robert Gates that Pace would be too easy a target for Democrats to rehash past mistakes and issues regarding the Iraq war.
Senator Warner added: “I made it clear that it was the president’s decision. I had worked successfully with Pace, but I supported the secretary’s conclusion that we have to look forward and not go back over and over the issues of the past like WMD and the like.”
Indeed, the Democrats and Harry Ried’s disapproval of how the war has been run, and General Pace’s ability to advise the president are again coming under fire.
Can we question the Democratic Party’s patriotism yet?
