Posted on 09/03/2014 2:57:53 PM PDT by Hojczyk
Hagel suggested that America should focus on Obama’s prepared remarks and ignore the president’s extemporaneous musings on America’s objectives and capabilities.
Obama was “pretty clear,” Hagel insisted. America’s goal is to “degrade and destroy the capability of ISIL to come after U.S. interests all over the world and our allies.”
“However way he addressed that later in the news conference, I wasn’t aware of that,” the secretary added, if you can believe it.
“That’s the end game? Degrade and destroy, not contain?” Sciutto asked.
“No, it’s not contain,” Hagel replied. “It’s exactly what the president said: ‘Degrade and destroy.’” But that’s not “exactly what the president said.” Reading the statements coming out of this White House has become a form of Kremlinology. Americans are instructed after the fact to ignore some of administration officials’ statements and take others as gospel.
At the closing of this event, Hagel was asked if he could pledge to the American people that the group responsible for what the administration considers a “terrorist attack” on the United States will be destroyed. “We will do everything possible that we can do to destroy their capacity to inflict harm on our people and Western values and our interests,” Hagel replied.
This lawyerly equivocation was hardly inspiring, but the secretary only has so much leeway to make policy for this administration. It was his statements, and those of the Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey two weeks ago, which prompted Obama to say the U.S. doesn’t “have a strategy yet” to take on ISIS in Syria. The Defense Secretary can only be as clear as is his boss, and there is no clarity coming from the man at the top.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Waddahesay? HUH?
Nope. Nobody’s flying the plane.
That’s our Sec. Def. folks. Chuck “Foster Brooks’’ Hagel.
What a great show that was. I still look for it on the cable channels.
So we should believe prepared vetted and sanitized remarks rather than extemporaneous comments.
That completely counterintuitive.
When there is a disconnect between speeches and off-the-cuff comments, I lean heavily towards the comments.
Side note... how useless is our president without his teleprompter? One would think they would have figured out how to get Cyrano in his ear or on his screen by now.
Another drunk in government? Of course, I always think of Boehner as Foster Brooks. I remember shortly after 9/11 when everybody was so down, FR had a casting notice for an imaginary movie about government and everyone cast Foster Brooks as Ted Kennedy.
What if you just wanna make em dead? Is that so wrong? :-)
The first time I saw Chuck Hagle I said “Oh my God it’s Foster Brooks!’’ Remember him from the old “Smothers Brothers Show’’?
Funny comic. He was great on the Dean Martin roasts.
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