The spin begins with a furious assault of stupidity:

With that indelible image of Saddam's toppling statue forever banishing the doubts of the armchair generals, and with the amazing achievements of the United States armed forces coming into sharper relief, it's time for all honest observers - and especially conservatives - to confront a simple fact:

The remarkable feats in Iraq are being performed by Bill Clinton's military.

I guess that if we are to take this line of reasoning, the recession we are mired in is the "Clinton Recession". It did start before he was out of office.

This should be obvious to anyone not blinded by ideology or partisanship. We've been told repeatedly how much more lethal and accurate our forces are in 2003 than they were in 1991 - so much so that we needed only 250,000 troops to drive to Baghdad and change the regime, as opposed to the 500,000 we sent merely to oust Saddam from Kuwait in Gulf War I. Something like 90 percent of the bombs and missiles we use are "precision guided" today, versus roughly 10 percent back in 1991. The catalogue of how today's military is smarter, faster and better than it was back during Desert Storm is a credit to U.S. ingenuity and a source of national pride.

Hmm. Let's see. Between 1992 and 2003, the person who was president for the bulk of that time was... Bill Clinton. It's true that President Bush has been throwing money at the Pentagon since Sept. 11, but defense planners will tell you that none of the impressive leaps in our military capability have taken place suddenly in the last 18 months.

No they could not. We waited to go into Afghanistan because we weren't ready and we waited to go into Iraq because we weren't ready. We had the weapons mostly because the Republican House ensured that we would have proper weapons if they were needed. Why did we not use the proper weapons in Somalia?

No, much as it must incense Rush Limbaugh and Tom DeLay, we are liberating Iraq with Bill Clinton's military. The same Bill Clinton, of course, who, as conservative myth has it, "gutted" and "hollowed out" our fighting forces - that is, when he wasn't busy shredding the moral fabric of the country, his first priority.

What should we make of this fact?

The main truth it underscores is how divorced the defense debate is from real life. The myth that Democrats are "weak on defense" and the GOP is "strong" is one that Democratic strategists have struggled with for years.

As far as I know Rush has never been elected to any office, but that's beside the fact. I was in the military when both Bush and Clinton were in office. Clintons first act to bolster the military was to push for ending the gay-ban. He folded because the military establishment fought him as they did on every other issue. If you consider "Don't ask, don't tell" a victory for Clinton with regards to the military, you are delusional. As for the Dems being weak on defense, two words: Jimmy Carter.

The reality is that Bill Clinton's defense budgets roughly tracked the blueprint left by then-defense secretary Dick Cheney in 1992. Clinton insisted the Pentagon maintain a Cold War budget even without a Cold War to protect his party's right flank. For the same reason, Al Gore called for bigger defense budgets during the 2000 campaign than did George W. Bush - a fact that almost no one recalls. Gore needed to "prove" his "toughness" on defense with dollars. Bush didn't have to - as a Republican, he was simply more trusted on the issue.

The difference between Gore/Clinton and Bush is that Gore/Clinton didn't trust the military as Bush does. The military knows what it needs to procure and Bush has given them the authority to get it.

The problem that Rumsfeld ran into was that the military was so used to doing as they wished and not listening to a thing Clinton or Cohen said, that to finally have a man in charge who said no to their plans
caused some friction.

That reform agenda is for another day - for now, it's time to celebrate the extraordinary courage and accomplishments of our troops. To be sure, the risks and dangers they face in Iraq aren't over - and America's responsibility to help Iraqis build their own future has only begun.

Still, this milestone is indisputably historic.



The obligatory support the troops, blah, blah, blah...

Yes, Tommy Franks and Donald Rumsfeld and their teams deserve enormous credit, and President Bush's steely resolve may give even Jacques Chirac a secret shiver of apres-war doubt.

But all the same, I hope all honest Americans - and I know that includes you, Rush and Tom - join me in toasting the unrivaled capabilities of the military that Bill Clinton handed off to his successor.

The only thing Clinton handed off was a legacy of scandal, abuse of power, a lawsuit against one of the very companies that allowed him to enjoy a great economy, and Osama bin-Laden still at large.