Posted on 11/06/2007 9:49:19 AM PST by Calpernia
The ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee has called on the President to fire State Department personnel who refused to be deployed to Iraq and replace them with wounded veterans at Walter Reed and Bethesda Hospitals.
“We have a lot of wounded warriors at the [military] hospitals -- a pool of great talent,” Rep. Duncan Hunter (R.-Cal.), the last Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and now a candidate for his party’s presidential nomination in ’08, told me outside the White House last week. Hunter was going to a meeting with President Bush as well as former Sen. Bob Dole (R.-Ka.), former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, and other members of the panel recommending reforms of hospital for veterans.
An angry Hunter was responding to recent front page stories -- including one on Page One of the Washington Post November 1st -- reporting how diplomats were challenging senior State Department officials about having to serve in Baghdad. The Post reported a town hall meeting in the State Department’s main auditorium attended by hundreds of Foreign Service officers in which complalints about the safety of conditions in Iraq were discussed and one participant characterized service in Iraq as a “potential death sentence.”
The ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee has called on the President to fire State Department personnel who refused to be deployed to Iraq and replace them with wounded veterans at Walter Reed and Bethesda Hospitals.
“We have a lot of wounded warriors at the [military] hospitals -- a pool of great talent,” Rep. Duncan Hunter (R.-Cal.), the last Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and now a candidate for his party’s presidential nomination in ’08, told me outside the White House last week. Hunter was going to a meeting with President Bush as well as former Sen. Bob Dole (R.-Ka.), former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, and other members of the panel recommending reforms of hospital for veterans.
An angry Hunter was responding to recent front page stories -- including one on Page One of the Washington Post November 1st -- reporting how diplomats were challenging senior State Department officials about having to serve in Baghdad. The Post reported a town hall meeting in the State Department’s main auditorium attended by hundreds of Foreign Service officers in which complalints about the safety of conditions in Iraq were discussed and one participant characterized service in Iraq as a “potential death sentence.” Continued Sponsored Links:
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In Hunter’s words, “It’s a sad day for the State Department when you can’t get 45 voulunteers to go into Iraq -- and even into the ‘Green Zone’, which is fortified -- and the U.S. Marine Corps is 180,000 strong and all volunteers.” Among those serving in the Marines, Hunter proudly pointed out, is his son Duncan D. Hunter, now completing his third tour of duty. (The younger Hunter, who has served in Iraq, will shortly complete his latest tour in Afghanistan and return home to compete for the House seat his father is relinquishing after twenty-eight years.)
The San Diego-area congressman took particular exception to a Post report of a woman Foreign Service officer who said she returned from a tour in Basra with post-traumatic stress disorder and discovered that the State Department would not authorize medical treatment.
“I haven’t seen any facts” showing how civilian employees can acquire PTSD, Hunter said, adding that “when one only wants to serve when they have an easy assignment, it has to be resented by the thousands of Americans who have had a loved one who served in the military in Iraq.”
As he prepared to go into the Oval Office, Hunter told me he was going to hand-deliver a his letter of complaint about the State Department to the President personally and that he had also discussed the matter with David Chu, under secretary of defense for personnel.
A few hours later that day, I spoke to Hunter about his meeting with the President. Sure enough, he did hand the letter to the President and “he told me he would look into it,” the congressman from the San Diego-area told me. He also planned to bring up his own Wounded Warrior Bill, which he plans to attach to the Defense Appropriations bill, with the President’s nominee to be secretary of veterans affairs, retired Gen. James Peake.
“And if I have to go out and recruit the veterans [to replace the reluctant State Department officers], I’ll do it myself!” he promised.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1921199/posts
'Special Report' Panel on Uproar at the State Department (Duncan Hunter: Fire 'em!)
Veterans and Duncan Hunter!
Firing’s too good for em.
The Wit and Wisdom of Duncan Hunter
(AP) Referring to Giuliani, Romney and McCain, Hunter said: “The guy who has the most influence with these three gentlemen is Ted Kennedy. We need to move away from the Kennedy wing of the Republican party.” Hunter
“I don’t need consultants to give me a conservative image.” Duncan Hunter
Hunter responding to Johnny Suttons’ remarks re: Campeon/Ramos:
HUNTER: You know, that’s about the weakest statement I have ever heard and about the weakest justification for saying that a guy is unarmed. So ask him. Pin him down on this thing. Say, did you search him, did anybody search him and so if you didn’t search him, how do you know he’s unarmed. And hit him with that. And, you know, the other question I’d ask him, if that’s true, how did those 600 people die in Nuevo Laredo, most of them in drug-related murders if guns weren’t used? Do these guys choke to death on their Wheaties in the morning?
Rep. Hunter makes use of child labor
We aren’t sure whether Rep. Duncan Hunter’s grandson is going to be class president or bully bait — it could go either way.
Hunter (R-Calif.) recounted in the Sept. 27 GOP presidential debate that the child, who is also named Duncan and called “D-3” by his family, has picked up some questionable habits from his grandfather.
“He walked up to his first-grade teacher about a month ago, stuck his hand out, and said, ‘My name is Duncan Hunter … My grampa’s going to be president,’” the senior Hunter said. “And then this little 6-year-old looked his teacher right in the eye, and he said, ‘Now, can I count on your vote?’ ”
Nurse Amy Salud, one of a platoon of nurses thanking Hunter for cheering their patients, shakes his hand and says they have met before. On a previous hospital visit? asks the congressman. “No, at the Miss Philippines Pageant,” says Salud. Hunter puts on a Scrooge face. “Ah, yes,” he says, “the Miss Philippines Pageant. I didn’t win.” Salud laughs.
He hands her a House of Representatives pen. He hands another to a bedridden patient. Hunter bends over and half-whispers, “It’s a congressional pen. It writes only in red.” The patient laughs.
http://towncriernews.blogspot.com/search?q=wit+and+wisdom
I agree
Easy Huck! :)
What a great idea! I am really, really liking this guy. He must cause neoliberals and our enemies (yeah, I know) some serious worry.
I thought it was a great idea too.
Heeheeeheeeee! Brilliant! Sounds like Reagan and the air traffic controllers. Fire ‘em all!
I like the man & his ideas.
And then this little 6-year-old looked his teacher right in the eye, and he said, ‘Now, can I count on your vote?’ ”
***That little 6 year old is braver than a lot of republicans I’ve run across.
You got that right....but the kid was probably raised right.:<)
Did you vote yet?
Yes, I do too. DH is also about the only intelligent voice regarding what’s happening in Pakistan too.
Sure wish we had a Duncan-Hunter-type up here in Canada. I’d be voting for him, that’s for sure. What an honest, shoot-from-the-brain kinda guy he is!!
No stuck in this house with a staph infection. Everyone else that was able to did though.
And fire the apparatchik who screened and reccomended them tom be hired.
I know he will do it too. He is a man of integrity! Go Duncan Hunter!
“I like the man & his ideas.”
Hunter is the most commonsensical politician we’ve had in a long time, and we’re so lucky to have him.
Tough. Assign Summer patriots like this one to Iraq. Don't expect anything of them, just send them to the sand box and hope for resignations.
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