Rep. Paul Ryan didn't mean to suggest ...
Republican Rep. Paul Ryan is
walking back his recent
claim that U.S. military leaders are liars:
“I really misspoke,” Ryan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I didn’t mean to make that kind of an impression. So, I was clumsy in how I was describing the point I was trying to make.” [...]
“What I was attempting to say is, President Obama put out his budget number for the Pentagon first, $500 billion cut, and then they began the strategy review to conform the budget to meet that number,” Ryan said. “We think it should have been the other way around.”
So, how did he so clumsily put it the first time?
We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice. We don’t think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget. I believe that the president’s budget by virtue of the fact that when he released his budget number of about $500 billion, the number was announced at the same time they announced the beginning of their strategy review of the Pentagon’s budget. So what we get from the Pentagon is more of a budget driven strategy, not a strategy driven budget.
Huh. So what Ryan really meant to say was the same thing ...
except the part where he called U.S. Generals a bunch of liars. Except of course he's still calling them
liars:
Gen. Dempsey, the military’s top officer, took sharp exception to the chairman’s comments. [...]
”My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget.”
Try again, Mr. Ryan.