Threats against President Obama have become so disturbing that a secret Presidential Threat Task Force has been created within the FBI to gather, track, and evaluate assassination threats that might be related to domestic or international terrorism.
The task force operates within the FBI’s National Security Branch. It consists of 20 representatives from pertinent agencies, including agents from the FBI and Secret Service and operatives from the CIA, the NSA, and the Defense Department, as well as analysts.
The disclosure appears in a new chapter to the paperback edition of my book “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,” which hits bookstores Aug. 3.
The hardcover edition reported that threats against Obama rose by as much as 400 percent compared with when President Bush was in office. Although threats fluctuate, the level continues to be at high enough levels to call for the threat task force. Many of the threats are from racists who have no connection with politics.
At the same time, the Secret Service, which let party crashers into the White House in November, has been spinelessly acceding to requests of the Obama administration officials for Secret Service protection in instances where there are no threats against them.
As a result, 40 Obama administration officials and White House aides are under Secret Service protection, compared with 32 under George W. Bush. No one outside of the government has heard of most of these officials, but they have one thing in common: They enjoy being chauffeured free of charge by the Secret Service.
The expansion in protection has occurred while the Secret Service is jeopardizing the president’s safety by cutting corners because of understaffing and a management culture that is indifferent to the potential risks, as detailed in the book.
The Secret Service’s deficiencies led to the intrusion by Michaele and Tareq Salahi at the White House state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. As it turned out, they weren’t the only party crashers, as revealed in the Newsmax story "Secret Service Let Third Intruder into White House."
The Secret Service knew about the third intruder for weeks and had identified him, but mortified Secret Service officials failed to inform the House Homeland Security Committee, which was investigating the original breach at the White House.
After I asked the Secret Service for comment, I wrote a story for Newsmax.com revealing that a third intruder had crashed the state dinner. Having failed to respond to my request for comment, the Secret Service issued a statement within two hours confirming that “a third individual, who was not on the White House guest list, entered the state dinner.”
The breach was a deliberate, conscious decision by uniformed officers to ignore the fact that the Salahis and Carlos Allen, the third intruder, were not on the guest list. Those decisions are an expected consequence of the agency’s practice of cutting corners.
The corner-cutting includes:
Not passing crowds through magnetometers, or shutting down the devices early, at presidential events. Cutting back on the size of counter-assault teams and bowing to demands of staff that the teams remain at a great distance from protectees. Not keeping up to date with the latest, most powerful firearms used by the FBI and the military. Not allowing agents time for regular firearms requalification or physical training. The Secret Service covers that up by asking agents to fill out their own test scores.
No doubt the uniformed officers who decided to wave the Salahis into the state dinner were aware of the corner-cutting and were overwhelmed by the workload. In part because the Secret Service refuses to demand funds for adequate staffing, the attrition rate is as high as 12 percent a year within the Uniformed Division alone.
In addition, the agency bows to political pressure. When agents refused to drive friends of Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary to restaurants, she got her detail leader removed. The fact that Secret Service management does not back personnel when they are just doing their jobs had to contribute to the uniformed officers’ reluctance to turn away guests at the state dinner and face possible repercussions.
“To this date, not one high-level person has been held accountable for these failures and corner cutting,” a Secret Service official, who declined to be named, tells me. “Secretary Janet Napolitano has failed to hold this director accountable. He [Mark Sullivan] doesn’t want to ruffle anyone’s feathers. He doesn’t want to ask for more money. He is more concerned about appeasing the administration.”
The official adds, “A large majority at headquarters has lost faith in him. Everybody’s waiting for the day he leaves. This agency has some very talented people, and that is clearly lacking in the case of the director.”
Despite the breaches and corner-cutting, Obama has said he has complete confidence in the Secret Service, signaling that he sees no need for a change in management. Given the clear warning signs, that is just as reckless as Abraham Lincoln’s and John F. Kennedy’s disregard for security.
Lincoln resisted efforts of his friends, the police, and the military to safeguard him. Finally, late in the Civil War, he agreed to allow four Washington police officers to act as his bodyguards. But on the night of his assassination, only one D.C. patrolman, John F. Parker, was guarding him.
