Someone earlier today asked me

 where I had met service people that had been on duty at the Bill Clinton White House.

Simple. While they had been taking their vacations at Indian Lake or wherever I have taken mine at Camp Perry for the past 20 plus years. There I am alongside quite a number of active and reserve service people.

I keep my eyes and ears open and listen and am constantly chatting with people of all ranks. One year my barracks bunkmate was an active duty army colonel who was shooting at his own expense. He was an interresting man.

Mostly, though I am around an occasional junior officer or NCOs. These are the backbone of the services, especially the NCOs. These are the guys that make the services run.

For some reason the Marines seem to be the most open. I have sat and tipped beers with them and sat in on poker games and things of this sort.

Back during the second half of the Bill Clinton years I ran into a few service people that had served on White House duty and they all seemed to say the same thing. Bubba was halfway decent and Hillary was a witch.  What had been a highly sought after duty station became something to avoid like the plague.

I met one retired NCO that said he had planned on staying for 22 years as his rank permitted. After he spent a couple of months on WH duty he retired the instant he could, two years ahead of schedule.

Another now retired NCO said that he pulled every string he could and cashed in a career's worth of favors to get away from that duty. He accepted an unaccompanied tour to some far-flung remote outpost and left his family behind for a year to get out of the WH. It was THAT kind of duty.

What was a highly coveted post during the Reagan and Bush years became a hardship tour during the Clinton administration. By all I spoke with, Bill was generally halfway decent. Hillary was a world class bitch. She treated the service people there like dogs. 

What kind of true leader acts like that?

All I can say is that I am glad I was never assigned there, That's for sure.



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY