Retired Army Major Gen. Bob Scales says he was emotionally overcome at what he called the
hypocrisy of President Barack Obama's using a wounded Army veteran in his State of the Union speech.
Appearing Wednesday on
Fox News Channel's "On the Record with Greta Van Susteren," Scales, who is a military analyst for Fox News, said the very branch of service to which Sgt. First Class Cory Remsburg belongs is breaking down institutionally.
Remsburg sat beside first lady Michelle Obama during the president's speech. He served 10 tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in 10 years before suffering severe brain injuries, Scales noted.
"What does that say about the overcommitment of our Army?" he asked.
Scales says the Army always gets the short end of the stick compared to the other military branches, and he has seen it "break" four times in his life: after Korea, after Vietnam, during the 1990s, and today.
Eighty-five percent of Army brigades are not combat-ready, and much of the Army's equipment is decades old. Its machine gun was designed in 1919.
"We have weapons in the Army that were used by soldiers' grandfathers," Scales said.
"My fear is, if something isn't done to reverse this slide in readiness and our advantage in technology, we're going to be producing more Cory Remsbergs in the years ahead."
Earlier on Fox New Channel,
the co-hosts of "The Five" praised Obama for telling Remsberg's story, but Greg Gutfeld noted that placing him at the end of the speech may have been an effort to avoid scrutiny of Obama's message.
"Everyone walks away thinking about this amazing hero and not how lame the president's speech was," Gutfeld said. "It was really moving at the end, but I felt like I was being used."
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