Two Sheds

During the 2000 campaign, candidate chimpy lamented the state of the military under Clinton/Gore during his speech accepting the Repub nomination:

"if called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report ..., 'Not ready for duty, sir.'"

This story from CNN shows that the criticism was a canard:

Bush was referring to a classified U.S. Army evaluation first reported on by the Washington Post that found that two divisions were considered to need additional manpower, equipment or training before being able to fight in a major regional war.

But the Pentagon said the rating did not reflect the combat-readiness of the divisions, but the fact that they were already deployed on peacekeeping missions in the Balkans. Therefore, the divisions could not be counted in the "first-to-deploy" units the Pentagon might send to fight two major wars simultaneously. Any division with units away from home is required by Army regulations to be listed as not combat-ready.

Bush's phony denunciation provides an interesting context for a report this week from General Peter Pace's office:

Strained by the demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is a significant risk that the U.S. military won't be able to quickly and fully respond to yet another crisis, according to a new report to Congress.

The assessment, done by the nation's top military officer, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, represents a worsening from a year ago, when that risk was rated as moderate.

Does anything Bush says ever come back to haunt him, or does the "liberal media" regard his blatant hypocrisy as one of his charming features?