Political Quotes

“I rise to pay tribute to an extraordinary officer and gentleman--my dear friend BG Patrick Finnegan. Pat Finnegan and I go back a long way. We were classmates from the class of 1971 at West Point. We went to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University together. We went to the infantry officer basic course together, the airborne school. In fact, I was Lieutenant Finnegan's platoon leader. Pat went on to serve first as an infantry officer and then as a military intelligence officer. He was so talented and so obviously marked for big things that he was selected by the Army to attend the University of Virginia Law School. There he demonstrated his great legal mind and talent by his remarkable success in the classroom. He was a member of the Law Review, and then went into the Judge Advocate General Corps. He served with distinction, never serving a Washington billet, but always with the troops in the field, overseas in Germany, but particularly with the Special Operations Command, those warriors who are the tip of the spear for our military forces. Pat returned to West Point as a full colonel to become the head of the Department of Law. There he nurtured a generation of cadets. His success was such that he was the most obvious and the best choice to become the dean of the Military Academy, and he assumed those duties. For the last several years he has led the academic department at West Point with distinction.”