Bill Clinton: “Well, first of all, I do have a unique opportunity to see them, in all kinds of settings--formal settings in my tour of…”

“Well, first of all, I do have a unique opportunity to see them, in all kinds of settings--formal settings in my tour of Korea last December; going to the launching of the U.S.S. Harry Truman. But I have been, just in the last couple of years, in the last 2 years, on 30 different occasions with our men and women in uniform, and I see them doing national security work overseas; I see them in training operations here and overseas; I see them dealing with disaster situations. I will see some of them in Central America in the next few weeks when I go down there, dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Mitch. And the overwhelming impression that you get is that they're not only superb at what they do but that they're really good people and good citizens. That kind of teamwork that is required to pull off a military mission is something that they bring to all their work in life. I remember, I talked to a command sergeant major in Korea who can still run under a 6-minute mile; he's in his late forties. And he's been in the Army 29 years, and he's retiring. I said, ``What are you going to do when you get out?'' He said, ``I'm going home to Kentucky to teach school, because I think I can do some good for those young people.'' So I see this. And I always try, when I am with our men and women in uniform, not only to get briefed in a formal way on what their mission is on a particular day but also to find out a little bit about their lives, how their families are doing, how many times that they've been deployed, how are they dealing with that. And whenever possible, I always try to take a meal with them, so that enables me to connect with a lot of them individually and get a real feel for what's going on. Mrs. Cohen. How do you feel they connect with you? What impression are you getting when they talk to you and answer your questions?”