KERRY KNEW HE WAS LYING WHEN HE SAID IT:
Transcript of General DeLong on KMC Show
~5:14pm~ EST
In light of the oft-repeated assertion by John Kerry that President Bush took resources from Afghanistan in order to perform the operations in Iraq - former CentCom commander and number 2 in the War On Terror Lt. General Michael DeLong had the following to say...
KMC: General welcome to the Kevin McCullough Show
DeLong: Kevin its a pleasure to be here.
KMC: When you hear John Kerry last night, in the debate, talking about the robbing of Afghanistan to serve Iraq...I'm going to play this clip, I want you to hear this comment and then I'd like to get your reaction to it.
CLIP: (John Kerry) "The President made the judgement to divert forces from under General Tommy Franks from Afghanistan before the Congress even approved it, to begin to prepare to go to war in Iraq."
KMC: That assertion he (Kerry) made multiple times throughout the debate last night, Lt. General Michael DeLong, former number two at CentCom - was that your experience or did you have knowledge of that to be true? That the Bush Administration robbed Afghanistan to pay Iraq - so to speak?
DeLong: It's completely untrue, what happened is...The way we went to war in Afghanistan, first of all was different than the Soviets. We used Afghan forces with our ground forces on purpose so that they'd be the heroes of the war. So that they would feel good about themselves in the end, and be able to have a country united. We never had more than around 9000 soldiers there at any one time and today there is 10,000. So I can say unequivocally not one single troop, nor airplane, nor piece of equipment left Afghanistan to go to Iraq. It was a conscious decision on General Franks, the President and Sec. Rumsfelds part to insure that the war on terrorism not only stayed at its current rate but accelerated because going into Iraq, we did not know how that would make the terrorists react. So we went overboard. And the same day we went into Iraq we carried out a huge, huge operation in Afghanistan. So it (the statement by Kerry) is NOT correct.
KMC: As a former commander of those operations how do you personally feel when you hear a man who is seeking the office of Commander-In-Chief get something so basic in terms of the raw facts of the matter, that's so easily provable - so wrong?
DeLong: Well, first of all its an election year. He's running for President - he doesn't have the Presidential background to fall back on. He's picking and choosing and taking things out of context, and I feel sorry that that's the way he has to go. And if I thought those were things he really meant I'd take offense.
And for what it's worth General Franks roundly disputed Kerry on the same matter on some network coverage last night.
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