Posted on 09/22/2010 6:03:14 AM PDT by SonOfDarkSkies
President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.
...
According to Woodward's meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.
"This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan," Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. "Everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It's in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room."
Obama rejected the military's request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. "I'm not doing 10 years," he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. "I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars."
Woodward's book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We'll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sounds like all the Bush-bashers and Paulestinians on FR should have a new hero in OBama when this book comes out.
How many troops did Woodward kill by holding information in the book for his own financial gain?
He is the most pathetic SOB to ever hold public office!
"... At McConnell's top-secret briefing for Obama, the intelligence chief told the president-elect that Pakistan is a dishonest partner, unwilling or unable to stop elements of the Pakistani intelligence service from giving clandestine aid, weapons and money to the Afghan Taliban, Woodward writes."
I see a mission for a few CIA snipers then. Do not talk, KILL these Taliban supporters! Go after the money men and give them a dose of lead poisoning!
Speechless.
The fantasy world Obama lives in continues to damage America and make the real world more dangerous. Woodward is a bona fide liberal whose book will have to be taken seriously.
We should be looking for the exit door from Afghanistan. This is more than we are able to handle at this moment in time.
It’s like nation building in North America circa 1491.
This is not a nation like Japan, Germany, or Iraq where you can organise a nation based on modern standards with people who can read, write and have some education.
Afghanistan is no way close to being even literate. It is a loosely held group of tribes constantly fighting and negotiating with one another.
What book? According to CNN, the book doesn’t exist!
Just kidding...it is nowhere to be found on their website, and, Woodward is a lib!
“In a dramatic scene at the White House on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009, Obama summoned the national security team to outline his decision and distribute his six-page terms sheet. He went around the room, one by one, asking each participant whether he or she had any objections - to “say so now,” Woodward reports.
The document - a copy of which is reprinted in the book - took the unusual step of stating, along with the strategy’s objectives, what the military was not supposed to do. The president went into detail, according to Woodward, to make sure that the military wouldn’t attempt to expand the mission.
After Obama informed the military of his decision, Woodward writes, the Pentagon kept trying to reopen the decision, peppering the White House with new questions. Obama, in exasperation, reacted by asking, “Why do we keep having these meetings?”
Obama: ‘WHY DO WE HAVE TO KEEP HAVING THESE MEETINGS? I have a golf game and a vacation to get to.’ (eye roll)
He’s being honest.
The message will go out World-wide that Obama has no heart for fighting in Afghanistan.
He certainly isn't doing everything to prevent another one. Giving CIA interrogation data to al-Qaeda isn't exactly protecting this country.
Obama should read the Constitution. And his oath of office.
Really? His job is not to prevent terrorist attacks? I guess we’re on our own.
IMHO, 25 to life sounds more appropriate.
if true (which I only say because, face it, it’s Woodward), these should be the final two nails in Barry’s political coffin.
- he tried to override his own generals and formulated Afghan war strategy based on pleasing internal constituents in the Democrat Party, not for any sound national security reasons.
- he says that we can “absorb” another terrorist attack (which is clearly what he intends to do should there be one)
Repeat threads are the norm for FR, but you didn’t even pretend to do a search.
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