Political Quotes

“I just want to talk about an issue I just heard about from two officers just today on this issue of readiness, on this issue of maybe this whole episode is creating a ``Fat Leonard'' scandal 2.0 that is like I said earlier when the Navy had some of their top officers kind of wiped out due to corruption. They lost a whole generation of senior officers with specific fleet experience, which we are still actually dealing with. What we are starting to see here--I am hearing it; I have a lot of contacts; I have my colleagues whom I have served with. We are starting to see that here. Imagine we are facing a really, really dangerous world, that we have Senate politics driving military officers--our best--I mean, are you listening to these bios? All 30, 35 years of incredible combat experience. And we are driving them out. As Senator Graham said, some are going to be timed out, eventually. A couple are hitting that already. If you get selected and you don't pin on by a certain time, you are gone. Think about how bitter you would be. But here is the other thing. Just today, I heard it, too--I am not going to name them--Navy officers who are saying: You know, I think I am done with this. I did 28 years. I did seven deployments. My family sacrificed.…”