Instead of remaining on guard outside the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, Parker went to a nearby saloon for a drink. As a result of Parker’s negligence, just after 10 p.m., John Wilkes Booth made his way to Lincoln’s box, sneaked in, and shot him in the back of the head. The president died the next morning.
Kennedy told Secret Service agents he did not want them to ride on the small running boards at the rear of his limousine in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. “If agents had been allowed on the rear running boards, they would have pushed the president down and jumped on him to protect him before the fatal shot,” Charles “Chuck” Taylor, who was an agent on the Kennedy detail, tells me.
Confirming that, Secret Service Director Lewis Merletti later said, “An analysis of the ensuing assassination, including the trajectory of the bullets which struck the president, indicates that it might have been thwarted had agents been stationed on the car’s running boards.”
In the case of Obama, in the view of many current Secret Service agents interviewed for “In the President’s Secret Service,” the result of the Secret Service’s corner-cutting could be a security breach with deadly consequences.
Although Secret Service agents are brave and dedicated, the agency’s management needs to be replaced. On the night of Obama’s state dinner, it was a pretty blonde. Tomorrow, it could be an assassin.
UH, OH! Another Democrat accused of ethics violations. This one is Maxine "this liberal will be all about socialize...er...uh...basically...taking over your companies" Waters.
With Democrats’ prospects in the November midterm elections appearing increasingly bleak, President Barack Obama has launched into attack mode and begun invoking the name of his predecessor, George W. Bush.
Obama has often criticized Republican policies, but until now he has avoided referring to Bush by name, according to CNN.
That changed this past week.
On Monday, Aug. 2, Obama spoke at a party fundraiser in Atlanta and referred to Republican efforts to “extend Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.”
Then on Thursday, he spoke at a fundraiser in Chicago for Democrat Alexi Giannoulias, who is seeking Obama’s old Senate seat in Illinois. He said Republicans “haven’t come out with a single solitary idea that is different from policies that held sway for eight years before Democrats took over, not a single policy difference that’s discernible from George W. Bush. Not one.”
Linking Republicans to Bush is a “core element of the Democrats’ strategy” for November, according to the political website Pollster.com.
But the site cautions: “There is no doubt that Bush's brand is still tarnished, but it is still surprising to see the Democrats fall into the trap of waging the 2010 battle like it is still 2008. It might work, but since Bush has been privately living his life out of office for almost two years and probably will not even be doing the Sunday talk show circuit anytime before the elections, it's a stretch.”
I guess he doesn't want to own the problems his administration has caused so it's time to blame Bush again.
“Last year, Obama gave you goose bumps, but I don’t think you’re going to see that this year,’’ said Alex McCluskey, co-owner of the Locker Room, who sold more than 4,000 “I vacationed with Obama’’ T-shirts last year. But so far this year, he said, his hot item is T-shirts of former President Bush asking, “Miss me yet?’’
Few Americans consider themselves bigger than the presidency but Obama might be one of them. The man in the Oval Office, argues Toby Harnden, may already be preparing for a role as a post-president in a post-American world.
