And it was a whopper.

Writing in the pages of liberalism's vaunted secular bible, the Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon made the utterly absurd claim that the U.S. armed forces that made mincemeat of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces in record time was the military establishment George Bush inherited from Mr. Clinton.

We're not kidding - he really does make that claim.

President Bush, O'Hanlon gushed, "stands on the verge of winning a war with the military that Bill Clinton bequeathed him."

Although "some might wish to give the young Bush administration and its impressive secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, primary credit for the performance of American forces in Afghanistan," O'Hanlon writes, "it is still Bill Clinton's military that has actually been winning this war."

While maintaining that the U.S. armed forces are basically what they were at the end of Clinton's second White House term, O'Hanlon admits that there were problems "which put a drag on military readiness."

"There were some setbacks," he writes, noting that the "Clinton administration misused military power during its first year in office in Somalia and then in Haiti; the results were needless American deaths in the first instance and a poorly planned, aborted mission in the second."

"Morale was low, and recruitment and retention posed problems. Cuts in defense spending to help balance the federal budget went too far in some cases - until the Republican Congress stepped in and insisted on adding money for the Pentagon. And the Clinton administration and the uniformed military struggled with how to sustain numerous small missions overseas without overusing certain parts of the armed forces."

Having painted a dismal picture of a badly demoralized and wretchedly misused military establishment in deep trouble - the real military establishment Bush inherited from a predecessor who once admitted his loathing of the American military, O'Hanlon nonetheless continues to suggest that Clinton should get the credit for the military's astounding success in Afghanistan because it was the same military he bequeathed to President Bush.

The problem with O'Hanlon's analysis is that the GIs and their fellow service members in the U.S. military loathed Clinton. And no wonder - their morale was at rock bottom. Many of them were forced to rely on food stamps to feed their families. Overused military equipment was in terrible shape, with everything from trucks to aircraft being cannibalized for spare parts. Key officers and enlisted men with specialties in essential categories in short supply, such as pilots, were leaving the armed forces in droves.

In his brief months in office President Bush and his invaluable secretary of defense restored morale, arranged for badly needed pay raises, and saw to it that equipment problems were being remedied. The military they sent into Afghanistan was a military infused with a new sense of purpose, patriotism and a determination to win.

And that, Mr., O'Hanlon, is anything but the military establishment that existed when Mr. Clinton made his inglorious exit from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.