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White House doesn’t dispute my report on skipped meetings--Marc A. Thiessen
Washington Post ^ | 09/11/2012 | Marc A. Thiessen

Posted on 09/11/2012 10:46:16 AM PDT by Ooh-Ah

The Politico headline reporting on the Obama administration’s reaction to my column yesterday exposing the fact that President Obama has skipped more than half of his daily intelligence meetings since taking office reads “White House disputes report on intel briefs.” For its part, CNN reports that “The president's spokesman disputed a Washington Post item that suggested the commander-in-chief has not attended the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB)  "more than half the time." 

No, he didn’t.  In fact, no one in the Obama administration has “disputed” my report on the president’s record on attending his daily intelligence meeting.  No administration official has said that the numbers I reported are wrong or that the president does in fact attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis. 

What the administration did say is that, while I might be right, it doesn’t matter.  Here’s National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor in Politico:

“The President is among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet. He receives and reads his [Presidential Daily Brief] every day, and most days when he’s at the White House receives a briefing in person.”

Translation: Obama is so smart and so sophisticated that he does not need a briefer. ...

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: emptychair; emptysuit; nationalsecurity; obama; obamaforeignpolicy; obamascandals; thiessen

1 posted on 09/11/2012 10:46:26 AM PDT by Ooh-Ah
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To: Ooh-Ah
Also see:

Why is Obama skipping more than half of his daily intelligence meetings?

2 posted on 09/11/2012 10:54:48 AM PDT by Ooh-Ah
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To: Ooh-Ah

“Translation: Obama is so smart and so sophisticated that he does not need a briefer. ...”

Poor li’l’ ol’ Hussein.

Can’t be right for being wrong.... said he wasn’t going to be dragged into a boxer vs. brief question.

/s

FU Hussein, as always!


3 posted on 09/11/2012 10:58:24 AM PDT by treetopsandroofs (Had FDR been GOP, there would have been no World Wars, just "The Great War" and "Roosevelt's Wars".)
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To: Ooh-Ah

You can’t collapse a country if your hands are on the steering wheel. Obama’s disengagement is part of his strategy to allow the house of cards to fall.


4 posted on 09/11/2012 11:15:40 AM PDT by GeorgeWashingtonsGhost
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To: All
...GAI analysis of President Obama’s calendar found that the president has spent just 412 hours in economic meetings of any kind throughout his presidency versus the over 600 hours he’s spent golfing.


http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/10/Firestorm-Obama-Misses-Over-Half-His-Intelligence-Briefings-WH-Calls-Report-Hilarious



White House Press Secretary Jay Carney calls a new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report finding that President Obama has missed over half of his daily intelligence briefings “hilarious.” 

“It’s revealing that Mr. Carney did not dispute the Government Accountability Institute’s actual numbers,” said Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer in an interview with Breitbart News. “That’s probably because our findings are drawn directly from the White House’s own calendar.”  

The study found the following:

The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent.

During a White House press briefing today, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney blasted the Government Accountability Institute’s findings as being “hilarious” and said:

The President of the United States gets the presidential daily briefing every day. He always reads it, every day, because he’s a voracious consumer of all of his briefing material.

Likewise, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor fired back the following response to Politico via email:

“The President is among the most sophisticated consumers of intelligence on the planet,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor wrote in an e-mail. “He receives and reads his [Presidential Daily Brief] every day, and most days when he’s at the White House receives a briefing in person. When necessary he probes the arguments, requests more information or seeks alternate analysis. Sometimes that’s via a written assessment and other times it’s in person.”

Carney also used the report’s findings to take a swipe at former President George W. Bush:

“I believe if you compare our foreign policy record with the one … that proceeded this one, we’re comfortable with that comparison,” he said at the White House’s daily press briefing. “This president is very much steeped in the details of national security issues.”

This isn’t the first time a Government Accountability Institute study has caused controversy. In July, a GAI analysis of President Obama’s calendar found that the president has spent just 412 hours in economic meetings of any kind throughout his presidency versus the over 600 hours he’s spent golfing.

"The numbers are the numbers," says Peter Schweizer. "We just investigate the facts and report them. Citizens will interpret what they mean for themselves." 

5 posted on 09/11/2012 11:28:16 AM PDT by Ooh-Ah
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To: Ooh-Ah
In July, a GAI analysis of President Obama’s calendar found that the president has spent just 412 hours in economic meetings of any kind throughout his presidency versus the over 600 hours he’s spent golfing.

There is so much data available for TV ADS if the GOP would only use it
6 posted on 09/11/2012 11:54:44 AM PDT by uncbob
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To: Ooh-Ah; Revolting cat!; Slings and Arrows; JoeProBono
exposing the fact that President Obama has skipped more than half of his daily intelligence meetings since taking office

THAT'S GONNA LEAVE A MARK

7 posted on 09/11/2012 12:30:03 PM PDT by a fool in paradise (Obama likes to claim credit for getting Osama. Why hasn't he tried Khalid Sheikh Mohammed yet?)
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