When David Plouffe, President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign manager, wrote recently that his former boss was "not concerned with his re-election", there was predictable scepticism. After all, it has long been a truism that every politician wants to cling to power and a reality that presidential campaigns are planned years in advance. Pronouncements about not looking at polls and concentrating on getting things done are, moreover, standard fare from poll-driven, election-obsessed politicians and their apparatchiks. In this case, however, Plouffe may inadvertently be onto something. Almost everything Obama does these days suggests that he doesn't care much about being re-elected. Strange as it might seem, perhaps he wants to be a one-term president. Obama was elected in 2008 at an extraordinary moment in American politics. Suddenly, this charismatic figure, elected to the Senate without serious opposition in 2004 and without any executive experience, was catapulted into the White House. His presidential bid had been based on the power of his life story and his ability with the spoken word. Doubtless he was as surprised as anyone else that he pulled it off. Governing has been altogether more difficult for him and there are signs he is already tiring of it. Obama's intervention on the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" issue is a case in point. There was no need for him to get involved - the Islamic community centre two blocks from the 9/11 site is unlikely to get built and there was no political advantage in his making a statement. What he said about religious freedom was typically Obama - high-minded, principled and legalistic. He is, after all, a former constitutional law professor. What his words lacked were any real empathy with what Americans felt and practical considerations about resolving the issue - never mind the political downside for him. Doubtless he has been advised to prove he is "connected" to ordinary Americans by doing things like be seen attending church and taking "regular" holidays. But Obama seems happy to act as a European-style secularist, vacation in Martha's Vineyard and send his daughters to one of America's most exclusive private schools. Obama does not suffer for self doubt. He has long seemed so convinced of his own virtue that to question his motives is illogical. Increasingly, his pronouncements carry the tone of one who believes those who disagree are stupid or bigoted. Before departing for Martha's Vineyard last week, Obama spent three days on the campaign trail raising money and support for Democratic mid-term election candidates. Don't give in to fear," he said in Milwaukee. "Let's reach for hope." It was a message that worked once but is unlikely to appeal this time, with America in the grip of a recession, unemployment still stubbornly close to 10 percent and blame-it-on-Bush rhetoric wearing very thin. Obama is, however, at his best in these settings. He has the crowd hanging on his every word and he is not dealing with grubby political realities or objectionable opponents. Perhaps they are a reminder for him of simpler times. They might also be a glimpse of the future. For Obama, the crowning moment of his presidency have been speeches abroad - the statement in Strasbourg that America had been "dismissive and arrogant", the address to the Muslim world from Cairo, the acceptance in Oslo of the Nobel Peace Prize. In Berlin in 2008, Obama cast himself as a "citizen of the world". He has dismissed the bedrock notion of American exceptionalism by describing it, also in Strasbourg, as little more than narrow patriotism. Elite opinion among liberal Ivy League types - of which Obama is the embodiment - holds that we are already living in a post-American world. There are few Americans who see themselves as bigger than the presidency but Obama could well be one of them. In 2008, Obama showed little appetite for the down-and-dirty aspects of political campaigning. When things got tough against Hillary Clinton, he all but conceded the final Democratic primaries and let the clock run out. Against John McCain, he developed a campaign plan and refused to deviate from it. McCain was level in the polls when the US economy imploded, handing Obama a relatively comfortable victory. Obama is the first black American president, an established author, multi-millionaire and acclaimed figure beyond American shores. It seems highly unlikely that Obama will decide not to run in 2012. But he might well be calculating that a embarking post-presidential role as the leading global thinker in the post-American world as a Republican successor enters office is more attractive than being sullied by the political compromises and manoeuvrings necessary to win.
Top Democrats are growing markedly more pessimistic about holding the House, privately conceding that the summertime economic and political recovery they were banking on will not likely materialize by Election Day.
In conversations with more than two dozen party insiders, most of whom requested anonymity to speak candidly about the state of play, Democrats in and out of Washington say they are increasingly alarmed about the economic and polling data they have seen in recent weeks.
They no longer believe the jobs and housing markets will recover – or that anything resembling the White House’s promise of a “recovery summer” is under way. They are even more concerned by indications that House Democrats once considered safe – such as Rep. Betty Sutton, who occupies an Ohio seat that President Barack Obama won with 57 percent of the vote in 2008 – are in real trouble.
In two close races, endangered Democrats are even running ads touting how they oppose their leadership.
“Democrats kept thinking: ‘We’re going to get better. We’re going to get well before the election,’” said one of Washington’s best-connected Democrats. “But as of this week, you now have people saying that Republicans are going to win the House. And now it’s starting to look like the Senate is going to be a lot closer than people thought.”
A Democratic pollster working on several key races said, “The reality is that [the House majority] is probably gone.” His data shows the Democrats’ problems are only getting worse. “It’s spreading,” the pollster said.
PRINCETON, NJ -- Republicans lead by 51% to 41% among registered voters in Gallup weekly tracking of 2010 congressional voting preferences. The 10-percentage-point lead is the GOP's largest so far this year and is its largest in Gallup's history of tracking the midterm generic ballot for Congress.
Chris Matthews on Wednesday laid into Barack Obama's teleprompter calling it "his menace."
