Truman National Security Project

Today, Truman Project Vice President Michael Breen was joined by Delaware Attorney General and Iraq War Army Veteran Beau Biden, former Congressman and U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of India Tim Roemer and former Asst. Sec. of Defense Doug Wilson, on a press call to discuss how Romney’s policies as Governor and his recent endorsement of the Ryan Budget show his fundamental misunderstanding of what it takes to care for our America’s troops and keep America safe.

Below are some key excerpts from the call and here is a recording: http://bit.ly/RnoBqB

Doug Wilson, former Asst. Secretary for the Pentagon’s Public Affairs and Truman Project Senior Adviser:

“For the first time in my lifetime a Democrat polls higher than a Republican in every political poll to date on the question who would you prefer as Commander in Chief? And voters choose Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a sizeable margin and I think there are very solid reasons for this. On defense and national security what we are hearing out of Romney Ryan is….all sound bites and theory with no grounding in reality and nothing substantive to back it up. There are stark differences in the selection and on national security those differences include the following: Romney-Ryan demonstrate a serious lack of understanding of the relationship of spending to strategy when it comes to national security. There is a disconnect that they have between the national security realities our military must face and those they would have them face. They have replaced strategy with rhetoric not based in reality and they pay lip service to veterans which can be contrasted to what the Obama administration has done and continues to be doing for our military and their families.”

Mike Breen, Truman Project Vice President:  

“The bottom line is that neither Romney nor Ryan has foreign policy or national security experience. When challenged on that point recently Paul Ryan said he voted to send men to war and that meant he had national security experience. As a veteran who served in those wars I find his response as flippant as it is inadequate, but in the absence of experience we need to look to the strategic judgments and values that these men have demonstrated and the plans they have made for the nation as part of their campaign. Unfortunately, I find these judgments and values lacking. They have surrounded themselves with advisors from the Bush administration, a team that squandered early victories in Afghanistan, that launched the Iraq war, that didn’t pay for those wars, that failed to act to prevent a nuclear Iran…the list goes on. It is telling that Condoleezza Rice was unable to come up with a failure of the Obama administration’s foreign policy over the last four years, that is not a challenge that presents anyone evaluating the Bush presidency with any honesty at all.”

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