Obama announced this morning on Meet the Press that his choice to run Veterans Affairs is Gen. Eric Shinseki. The official announcement will be made tomorrow, on Pearl Harbor Day.
I think this is a great choice. Gen. Shinseki, you may recall, was the lone voice among the Chiefs of Staff who stated publicly that the amount of troops being sent into Iraq was completely inadequate to do the job at hand. His reward for being honest and putting troops before politics was to be discredited by Rumsfeld, et al, and to be cut of out decision-making until his scheduled retirement in the summer of 2003. One example: none of the top civilians in the Pentagon showed up for his retirement party.
We all know that Veterans Affairs has been woefully funded and managed over the years. That's just such a crime, and I view it as a positive thing to have someone willing to speak truth to the Powers That Be to this job. Everything I've read about him suggests that he's an able administrator who takes the men and women in uniform seriously. I'm pretty hopeful that he'll be a great head for Veterans Affairs.
_________________ Hope is the new black.
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