Near the end of a "Hardball" segment about the President's prime time address to the nation Tuesday, the host said, "If he doesn't get rid of that damn teleprompter...He's just reading words now."
Matthews continued, "It's separating him from us."
And continued, "You go to a meeting with him I'm told, businessmen are invited to meet him at the White House, he hauls out the damn teleprompter, and he reads it to them."
"The teleprompter is a problem for this guy. I think it's his menace" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary):
CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know, sometimes I really support the President in a lot of his views, in fact all of them almost. But I have to tell you, Michael, if he doesn't get rid of that damn teleprompter, it's like an eye test. He's just reading words now. It's separating him from us. Your thoughts. You go to a meeting with him I'm told, businessmen are invited to meet him at the White House, he hauls out the damn teleprompter, and he reads it to them. Well, why even bring people into the room, just have the teleprompter. I sense it's getting between him and us and I thought that speech last night was a terrible, well a great example rather, of him using the teleprompter instead of his heart and his mind. He was reading words to us that any president could have written, had written for him and delivered. [...]
The teleprompter is a problem for this guy. I think it's his menace.
Imagine that.
Obama's been dragging TOTUS to speeches - regardless of how short - for over nineteen months, and Matthews is just starting to notice?
Makes you wonder if the "Hardball" host would be expressing such concerns about TOTUS if POTUS's poll numbers weren't plummeting.
The reviews on Barack Obama's Iraq speech on Tuesday night, August 31, 2010 are in and they are almost all unkind.
You know it is bad when the lefties are wetting their pants; a case in point being the head cheerleader and Prom King, Chris Matthews.
Matthews is upset that Obama can't wean himself off that danged teleprompter, and his guests are wondering where the old magic has gone. Where, they ask, is the electricity, the excitement, the gleaming smile?
Hey fellas, it was all fake; the fake Greek columns, the promises to heal the world, to end all wars, to make everyone love us, to lower the sea levels, to remake America into Obama's image for the 21st century, ushering in a level of both unparalleled prosperity and wealth redistribution all at the same time.
You believed because you desperately wanted to believe; you were captivated by the lights, the swaying and cheering crowds, the chin stuck into the air like Il Duce, and the voice reverb that made him sound like God in the Charlton Heston movie, "The Ten Commandments".
Now, you are seeing the real deal; he doesn't ditch the teleprompter because he can't. He sounds boring and uninspired because he is. He doesn't offer magical solutions because he is now beyond the promising stage and into the doing stage, and he has no magic to give. The world is stubbornly resisting his so called charms. Barack Obama has the same DNA as all the other 6 billion human beings on earth, and he is not special. He is an inexperienced politician from Chicago, who was elected to the presidency by happenstance.
You guys keep flogging that horse, though; maybe he will surprise us and turn into a fairy tale prince or something, and your world will suddenly be magical again.
[Ed. note on the Ed. note: this is from a former Chicago lawyer now practicing law in Tyler , TX ]
[Ed. note: This is legit. I checked it out myself at https://www.iardc.org Stands for Illinois Attorney Registration And Disciplinary Committee. It’s the official arm of lawyer discipline in Illinois ; and they are very strict and mean as hell. (Talk about irony!) Even I, at the advanced age of almost 65, maintain (at the cost of approximately $600/year) my law license that I worked so hard and long to earn.]
Big surprise !!!
Former Constitutional Law Lecturer and US President Makes Up Constitutional Quotes During State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.
Consider this:
1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”. He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application.
A “Voluntary Surrender” is not something where you decide “Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?” and forget to renew your license. No, a “Voluntary Surrender” is something you do when you’ve been accused of something, and you ‘voluntarily surrender” you license five seconds before the state suspends you.
2. Michelle Obama “voluntarily surrendered” her law license in 1993.
3. So, we have the first black President and First Lady — who don’t actually have licenses to practice law. Facts.
4. A senior lecturer is one thing... A fully ranked law professor is another. Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago .
5. The University of Chicago released a statement in March, 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) “served as a professor” in the law school—but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.
6. “He did not hold the title of professor of law,” said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law .
