Yesterday on CNN’s The Situation Room, Paul Begala got into an exchange with Torie Clarke on the subject of former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki:

CLARKE: It is an urban legend that Rumsfeld has overruled the military leadership. Nothing could be further the truth. And, by the way, it is an insult to people like Abizaid and Casey and Franks, who have 30 and 40 years in uniform to suggest something like that. It is an insult to them. Whether you mean to or not, you are insulting them when you say they are not getting what they need when they need it for what is happening in Iraq.
BEGALA: Eric Shinseki was the Army chief of staff, the number one general in America. He testified under oath that we needed hundreds of thousand of troops. Mr. Rumsfeld and his pinhead professor Wolfowitz who worked for him public insulted him and trashed him. And it effectively really couped (ph) him. It effectively relieved him from his duty a year early.
(CROSSTALK)
CLARKE: Months before General Shinseki testified and said it will take several hundred thousand troops on the ground, months before it was publicly known that Shinseki was not coming back as the Army chief of staff. Do not propagate the myth. It’s irresponsible.
BEGALA: They named his replacement early, extraordinarily early, so as to disempower him because he told the truth.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: We’re going to do some fact checking on this and get back to both you on this, maybe tomorrow. Thanks very much. Good discussion.

Today, Blitzer settled the argument in Clarke’s favor.

Video here.