Obama Angry About His Own Trial Balloon Leaks?
Tags: Afghanistan, Ben Smith, Bob Gates.
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This was amusing, does anyone really believe that Obama is angry about the leaks of his alleged Afghanistan deliberations?
“I think I am angrier than Bob Gates about it, partly because we have these deliberations in the Situation Room for a reason – because we are making decisions that are life-and-death, that affect how our troops will be able to operate in a theater of war. For people to be releasing information during the course of deliberation — where we haven’t made final decisions yet — I think is not appropriate.” – Barack Hussein Obama
What’s odd about this is that many of the leaks (though certainly not all) have seemed deliberate, in tandem with Flickr photo releases from the meetings and in line with a message that Obama is considering deeply. And indeed, leaking has been a signature of the transition from the Plouffe/campaign era to a governing era run by Rahm Emanuel, who talks frequently to the press and whose hiring was one of the first major Obama leaks. Leaks from more senior officials make lower-level staffers, in turn, feel that it’s not actually a firing offense.
Let’s be honest here… These weren’t mere leaks. Over the past month or so, we’ve heard all sorts of stories saying “Obama plans to do this…” “Obama plans to do that…” and yet, he still hasn’t made a decision. Here’s what’s happening: These leaks were trial balloons. Obama is letting ideas get leaked to assess the reaction of his anti-war left wing base.
Enough of the games Barry. Try being honest once in your life.
Matt Margolis is co-author (with Mark Noonan) of Caucus of Corruption: The Truth About The New Democratic Majority. He also blogs at The Buffalo Bean. Follow Matt on Twitter.
10 Responses to “Obama Angry About His Own Trial Balloon Leaks?”
Caucus of Corruption
He can’t decide – any decision he makes will (a) be his responsibility (and he’s never had to do that with a public stand in his life) and (b) be unpopular with someone…
Off topic but only a bit as far as I am concerned but speaking of war, the following tidbit is a rather pathetic and disturbing situation.
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Survey Results reported in the Nov 16/09 issue of Time Magazine:
75% of Americans ages 17 to 24 can’t enlist in the militry mostly because they lack a high school diploma, have a criminal record or are physically unfit.
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God forbid should the USA ever get into a real big war.
Standards will have to be lowered significantly to get enough cannon fodder.
Canuck,
It may be pathetic and disturbing, but it’s also nice to know that the United States military still has reasonably high standards. And I suspect the days of “big wars” and large armies of “cannon fodder” are probably over. Our enemy for the foreseeable future will require a strategy and tactics that we are only just beginning to refine.
God forbid should the USA ever get into a real big war.
Don’t worry about the USA, Canuckgoof–if we ever get into a really big war, we have some really big weapons which haven’t been unleashed yet. The only problem is, if it happens on the current Idiot in Chief’s watch, he may not use them if doing so could anger his base.
…any decision he makes will (a) be his responsibility…
Spot on, Mark. He won’t be able to blame President Bush…
canuckguy says: November 18th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
I saw that canuck.
the HS diploma & some crime would be waived, like WW2, if the big balloon went up.
the really disturbing part is the ~25% physically unfit mostly fat.
wanna guess where they were raised & the gelatinous suburbanites who provide the example to them.
“75% of Americans ages 17 to 24 can’t enlist in the militry mostly because they lack a high school diploma..”
Wanna guess that 99.9% of these individuals were educated in a government school?
But the government types want us to trust them our health-care.
Obamateur needs the leaks so he will know how to popularly fall on an issue, since he cannot take a leadership position on anything.
Keefer-Reefer:
–’Feet on the ground’ are still important, nukes are a last resort, to be used if you are losing.
–If you had more feet on the ground at the start of the Iraqui occupation, the surge would not have been necessary. If you had more feet on the ground in Afghanistan, again, the situation there would be much better.
–The military could not supply all those feet
–The politicians thought they could do it on the cheap.
Agreed; he’s mostly just sweating Karzai (which does seem to be working). I suspect that the only leak he’s really upset about is the one that revealed that he has in fact already arrived at a decision.
That’s what military rations are for.
Not quite that simple. Much of the reason why Afghanistan is drifting sideways is the fact that political attention was diverted. In Iraq we’ve been working on building local institutions and effecting national reconciliation. In Afghanistan, we haven’t been doing that very much, and we definitely haven’t been doing much to help the Afghan economy, which, because of the national security implications, I would venture to say is even more important than helping our own economy. In a recent survey, 70% of Afghans identified “poverty and unemployment” as a major cause of the conflict, compared to 48% blaming corruption, 36% blaming the Taliban, and 18% blaming the presence of international forces. The numbers get even more interesting when you look at the regional breakdown. I’m probably going to put together a post on my blog on this survey and another one from earlier in the year sometime later today.
Sergei:
–You need feet on the ground as the first step to provide security so that a good government infrastructure can be in place to address the needs of the Afghans.
“…so that a good government infrastructure can be in place to address the needs of the Afghans.”
Dream on, I said to myself.