Excerpt from Bob Gates book.
The ‘controlling nature’ of the Obama White House and the national security staff ‘took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level,’ Mr. Gates writes.This should put the tragedy in Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the ObamaCare debacle in a new light.
Under Mr. Obama, the national security staff was ‘filled primarily by former Hill staffers, academics and political operatives’ with little experience in managing large organizations. The national security staff became ‘increasingly operational,’ which resulted in ‘micromanagement of military matters — a combination that had proven disastrous in the past.’
If Gates is right, and from my chair it looks like he is, then the highest levels of the White House were fully aware of the issues noted. They were probably intimately aware of the situations as they developed and participated fully in the choices made.
The truth here is painfully obvious.
The White House ran the response to Benghazi. The death of an American Ambassador, former Navy SEALs and State Dept Workers can be laid at the door steps of the Commander in Chief.
It's been amateur hour in the administration, especially in foreign relations. Find one person at the first or second level that has any expertise. Hillary Clinton at State is the most obvious example -- Obama had to get his political rival out of the Senate. How much harm could she do there? Also Emanuel, Rice, Power, Then at Defense we had Gates, with a tarnished career under Reagan, plus the prima donna Petraeus who charmed his way through two bum wars.
ReplyDeleteOn Benghazi, Ambassador Stevens was a long way from the Libya capital where he was needed to help the new Libya government, and instead in far off Benghazi at a CIA compound (not State) working with CIA and Islamic radicals who had previously helped him and the US overthrow Gaddafi, to send Libyan arms through Turkey into Syria to help fighters against the government there, and Stevens got burned. People he had previously trusted turned on the US, and Stevens.
ReplyDeleteNobody in government is going to say that, although they know it. So it's a political game about Libya which overall was yet another foreign policy disaster among many others. That's another fact that nobody in Washington will admit. Libya is yesterday's news, as the Libya navy fires on oil tankers and threatens to sink them.
Uncle Adolph and the Sixth German Army at Stalingrad come to mind.
ReplyDeleteThe last supply plane went in with condoms and a note to Von Paulus who was Promoted to Field Marshall then reminded that "No German Field Marshall had been taken as a POW alive nor surrendered in the history of the Wehrmacht" Von Paulus promptly surrendered..
Hillary sent condoms to the SEALS and told the ambassador that no Ambassador of the Obama White House had ever been taken hostage.
Obama's administration is filled with Incompetent amateurs who put their phoney baloney and useless ideology ahead of reality and common sense.
they get their collective socialist asses handed to them every time.
The only enemy they seem to be able to whip constantly is the republican's and the US allies.
In the end Petraeus was betrayeous to everyone around him, a perfect democrat military man all bullshit and hot air.