From the NY Times, via Sister Toldjah and Michelle Malkin:

Of all the early problems Bill Clinton faced as president, few stand out to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as more frustrating and avoidable than his rocky relationship with the military, her advisers say.

Mrs. Clinton, to use a phrase, has been practicing her salute. As a senator and now as a presidential candidate, she has cultivated relationships with generals and admirals, prepped herself on wartime needs and strategy, and traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I think eight years in the White House, traveling the world and seeing the United States military doing the nation’s business, and now her time in the Senate, has given her a significant appreciation of the military that maybe her husband didn’t have before the White House,” said Jack Keane, the retired general and former Army vice chief of staff who has become close to the senator.

Well, yes and no.  See more below.

For Mrs. Clinton, exhibiting a command of military matters is not just about learning from her husband’s experience. It could be vital to her, as a woman seeking to become a wartime commander in chief, to show the public that she is comfortable with military policy and culture — and with the weight of responsibility that accompanies life-and-death decisions.

It is also part of an effort to shed the image some voters hold of her as an antimilitary liberal, defined by her opposition to the Vietnam War and, now, by her criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war in Iraq.

A Time magazine poll in July asked adults to assess whether Mrs. Clinton would keep the military strong. Asked how much that description fit Mrs. Clinton, 33 percent said a lot, 25 percent said a little, 15 percent said not much, 18 percent said not at all and 10 percent had no answer.

Some uniformed officers, too, said that the Clintons were more associated with a ’60s culture than a military one, and that only time would tell if Mrs. Clinton’s appreciation of the military would go beyond niceties and expressions of concern.

Donald L. Kerrick, a retired general and former deputy national security adviser to President Clinton, acknowledged that some people inside and outside the military were skeptical of Mrs. Clinton’s intentions and wary that she would shift federal dollars to domestic programs like health care.

General Kerrick, who is close to Mrs. Clinton, said he believed that her appreciation of the military was genuine, but that it would take time and effort for that to come across.

I should wonder why such genuine appreciation is hard to express.  Perhaps because it isn’t.

A good read on the matter would be Buzz Patterson’s book, Dereliction of duty:

From a review:

In his bestselling tome entitled, Dereliction of Duty, Buzz Patterson (Lieutenant Colonel USAF, now retired) provides us with a bird’s eye view of the day-to-day chaotic and undisciplined Clinton presidency. Patterson, who was one of a handful of military aides in charge of the “nuclear football”, was regularly in the presence of Bill Clinton during a two-year period from May 1996 through May 1998 when he resigned from the Air Force. Patterson rightly summed up the modus operandi of the Clinton White House, stating, “As a newcomer I asked for a White House organizational chart, a wiring diagram, something that laid out the administration’s chain of command. I was told, ‘There isn’t one’. That didn’t entirely surprise me, because the Clinton White House seemed disjointed, reactive, and highly undisciplined to a career military officer. In Air Force flying parlance, we’d term this ‘all thrust, no vector’ or ‘all fluff, no stuff’

The author also acted as a direct conduit between Bill Clinton and his cabinet advisors when Clinton was traveling, which was rather often, and helped coordinate considerable military involvement on these trips. Patterson witnessed quite a bit — He cited myriad examples of Clinton’s avoidance, indecisiveness, arrogance and moral turpitude that made him unfit to lead this nation, especially in the realms of national security and the utilization of the military. Clearly, the growing threat of militant Islam, which led directly to the September 11th assaults, can be laid right at the doorstep of the Clinton presidency.

So where does Hillary fit in?

Patterson referenced his experiences with a number of White House players, but Hillary Clinton is undoubtedly the most fascinating character – portrayed by Patterson as an angry and controlling woman with a sense of entitlement, and a propensity to verbally abuse others with streams of vulgarities. Reportedly, Hillary’s outbursts even engendered fear in her husband, who “looked like a beaten puppy. He put his head down and didn’t try to fight back. He said, ‘Yes, I understand. Yes, dear, I know’…between her volleys of expletives”. However, Patterson indicated that Hillary could stop on a dime, and be completely charming if there was a public occasion at hand. Patterson also believed that the Clintons blatantly misused taxpayer monies, citing a 43 million dollar trip to Africa for various cronies, and Hillary Clinton’s multiple campaign trips to New York, “at least seventy”, which utilized Air Force aircraft at formidable manpower and cost.

Other Hillary accounts in the book: Military personnel were forbidden to wear their uniforms inside the White House West Wing - by order of Hillary Clinton; how Hillary was ”Harsh, difficult, and unpredictable” - and more about why administration officials fled from their desks and scurried into hiding places to avoid having to deal with her; How Hillary revealed her basic ignorance of the nature and parameters of the United Nations mission in Bosnia that she was helping to oversee and even one account of how military staffers were ordered to act as luggage toting porters by Hillary.

Another account: Abusing the privilege of rank, Patterson recalls that Hillary threw a fit when Chelsea forgot her back pack after a Renaissance weekend and arrived in St. Thomas with upcoming exams but without her school books. Chelsea, a senior in high school, was not responsible for her own books. The blame was assigned to the White House valets. Clueless at best, as to what shuttling the first family around involves, Hillary once demanded that Marine One return to the White House so she could retrieve her forgotten sunglasses. She used government aircraft for her junkets to New York while campaigning for senator aboard AF C-9A’s or C-20’s, which operate at $3,366 and $3,587 per hour respectively.

So her history within the military is the stuff of legend.

That might explain this famous viral picture:

Oh yes, it is real. As ST notes:

La Clinton must think the men and women in our military are as dumb as Rep. Charlie Rangel routinely makes them out to be if she honestly thinks she’ll win over a significant amount of military support. The military hasn’t forgotten the disdain for the armed services Bill and Hillary displayed while Bubba was Commander in Chief, nor will they forget that her husband dodged the draft. They also won’t forget her carefully crafted “If I knew then what I know now” position on Iraq, a position she’s taken solely for political purposes aimed at catering to the Nutroots left, in spite of her trying to soften her tone on the Iraq war a few months later.

 All told her own words and actions and frequent mood swings are the real testament to her fitness to command, and her disdain of the troops is going to be hard to overcome.

Most of the above may seem like minor abuses, a few rants, a few abuses of power.

One of the ones that draws a lot of outrage is the uniform issue.  Military people may grumble about the nit picking requirements involved in staying in regulation regarding uniforms, but in reality, it is just grumbling.  They take a lot of pride in the spit and polish that makes them shine in the formal uniforms. 

When they serve in a high profile assignment, such as Whitehouse duty, it is a badge of honor and they take extra care to be perfect in dress and manner.  Professionalism and military bearing is one of the qualifications for said duty, whether it is honor guard or staff aides.

To take away their uniforms cuts to their pride, their esprit de corps.  I can, as a veteran, think of few worse insults.

The left of course dismisses this as urban legend.  Patterson insists he was a witness to it.  I have no reason to doubt him but there is plenty of reason to believe she would like this covered up.

Read his book, and decide for yourself.

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