Leahy praises Shinseki choice for VA

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Senator Patrick Leahy is praising President-elect Barack Obama’s choice of retired Army General Eric Shinseki to be secretary of Veterans Affairs.

Leahy calls the 66-year-old Shinseki a straight shooter and truth talker.

Shinkski the first person of Japanese-American descent to rise to four-star general in the U.S. Army.  Shinseki was nudged out as Army chief of staff in 2003 after testifying to Congress that the U.S. needed more troops in Iraq than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld believed at the time. Shinseki was later proved correct.

Leahy says that’s the kind of leadership the VA needs after what the senator describes as years of neglect of the agency by the Bush administration.

 

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