"And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go."
-- Clint Eastwood 2012
Posted on 10/13/2012 5:16:04 PM PDT by Kenny
The last few weeks have produced many intriguing political moments, but none as shocking as the revelation that President Obama has been absent from the vast majority of his daily intelligence briefings.
According to a study by the Government Accountability Institute, Obama failed to attend a single Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) in the week leading up to the recent anniversary of 9/11 and the chaos that erupted in the Arab world. The mere fact that we were approaching 9/11 was a crucial enough reason to attend not one but all the briefings. President Obama attended none.
Worse, this is apparently nothing new. Obama attended only 43.8 percent of his Daily Briefs in the first 1,225 days of his administration. For this year, he attended a little over a third.
This is stunning, and there’s no excuse for it.
Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, who worked for President George W. Bush, pressed NSC spokesman Tommy Vietor for an explanation. Thiessen reported:
Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions. “I actually don’t agree at all,” Vietor told me in an e-mail. “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community each day.”
That’s simply the White House covering for the president.
Similarly, White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed the PDB charge as “hilarious.” No, no, said Carney, the president “gets it every day.” By “it,” Carney was apparently talking about the intelligence briefing papers, not the actual meetings.
Pro-Obama journalists happily accepted Carney’s explanation. CNN posted Carney’s comments under a photo of a pensive Obama sitting at an intelligence briefing.
Sorry, but, once again, there’s no excuse for this, especially in the post-9/11 world. George W. Bush not only didn’t miss the PDB but actually expanded it to six meetings per week.
Consider, too, the case of Ronald Reagan, who liberals, ironically, portrayed as an uninformed idiot who didn’t pay attention in meetings or read anything.
Reagan, in fact, attended the daily intelligence briefing. I could lay this out at length, but here I’ll offer just two Reagan sources, both still living, who can speak to this:
One source is Herb Meyer, special assistant to CIA director Bill Casey in the 1980s. Meyer told me: “Of course Reagan attended all those daily briefings. And after the briefers returned to CIA headquarters, Bill [Casey] would meet with them just to be sure the president (and Haig & Weinberger) got answers to whatever questions they may have had. In short, it was a very—very—serious business.”
Another source is Bill Clark. Clark was Ronald Reagan’s right-hand man in foreign policy. As his biographer, I know Clark well. He is 80 years old and lives in California. Clark told me this about Reagan and the PDB:
Bill Casey would, by courier, send the President’s Daily Brief each morning at about 5:00 a.m. to our war room downstairs in our [National] Security Council…. It would be delivered to the president in his residence before he came over [by 7:00 a.m.]…. He’d write questions all over the margins about things that weren’t clear in the briefing. And, of course, the agency [CIA] would come down with further explanations.
Clark recalls how Reagan craved that regular morning update. He would read it, and then they would meet. Reagan ate up these briefings. He asked questions of his advisers. He probed for ideas. Reagan attended the briefings and used them as presidents should.
When Reagan finished his presidency, after two terms, genuine freedom and democracy were surging all over the communist world.
As for President Obama, if he’s in the process of finishing his presidency, after one term, he’s facing a surge of radical Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East. Can any of that be blamed on Obama’s failure to attend these routine briefings? Maybe, maybe not, but it certainly can’t help.
In fact, as Marc Theissen and the Government Accountability Institute have noted in follow-up stories, Obama is now suddenly attending his daily briefing. That’s no doubt a response to political criticism. But could it be—on the heels of the eruptions in Libya and Egypt, which Obama initially blamed not on pre-meditated terrorism but a video—that maybe President Obama feels like he might have been missing something?
Great point that I’m sure Romney will hammer Obama with on Tuesday.
Not stunning at all. This president wants to destroy America as we know it.
Hope Governor Romney gets good mileage out of this.
What I fear is that as a "parting gift" he has planted the seeds of multiple devastating terror attacks to occur all over our country starting Jan 21, 2013.
While he basks his skinny ass in hawaii on his 35million dollar mansion
In person security briefings have a certain “pucker factor” that you don’t get by mearly reading. I don’t think Obie has the guts to sit through them.
Obama only does what Obama likes, and what doesn’t bore him. Practicing for the debate bored him; now what has been seen by millions cannot be unseen. He can “practice” now; but a day late and a dollar short.
Hell no....He's trying to figure out how he is going to pay for his Hawaiian vacation.
Maybe Michelle and the girls will have to stay home
Why would it occur to 0bama that his Arab Spring pals would cause him any trouble? Besides, there are many ways to deflect blame.
obama “outsourced” it.
"And when somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go."
-- Clint Eastwood 2012
Of course Reagan, Bush and other lesser mortals had to attend the daily intelligence briefings. Our current ruler finds this all unnecessary because he knows everything they could possibly tell him. He is so intelligent. Have you not seen the crease in his pants? How valuable is the intelligence he receives anyhow? Has anyone informed James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, that we have lost an ambassador. We know (thanks to John Brennan) that he does not watch television “24 hours a day.” Clapper also apparently avoids daily briefings, as demonstrated by his response to a question by Diane Sawyer. When Sawyer asked him, “London. How serious is it? Any implications that it was coming here?” he responded “London?” What a stupid question. London is a city. It is probably as serious as any other city. I think it is unlikely that it will move to the United States, although there was a song about one of its bridges moving to Arizona.
Did Valerie Jarrett attend the briefings?
Like Biden said they wee never told about the need for security, well of course they were not, thanks Biden , now if you and your boss actually went to these intel security briefings and actualy did your hob ten you woudl have been told.
To think there are dopes still out there who woudl vote for these lazy immature layabouts
To think there are dopes still out there who would vote for these lazy immature layabouts
You’re just jealous.
Tell me of any other Kenyan who made it all the way to the WH and Congress just stood there picking their noses.
From now on, a POTUS will not have to be a natural born citizen — Bambi never was.
This is all important but the real nuclear issue is the Darden obamacare stuff. That is devastating for the kenyan. His own supporter cutting employee hours to comply with obamacare rules.
That will hit home to all those who have struggled with employers who limited them to part time hours.
Obamacare is hitting hard right now with news of employers making plans for next year. Also many people filing taxes next week being are being told they face a HUGE tax increase for next year.
People are finally waking up and the polls show it.
I have had these same thoughts for awhile now. I remember Michelle saying something to the effect that whenever Barack would express something negative about the job, she would tell him, "Well, it's what you signed up for!". I think he realized from the start that it was ALL over his "pay grade" and he finally was in something so over his head he could not bluff and BS his way through it. It was way more work than he bargained for and I don't doubt for a minute that he relishes the idea that he just might be able to coast the rest of his life writing the odd book, giving prewritten speeches off his beloved teleprompter and playing golf and basketball whenever he wanted to, with a hefty "retirement" benefit and lifetime healthcare with a team of Secret Service protection to boot, sooner rather than later!
As for his planned "surprise" to get even with America, I actually believe he is too much of a coward to risk a prison sentence and loss of prestige and freebies to go through with it. He is, after all, a narcissist, and it is all about him - a subject he will milk for the rest of his life.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