7. The former Constitutional senior lecturer cited the US Constitution the other night during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence … not the Constitution.
9. Free Republic: In the State of the Union Address, President Obama said: “We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal….
10. Um, wrong citing, wrong founding document there Champ, I mean Mr. President. By the way, the promises are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights. The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
11. And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech???
When you are a phony, it's hard to keep facts straight.
Democrats in Congress are no longer asking themselves whether this is going to be a bad election year for them and their party. They are asking whether it is going to be a disaster. The GOP pushed deep into Democratic-held territory over the summer, to the point where the party is well within range of picking up the 39 seats it would need to take control of the House. Overall, as many as 80 House seats could be at risk, and fewer than a dozen of these are held by Republicans.
Political handicappers now say it is conceivable that the Republicans could also win the 10 seats they need to take back the Senate. Not since 1930 has the House changed hands without the Senate following suit.
Is this a piece from National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal or Fox News.com, all major conservative news outlets in the United States? No. It’s a direct quote from yesterday’s Washington Post, usually viewed by conservatives as a flagship of the liberal establishment inside the Beltway. The fact The Post is reporting that not only could Republicans sweep the House of Representatives this November, but may even take the Senate as well, is a reflection of just how far the mainstream, overwhelmingly left-of-centre US media has moved in the last month towards acknowledging the scale of the crisis facing the White House.
To its credit, The Washington Post has generally been ahead of the curve compared to its main competitors such as The New York Times in reporting President Obama’s travails, but its striking front page coverage of the “Democrats’ plight” and talk of a possible GOP Senate win (regarded as fantasy just a fortnight ago) was a bold step for a publication that is probably read in every office of the Obama administration.
The Post also ran another headline yesterday on its front page – “Republicans making gains ahead of midterm elections” – which would undoubtedly have sent a shudder through the White House. It carried a new poll commissioned jointly with ABC News, which showed public faith in Barack Obama’s leadership has fallen to an all-time low, with just 46 percent approval. The Washington Post-ABC News survey revealed high levels of public unease with President Obama’s handling of the economy, with 57 percent of Americans disapproving, and 58 percent critical of his handling of the deficit.
For most of the year, America’s political and media elites, including the Obama team itself, have touted the notion of an economic recovery (which never materialised), significantly underestimated the rise of the Tea Party movement, and questioned the notion that conservatism was sweeping America. It is only now hitting home just how close Washington is to experiencing a political revolution in November that will fundamentally change the political landscape on Capitol Hill, with huge implications for the Obama presidency. What was once a perspective confined largely to Fox News, online conservative news sites, or talk radio is now gaining ground in the liberal US print media as well – historic change is coming to America, though not quite the version promised by Barack Obama.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 23% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty-seven percent (47%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -24
Overall, 41% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the president's performance. Fifty-eight percent (58%) disapprove.
Gingrich: Obama's World View Shaped by Kenya Sunday, 12 Sep 2010 04:05 PM Article Font Size
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says President Barack Obama harbors a deep-seated animosity toward the West as a result of his forefather’s rebellion against British rule in their native Kenya. Obama, who had a bust of Winston Churchill removed from the Oval Office when he first settled in, operates with a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview, Gingrich told the National Review in remarks the Politerati blog reported Sunday. As a source for this insight, Gingrich cited a new article by conservative writer Dinesh D’Souza in an upcoming edition of Forbes magazine.
Gingrich, who is mulling a bid to run for president in 2012, suggested that the president’s world view might be “outside the comprehension” of most Americans.
“What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asked, according to the National Review. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”
“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president,” Gingrich said.
“I think Obama gets up every morning with a worldview that is fundamentally wrong about reality,” he said. “If you look at the continuous denial of reality, there has got to be a point where someone stands up and says that this is just factually insane.”
Yeah, I feel so much better about the Patriot Act since Obama extended it than when Bush first signed it. And that brilliant surge Idea in Afghanistan...wow, who would have ever thought about an idea like that?
Why? Because the bastard believes that our rights don't come from God, or from nature, or are inherent, but because our rights must be granted to us by GOVERNMENT.
