Political Quotes

“I have just returned with the gentleman from Mississippi from a superb and very moving week-long trip through England, Italy, and the beaches of Normandy, and I had occasion on that trip to speak to four Air Force four-star generals, four Army four-star generals, three retired four-star generals and another three-star active duty general, three Navy admirals and finally the four-star Commandant of the Marine Corps. They all want the language that is in the bill to stay. This issue has become severely politicized. When people say the Defense Department supports the language being offered by the gentlewoman from California, they are talking about civilians at the Defense Department. The uniformed personnel, particularly the individual service chiefs, do not want hundreds of people who stuck a dirty needle in their arm against the laws of the State where they were serving, the country's national laws, and the Universal Code of Military Justice, to be jerked off an airplane, a helicopter, a ship, a sub or any armored fighting vehicle, or any gunnery range in this country, and then kick out a healthy young man or woman who is combat trainable and worldwide assignable, and replace them with this individual who has broken the law. This to me is absolutely insane, and that is the way some of the generals expressed it to me, that political correctness in this case has gone crazy.”