Obama 'gutting military' by purging generals

[grumbler]

If we gut the constitution I want the roe.

Nobody ever wants the Wade 

In the row v wade debate, the people who favor wade are all wet.  Boat handlers FTW!

[Razgovory]

Well, one of the "purged" generals made the news.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/20/us/michael-carey-investigative-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

You have to be a really sloppy drunk to embarrass the Russians.

[Phillip V]

Check out former Defense Secretary Robert Gates new memoir.

[Siege]

Well, one of the "purged" generals made the news.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/20/us/michael-carey-investigative-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

You have to be a really sloppy drunk to embarrass the Russians.

CNN? No thanks.

[Razgovory]

Well, one of the "purged" generals made the news.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/20/us/michael-carey-investigative-report/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

You have to be a really sloppy drunk to embarrass the Russians.

CNN? No thanks.

Man they trained you well.

[Valmy]

Check out former Defense Secretary Robert Gates new memoir.

Probably do not have time.  What did he say?

[Admiral Yi]

The soundbite on CNN was that "Obama didn't believe in his own military strategy."

Which, if I'm correct in assuming refers to Afghanistan, is not a real shocker.  But still not good for Barry to have it said out loud.

[Valmy]

The soundbite on CNN was that "Obama didn't believe in his own military strategy."

Which, if I'm correct in assuming refers to Afghanistan, is not a real shocker.  But still not good for Barry to have it said out loud.

Yeah that is the sort of thing you want your biographer to discover a few years after your death.

[Siege]

A surge with time limit cannot work.
The Taliban is just waiting.

[Phillip V]

Check out former Defense Secretary Robert Gates new memoir.

Probably do not have time.  What did he say?

Robert Gates served both President Bush and President Obama as Secretary of Defense, overseeing the drawdown in Iraq and the escalation in Afghanistan. I admired his calmness and neutral team-playing. 3 years after retiring, he releases his obligatory book:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/01/07/top-10-revelations-from-robert-gatess-memoir/

Some takeaways:

1. Contempt for Congress
Mr. Gates expresses open disdain for Congress and the way lawmakers treated him when he testified at hearings. "I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country." Mr. Gates said he fantasized about storming out of hearings and quitting. "There is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that," he writes of his fantasy.

2. Contempt for Vice President Biden
Mr. Gates expresses particular dissatisfaction with Vice President Joe Biden. He describes Mr. Biden as a "man of integrity" who "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." Specifically, Mr. Gates said he opposed Mr. Biden's proposed limited strategy in Afghanistan to focus on counter-terrorism: "Whac-A-Mole hits on Taliban leaders weren't a long term strategy," he writes.

3. Suspicion of White House Control
Mr. Gates described the White House and its national security team as too controlling and says that he found himself at odds with Mr. Obama's inner circle. At one meeting in the Oval Office in 2011, Mr. Gates said he considered resigning because of the White House micromanagement and strategy. "I never confronted Obama directly over what I (as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and others) saw as his determination that the White House tightly control every aspect of national security policy and even operations," Mr. Gates writes. "His White House was by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled the roost" in the 1970s.

"The controlling nature of the Obama White House, and its determination to take credit for every good thing that happened while giving none to the career folks in the trenches who had actually done the work, offended Secretary Clinton as much as it did me."
...
"Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying."

[DontSayBanana]

Some takeaways:

1. Contempt for Congress
Mr. Gates expresses open disdain for Congress and the way lawmakers treated him when he testified at hearings. "I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country." Mr. Gates said he fantasized about storming out of hearings and quitting. "There is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that," he writes of his fantasy.

2. Contempt for Vice President Biden
Mr. Gates expresses particular dissatisfaction with Vice President Joe Biden. He describes Mr. Biden as a "man of integrity" who "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." Specifically, Mr. Gates said he opposed Mr. Biden's proposed limited strategy in Afghanistan to focus on counter-terrorism: "Whac-A-Mole hits on Taliban leaders weren't a long term strategy," he writes.

3. Suspicion of White House Control
Mr. Gates described the White House and its national security team as too controlling and says that he found himself at odds with Mr. Obama's inner circle. At one meeting in the Oval Office in 2011, Mr. Gates said he considered resigning because of the White House micromanagement and strategy. "I never confronted Obama directly over what I (as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta and others) saw as his determination that the White House tightly control every aspect of national security policy and even operations," Mr. Gates writes. "His White House was by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled the roost" in the 1970s.

"The controlling nature of the Obama White House, and its determination to take credit for every good thing that happened while giving none to the career folks in the trenches who had actually done the work, offended Secretary Clinton as much as it did me."
...
"Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. . . . The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying."

1 and 2 sound more like Gates is really a pompous ass who's too full of himself to listen to other viewpoints.  The only thing shocking about 3 is that Gates' grasp on who's in charge is more tenuous than a college freshman taking a 100-level PoliSci course in American Federal Government- intelligence is a hybrid of law enforcement and military.  Both are executive prerogatives, so of course, the White House is going to try to take control of it.  He might be onto something with the micromanagement, but he gets so wrapped up in how important he feels he should have been that it's difficult to take them seriously, coming from Gates himself.

[grumbler]

1 and 2 sound more like Gates is really a pompous ass who's too full of himself to listen to other viewpoints.  The only thing shocking about 3 is that Gates' grasp on who's in charge is more tenuous than a college freshman taking a 100-level PoliSci course in American Federal Government- intelligence is a hybrid of law enforcement and military.  Both are executive prerogatives, so of course, the White House is going to try to take control of it.  He might be onto something with the micromanagement, but he gets so wrapped up in how important he feels he should have been that it's difficult to take them seriously, coming from Gates himself.

Disagree.  I think that any sane person would reach the conclusions that gates did, even if that sane person were not an egotist.  It's not like his is the first evidence that Congressmen are incompetent assholes, or that Biden's position on policies would seem to a republican like they were consistently wrong.

What's shocking about your response to Gates in bullet number three is that you don't depend at all on what he actually says, but instead launch some weird ad hom on him that seems designed to merely allow one to ignore any truths that Gates may speak.  Gates may not understand "who's in charge" as well as you, because he lacks your experience at the highest levels of government, but there is nothing in what is quoted here that makes him sound like the college freshman you accuse him of sounding like.

[Siege]

Grumbler, you are awesome.

[Neil]

A surge with time limit cannot work.
The Taliban is just waiting.

WIthout the time limit, it's not really a surge.  It's just regular escalation.

[DontSayBanana]

Disagree.  I think that any sane person would reach the conclusions that gates did, even if that sane person were not an egotist.  It's not like his is the first evidence that Congressmen are incompetent assholes, or that Biden's position on policies would seem to a republican like they were consistently wrong.

What's shocking about your response to Gates in bullet number three is that you don't depend at all on what he actually says, but instead launch some weird ad hom on him that seems designed to merely allow one to ignore any truths that Gates may speak.  Gates may not understand "who's in charge" as well as you, because he lacks your experience at the highest levels of government, but there is nothing in what is quoted here that makes him sound like the college freshman you accuse him of sounding like.

Dude, you've got some major blinders on when it comes to military ego.  "There is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that" is bordering on narcissism at best.  You don't like the legislature exercising checks and balances on the executive?  Go find another government to bitch about.  Or did you miss that as a kid because "Schoolhouse Rock"was too newfangled for you?

And I'll grant it borders on ad hom, but what I mean to say is, unlike you and Siege, to me, his egotistical diatribes damage his credibility to the point where I'm not going to blindly accept any "truths" based solely on his word.  Politicians have lied for convenience's sake.  So have memoir authors.