Two days before the country was set to celebrate Constitution Day, President Obama decided to invoke the words of another founding document: the Declaration of Independence. Except he changed the words.
Towards the end of a speech on September 15 to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Obama began quoting the famous “rights” line from the founding document. But partway through, he omitted where those rights come from: a Creator.
The line is supposed to read: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
But Obama’s recitation left out an important part: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are crated equal. [Long Pause] Endowed with certain inalienable [sic] rights: life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
As the American Thinker points out, it could well be that Obama intentionally ignored his teleprompter:
After President Obama says “created equal..”, there is a long pause during which he scowls and blinks several times. For once, he may actually have opted to not read something that was on the teleprompter. It looks like he is disgusted and decided it would be better not to read what the [Declaration] actually says. So, did he just forget the words, maybe couldn’t see the lines, or did he leave them out intentionally? You decide:
This Civics lesson is ignored too often lately. It could be likened to a breath of fresh air.
The Washington Post babbled again today about Obama inheriting a huge deficit from Bush. Amazingly enough,...... a lot of people swallow this nonsense. So once more, a short civics lesson.
While the White House proposes budgets, funding for Budgets does not come from the White House! It comes from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011.
In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.
And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009. Let's remember what the deficits looked like during that period and what is projected into the future to 2019: (below)
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the FY 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending.
After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets. If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is I inherited a deficit that I voted for and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.
WASHINGTON — Some of the critical players in President Obama’s national security team doubt his strategy in Afghanistan will succeed and have spent much of the last 20 months quarreling with one another over policy, personalities and turf, according to a new book.
The book, “Obama’s Wars,” by the journalist Bob Woodward, depicts an administration deeply torn over the war in Afghanistan even as the president agreed to triple troop levels there amid suspicion that he was being boxed in by the military. Mr. Obama’s top White House adviser on Afghanistan and his special envoy for the region are described as believing the strategy will not work.
The president concluded from the start that “I have two years with the public on this” and pressed advisers for ways to avoid a big escalation, the book says. “I want an exit strategy,” he implored at one meeting. Privately, he told Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to push his alternative strategy opposing a big troop buildup in meetings, and while Mr. Obama ultimately rejected it, he set a withdrawal timetable because, “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”
But Mr. Biden is not the only one who harbors doubts about the strategy’s chances for success. Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the president’s Afghanistan adviser, is described as believing that the president’s review did not “add up” to the decision he made. Richard C. Holbrooke, the president’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is quoted saying of the strategy that “it can’t work.”
Mr. Woodward, the longtime Washington Post reporter and editor, was granted extensive access to administration officials and documents for his account, including an interview with Mr. Obama. The New York Times obtained a copy of the book before its publication by Simon & Schuster, scheduled for next week. The White House had no comment on the book Tuesday night.
Although the internal divisions described have become public, the book suggests that they were even more intense and disparate than previously known and offers new details. Mr. Biden called Mr. Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met.” A variety of administration officials expressed scorn for James L. Jones, the retired Marine general who is national security adviser, while he referred to some of the president’s other aides as “the water bugs” or “the Politburo.”
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought his vice chairman, Gen. James E. Cartwright, went behind his back, while General Cartwright dismissed Admiral Mullen because he wasn’t a war fighter. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates worried that General Jones would be succeeded by his deputy, Thomas E. Donilon, who would be a “disaster.”
Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was overall commander for the Middle East until becoming the Afghanistan commander this summer, told a senior aide that he disliked talking with David M. Axelrod, the president’s senior adviser, because he was “a complete spin doctor.” General Petraeus was effectively banned by the administration from the Sunday talk shows but worked private channels with Congress and the news media.
And the book recounts incidents in which Adm. Dennis C. Blair, then the national intelligence director, fought with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and John O. Brennan, the counterterrorism adviser.
During a daily intelligence briefing in May 2009, Mr. Blair warned the president that radicals with American and European passports were being trained in Pakistan to attack their homelands. Mr. Emanuel afterward chastised him, saying, “You’re just trying to put this on us so it’s not your fault.” Mr. Blair also skirmished with Mr. Brennan about a report on the failed airliner terrorist attack on Dec. 25. Mr. Obama later forced Mr. Blair out.
