Free Republic

In a new memoir, former US defense secretary Robert Gates delivered bruising opinions about President Barack Obama’s leadership in the Afghanistan war. Gates said that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.” In what the Washington Post called “one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat,” Gates observed that Obama was very pessimisic regarding his own strategy in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not...

Speaking at a National Guard Association Conference in September 2008, Joe Biden praised Defense Secretary Robert Gates, exclaiming “Thank God Gates in in charge now!” Flash forward six years later and Gates has not returned the favor. Gates wrote a new memoir, which details his time during office, revealing can’t miss tidbits and making digs at important government officials, most notably taking a jab at Vice President Biden.

The White House, in damage control after a blistering memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates went public, insisted that a full slate of events between President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden was not meant to prop up Biden. In a rare move, the White House opened up the weekly lunch between Obama and Biden to photographers Wednesday, prompting speculation that the administration was trying to gloss over a brutal 24 hours for Obama’s number two. “You can decide for yourself what you want to believe,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday, calling the timing of the...

In his new book, which has nearly 600 pages of text, Gates takes the reader inside the war-room deliberations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and delivers unsentimental assessments of each man’s temperament, intellect and management style. “It is difficult to imagine two more different men,” Gates writes. Gates left Washington in 2011 with a reputation as a steady, sober-minded member of the foreign policy establishment, who had served eight presidents and was admired equally by Republicans and Democrats. The next time Gates visits the capital, his reception may not be quite so warm. “Duty” is his second...

Former White House officials on Wednesday rushed to defend President Obama against scathing criticism from former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. In his new memoir, Gates wrote the president did not believe in his own strategy in Afghanistan, and that for him, it was “all about getting out.” Former White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley said Gates shouldn’t have released his memoir while the war in Afghanistan is still being fought. “It’s one thing as historians look back on an administration, but in the middle of it, when you’re pursuing a war at the same time, and one that...

All too often during my 4½ years as secretary of defense, when I found myself sitting yet again at that witness table at yet another congressional hearing, I was tempted to stand up, slam the briefing book shut and quit on the spot. The exit lines were on the tip of my tongue: I may be the secretary of defense, but I am also an American citizen, and there is no son of a bitch in the world who can talk to me like that. I quit. Find somebody else. It was, I am confident, a fantasy widely shared throughout...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Is it any surprise that Barack Obama -- see, this is my point, in a nutshell, this is it, this is it. Is it any surprise that Barack Obama and his gang don't like the military? Is it any surprise that everything they do is a political calculation? No. None of this ought to be a surprise to anyone. The real question is -- and I don't know Robert Gates -- you know, this is becoming a trend. You got journalists who are covering campaigns who do not report things that could have impact on the outcome....

"I may be the secretary of defense, but I am also an American citizen,  and there is no son-of-a-bitch in the world who can talk to me like that." Turns out that (genuinely bipartisan) former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates -the only high level official to stay-on from the Bush to Obama administrations, and who worked in some capacity for every US president since Richard Nixon- 'almost quit' in a 2009 Afghanistan strategy meeting, after being treated like crap by a President who he felt had zero grasp of "the uncertainties and unpredictability of war.' " This -among other...

WASHINGTON—Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates compiled a pointed critique of President Barack Obama's oversight of the Afghanistan war in a new memoir that exposes strains within the administration over a vital period for U.S. military strategy. Mr. Gates writes that the president lost faith in the very war strategy he approved, wanted most to find a way out of combat, soured on his handpicked commander and tried to micromanage Pentagon policy, with White House aides facing off against four-star generals.

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...

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has harsh words for Vice President Joe Biden’s foreign policy judgement in his soon-to-be-released memoir. According to the New York Times, which obtained an early copy of the memoir, Gates calls Biden “a man of integrity,” but questions his record. “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” Gates writes, according to the Times. Gates, the only high-level holdover from the Bush administration to the President Barack Obama’s Cabinet, reveals he nearly quit his post in September 2009 while Obama reviewed...

From the 60 Minutes interview: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tells Katie Couric that the mission was one of the most courageous decisions he's ever seen a president make. He calls it a "gutsy call."This 2 minute video is disgusting in its sycophancy. I've never forgiven Gates. There was no bigger Obama suck-up than Gates. Now he is an Obama critic? Give me a break.

Gates writes about Obama with an ambivalence that he does not resolve, praising him as “a man of personal integrity” even as he faults his leadership. Though the book simmers with disappointment in Obama, it reflects outright contempt for Vice President Biden and many of Obama’s top aides. Biden is accused of “poisoning the well” against the military leadership. Thomas Donilon, initially Obama’s deputy national security adviser, and then-Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the White House coordinator for the wars, are described as regularly engaged in “aggressive, suspicious, and sometimes condescending and insulting questioning of our military leaders.” During that...