Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki got his cabinet position because he criticized President George W. Bush during the Iraq war, conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh says.
Then-Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts loved to cite Shinseki, who was at the time the Army Chief of Staff, Limbaugh said Tuesday on Fox News Channel's
"On the Record with Greta Van Susteren." Shinseki was the first member of the military to criticize Bush after Democrats in Congress had voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq, Limbaugh said.
"Shinseki stood up and said, 'it's going to take hundreds of thousands, and we don't have a chance,'" Limbaugh said. "And the Democrats loved that, so they put him in this job, maybe as thanks, maybe as payback."
But Shinseki has no real qualifications to run Veterans Affairs, Limbaugh said.
"They're not qualified to run Obamacare. They're not qualified to run energy. They're not qualified to run the economy," he said of the administration as a whole. "They don't have anybody that knows what they're doing in anything."
The VA has always been problematic, he said, and so a "baseline of acceptance" was established. "The VA is X – it's just what it is."
But with the
current scandal of secret lists to mask long wait times for healthcare, the situation has gotten far worse, he said. "It's gone so far below the baseline that it is outraging people."
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