Cohen’s ballot ‘review’ is hollow

On Tuesday the Pentagon’s chief spinner and criminal privacy rights
violator, Ken Bacon, told the nation that his boss, Secretary of Defense
William Cohen, had “ordered” the Pentagon’s inspector general

to find
ways to improve the military absentee ballot
process.

There is no doubt that the system does need improving. It’s a shambles; furthermore, it’s a disgrace that the Pentagon can spend nearly $300 billion a year but can’t find the resources to ensure our soldiers, sailors and airmen can vote for their own commander in chief.

But I’ve got to be honest, here — Cohen’s decision leaves me cold. Like so many other “efforts” launched by Clinton administration lackeys, there is little real evidence that anything will come of it.

A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from a former Army postal officer. He basically told me that the current absentee balloting system is archaic — that we’ve been using the same system since the 19th century. Pretty pathetic for a 21st century fighting force that is billed as second-to-none in the entire world.

The testimony of that military postal vet led me to conclude that serious efforts to reform the system would not be forthcoming. If the Department of Defense leviathan is anything, it is historically slow to change.

Furthermore, Cohen is at the end of his rope; he’s as much a lame duck administrator as is his boss, Bill Clinton. So there is no time to effect the changes he called for — which may need to involve federal legislation.

Finally — and this is key — it is insulting for Cohen and the Defense Department to “suddenly” want to make such changes only after the current absentee ballot structure led to such disastrous press for the Pentagon and the Democratic Party.

Only after a series of reports in WorldNetDaily — which were eventually picked up by a few other news services — detailing the awful mess that is military balloting; only after Democratic lawyers in Florida instructed local canvassing boards on how to disqualify military ballots (not regular absentee ballots coming from Gore-leaning Americans in Israel); and after denying for days that there was even a problem does Cohen think it is “time” to deal with this “issue.”

Once again during this administration, the military has been reduced to little more than a political football — an instrument to use only in an attempt to gain higher political ground and better public relations.

This goes beyond mere irresponsibility. It borders on criminality; tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel likely did not get to exercise the most basic of all constitutional rights — the right to vote.

Meanwhile, this administration has never shied from sending our troops to foreign toilets to ensure those people can experience basic freedoms — like voting.

The term ironic doesn’t approach describing how wrong this is.

Every time I hear Al Gore and Joe Lieberman piss and moan about the “unfairness” of the Florida votes, I think of how really unfair it is to send troops abroad to live in constant danger (with no clear military goal or mandate) — and then deprive them of voting.

When I think of that sleazy Democratic lawyer who circulated that memo to all Florida canvassing boards, instructing them how to disqualify military ballots because Gore knew they’d be against him, I get nauseated. I get that way because I know that the legion of lawyers Gore has hired for such purposes combined have less military time than a Marine who just graduated basic.

When I think of how Ken Bacon and other Pentagon spokesmen lied like dogs when they told me early on there was no widespread military absentee ballot problem — only to reverse themselves later, when WND presented the evidence — I think that Inauguration Day 2001 can’t come quickly enough.

And when I hear phony compassion and fraudulent concern coming from Cohen — who did nothing about this problem during his tenure — I could spit nails.

Many groups have been unfairly targeted and vilified by the Clinton administration for eight long, tedious years — but none have been dumped on worse than our military men and women.

Cohen’s false bid to “improve” the absentee balloting system after the fact is just the latest — but hopefully the last — load of dung to come their way.