Palin blasts Obama on terror threats

Sarah Palin delivered a blistering attack on President Obama’s handling of terrorist threats in her speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference Thursday.

“We are in a long-term civilizational struggle against forces of evil,” the former Alaska governor said, referring to groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

She painted the Obama administration as weak on national security, ho.ing in on a recent comment made by State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf that America cannot “kill our way” out of the war against ISIS.

“We can’t kill our way out of a war? Really? Tell that to the Nazis,” Palin said. “Oh wait, you can’t — because they’re dead, we killed them.”

{mosads}But though Palin rallied the conservative crowd with red-meat attacks on the White House, she spent much of her time on stage arguing for improvements to the way military veterans are treated.

She ticked off statistics about how many soldiers had been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan and how many had been killed. And she focused on the mental health struggles plaguing many young veterans.

“In these four days, 92 of our veterans will have taken our lives,” she said, alluding to the length of the CPAC conference. She went on to blast the government for recent revelations that the Veterans Administration healthcare system had placed many of its patients on secret waiting lists.

“This bureaucracy is killing our vets,” she said. “They wait for months, they wait for years, to get treatment at the VA.”

She called for policy that would give veterans vouchers to go to private hospitals outside of the VA system.

“And instead of illegal aliens cutting in line, being rewarded with a handout of U.S. benefits,” she said, “we demand that the vets are first in line!”

Palin also called for veterans to be able to transfer their military certifications directly to the workplace.

Unlike many of the speakers that preceded her, Palin is not building an organization to launch a presidential run. She has said would be “interested” in running, however.

“Yeah, I mean, of course, when you have a servant’s heart, when you know that there is opportunity to do all you can to put yourself forward in the name of offering service, anybody would be interested,” she told ABC News.