Posted on 01/07/2014 12:50:00 PM PST by Sub-Driver
January 07, 2014, 02:52 pm Gates slams Biden in new memoir
By Rebecca Shabad
Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates slams Vice President Joe Biden in a new memoir, saying Biden has been wrong on "nearly every" major foreign policy and national security issues for the past 40 years.
Gates calls Biden “a man of integrity,” but questions his judgment, writes The New York Times. The paper obtained an advance copy of the book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” which will be released next week.
“I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Gates writes in the memoir.
President Obama also doubted the success of his troop increase in Afghanistan, Gates says in the book.
At a key meeting in March, 2011, in the White House situation room, Obama told advisers he was frustrated with Gen. David Petraeus -- who was then leading the war -- and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Gates writes, according to the Times.
“As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Gates writes, according to the Times’ report. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”
In the book, Gates reveals he almost quit his post in September, 2009, after a meeting over Afghan policy. He said he was “uneasy” with the White House’s “lack of appreciation” regarding the unpredictability of the war.
“I came closer to resigning that day than at any other time in my tenure, though no one knew it.”
Gates had also served as defense secretary to former President George W. Bush.
On the Osama bin Laden raid, Gates writes that he initially opposed the operation, but eventually decided it was “one of the most courageous decisions I had ever witnessed in the White House.”
Bob Woodward of The Washington Post also received an advance copy of the memoir. Gates described Clinton in “the sort of glowing terms that might be used in a political endorsement," Woodward wrote.
“I found her smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world,” Gates writes.
Since stepping down in 2011, Gates has served as chancellor at William and Mary. He was elected to lead the Boy Scouts of America in October as its national president. He recently suffered a fall in his home, and injured his first vertebrae.
Looks like you favor canning the shotgun and getting a canon.
Kerry would be better off addressing what went wrong in Benghazi. Before he tries to solve the biggest problem in the world he should try to solve the problems in his agency.
Kerry capitulated in Iran, and his ‘peace plan’ would be a disaster for Israel.
Gates had better be careful. Biden might fire two blasts over his head!
Bob Gates praised Hillary and obama with the mildest of rebukes. They left Americans to die and they both support terrorism. Bob Gates is a man with no principles. He knows what happened in Benghazi yet is quiet.
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