Webmaster Comments 15.02.07

There were two interesting quotes in the Verbatim section of the January 2015 issue of Air Force Magazine.

Buck’s Last Blast

“I hope sometime next year a compromise can come to this floor that will end sequestration. … Remember the great sacrifice our troops are making around the world. … They take those risks, they make those sacrifices, because of you. They do it for you. For their families, for their flag. For our freedom.

And how we have repaid them? With equipment that is falling apart, By laying them off while they’re off in war zone.. By docking their pay and their medical benefits. By throwing them out of the service and onto a broken economy.

They never failed us. Not once.

So shame on us, if we’re unwilling to pay back the debt we owe them. Shame on all of us, from the White House on down.”

– Representative Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-California, Chairman of the House Armed Forces Committee, farewell address to the House, December 4, 2014.

Party Line

“I had them tear it out while I was standing there. I told the commanders, “if you get a call from the White House, you tell them to go to hell and call me.” … When a President want highly centralized control in the White house, at the degree of micromanagement that I’m describing. That’s not bureaucratic; that’s political.”

– Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, referring to his discovery of a direct telephone line from a military headquarters in Afghanistan to the White House, Associated Press dispatch, November 29, 2014.