Beyond the internal battles, the book offers fresh disclosures on the nation’s continuing battle with terrorists. It reports that the C.I.A. has a 3,000-man “covert army” in Afghanistan called the Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams, or C.T.P.T., mostly Afghans who capture and kill Taliban fighters and seek support in tribal areas. Past news accounts have reported that the C.I.A. has a number of militias, including one trained on one of its compounds, but not the size of the covert army.
The book also reports that the United States has intelligence showing that manic-depression has been diagnosed in President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and that he was on medication, but adds no details. Mr. Karzai’s mood swings have been a challenge for the Obama administration.
As for Mr. Obama himself, the book describes a professorial president who assigned “homework” to advisers but bristled at what he saw as military commanders’ attempts to force him into a decision he was not yet comfortable with. Even after he agreed to send another 30,000 troops last winter, the Pentagon asked for another 4,500 “enablers” to support them.
The president lost his poise, according to the book. “I’m done doing this!” he erupted.
To ensure that the Pentagon did not reinterpret his decision, Mr. Obama dictated a six-page, single-space “terms sheet” explicitly laying out his troop order and its objectives, a document included in the book’s appendix.
Mr. Obama’s struggle with the decision comes through in a conversation with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who asked if his deadline to begin withdrawal in July 2011 was firm. “I have to say that,” Mr. Obama replied. “I can’t let this be a war without end, and I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.”
Some news is too scary to report to the sheeple, it will make them more nervous than usual.
All I can say is I'm glad I live in a small town of no importance, and rarely go into the bigger cities (except San Jose, which is not a likely target). I feel sorry for you east coast folks near D.C. and New York.
He's tried homey backyard settings, large campus ral lies and teamed up with a crass hip-hop show. Wherever he goes, he floors the rhetorical pedal, as when he likened his slow-motion polices to the time it took to "free the slaves."
Barack Obama has gone from a failing president to flailing at ghosts. Even allowing for desperate times, his desperate measures are a national embarrassment.
Emancipation? Give us a break.
With each passing day, his denunciations of dissent and inflated claims of economic progress turn off the independent voters who will decide the midterm elections. He is ignoring the sensible advice to listen to the majority of voters and build a governing coalition.
REUTERS Barack Obama Instead, he recklessly bets the remainder of his presidency on maintaining the huge liberal Democratic majorities that helped him impose a string of unpopular policies on America. If he fails, and there is good reason to hope he will face a Republican Congress, he'll be the loneliest man in Washington.
He is losing much of his White House team, yet the obsequious hagiography continues. When Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel departed Friday, he claimed the last 20 months were "the toughest time any president has ever faced."
This is farce masquerading as fact, but there is no sign Obama is willing to bring in new aides who could help him chart a new course.
If anything, he is doubling down on his self-aggrandizing Big Government agenda, dashing hopes he would use the public revolt against him to finally become the centrist many Americans believed they were electing.
A friend said the other day that Obama's nonstop campaign speeches were useless because the country has tuned him out. Politically speaking, that's true.
The thrill is gone, and his efforts to gin up enthusiasm seem a pale imitation of 2008. It's all vapors now as he hectors former supporters to "buck up."
But it's impossible simply to ignore Obama. He is the president of a troubled nation, and he regularly reaches new depths of demeaning the office as he fights public will.
His isolation from reality produces cringes when he opens smaller gatherings to questions. First, it was a woman in Washington who said she was "exhausted defending you" and waiting for meaningful change.
Then it was a business owner in Iowa who complained tax hikes would make it impossible to add jobs.
Both questioners were informed and polite, one a supporter, one not. They represent the sturdy and loyal backbone of the nation, but Obama was clueless about how to respond.
He answered as if on automatic pilot, showing no ability to connect to their everyday problems or even to stray from stock answers.
Sadly, the failure to deliver on his promise of unity doesn't end at our borders. He vowed his election would raise America's standing around the world and enable us to building expanding networks of allies to face global issues.
A recent incident at the United Nations shows it's not going well. When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in the General Assembly that the 9/11 attacks were an "inside job" carried out by our government to help Israel, US diplomats walked out in protest.
