By JOE NEWBY VIA THE EXAMINER

While speaking at the annual CPAC conference on Friday, retired Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North honored the nation’s military and slammed the president, telling the crowd Obama “draws phony red lines with a pink crayon.”

“It’s been 13 years since I started covering, reporting, and documenting what our American heroes do,” he said. “My heroes are not people who catch passes in the end zone or set Olympic records or even those who appear on comic books or creations of television in a spandex suit and a cape. In fact, my heroes wear flak jackets and combat boots and flight suits.”

“They put themselves at risk for the benefit of others,” he added. “That’s the definition of a hero.”

These men and women, he said, deserve a better commander-in-chief.

North said the one they have now travels around the world “apologizing” for America’s greatness.

He also told the crowd Obama doesn’t understand that America is “the greatest force for good the world has ever known–has nothing to apologize for.”

He spent much of his speech slamming the Obama administration’s treatment of the military.

“The members of our armed forces and their families deserve better than to be treated like laboratory rats in some radical social experiment,” he said.

Not only are Americans suffering from a “leadership deficit disorder,” he said, but the people in Ukraine are also suffering.

“We don’t need a head of state who draws phony red lines with a pink crayon,” he said, a reference to Obama’s “red-line” statement during the Syrian crisis.

“We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized,” Obama said in August 2012.

As we reported last September, Obama later claimed he didn’t set a red line, and blamed the entire world.

“I didn’t set a red line,” he said. “The world set a red line.”

Throughout the crisis in Ukraine, Obama has been soundly criticized as weak and ineffectual.

CBS DC said that as a result, “Obama’s global power has waned from when he first took office in 2009.”

North said this needs to change: “We must show our enemies both here and abroad that we are not just the land of the free, but also the home of the brave.”

CLARK KENT @ AMERICAS FREEDOM FIGHTERS

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