Posted on 12/18/2015 5:29:30 AM PST by TigerClaws
Jet-lagged from a long overseas trip, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had just sat down with his wife for a quiet dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in northern Virginia when his phone rang. It was the White House on the line. President Barack Obama wanted to speak with him.
It was Aug. 30, 2013, and the U.S. military was poised for war. Obama had publicly warned Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad that his regime would face consequences if it crossed a “red line†by employing chemical weapons against its own people. Assad did it anyway, and Hagel had spent the day approving final plans for a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missile strikes against Damascus. U.S. naval destroyers were in the Mediterranean, awaiting orders to fire.
(Excerpt) Read more at foreignpolicy.com ...
Former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel's damning indictment of the Obama Administration
On Aug. 30, 2013, as the U.S. military was poised for war after Obama had publicly warned Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad that his regime would face severe consequences if it crossed a “red line†by using chemical weapons, Assad did it anyway.Then U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel spent that day approving final plans for a large Tomahawk cruise missile strike against Damascus. U.S. naval destroyers were in the Mediterranean, awaiting orders to fire.
But instead, Obama called HAgel and told the stunned Defense secretary to stand down. Obama told him that the United States wasn’t going to take any military action against the Syrian government. The president had decided to ignore his own red line — a decision, Hagel believes, that dealt a severe blow to the credibility of the United States.
“Whether it was the right decision or not, history will determine, but there’s no question in my mind that it hurt the credibility of the president. A president’s word is a big thing, and when the president says things, that’s a big deal,†HAgel has said.
Obama Administration Micromanagement and Meddling
The 69-year-old Vietnam War veteran, also said that the Pentagon was subject to debilitating meddling and micromanagement by the White House during his tenure as Defense Secretary, which is a sentiment alos echoed by his predecessors, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta.
The Obama administration's to meddle was such a frequent problem, that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Militry, General Dempsey complained that White House staffers were calling generals “and asking fifth-level questions that the White House should not be involved in.â€
The three last Secretray's of defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Michèle Flournoy, the former No. 3 official at the Pentagon, have all criticized the Obama’s centralized decision-making and interference with the workings of the Defense Department.
Hagel said the politically motivated micromanagement, combined with a mushrooming bureaucracy at the National Security Council, raised the very real risk that the executive branch was potentially undercutting the proper functioning of the Pentagon and other cabinet offices.
Appointment as Defense Secretary
Appointed to the Pentagon to oversee a peacetime footing and tough budget cuts, Hagel ended up having to contend with Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and a new war in the Middle East after he entered office in February 2013.
And he faced other crisis as well, including automatic budget cuts that threw the Pentagon’s budget into chaos; a shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard facility that left 12 people dead; a spate of sexual assault cases in the military; and a cheating scandal by nuclear missile crews.
Unproductive, rambling meetings
Once in office, Hagel’s requests were generally granted. But he sometimes found that his personal access to the president did not necessarily mean a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office.
“There were times that I asked to have a private meeting with the president, and when I showed up, there were others in the room,†he said.
While Hagel preferred smaller meetings and one-on-one phone calls, the White House often summoned him to large Situation Room sessions with last-minute agendas sent out overnight or on the morning of the meeting.
At other times he found himself in meetings and policy deliberations on Syria and other issues run by Susan Rice or her deputies. HAgel indicated that often these mettings led nowhere.
“For one thing, there were way too many meetings. The meetings were not productive. I don’t think many times we ever actually got to where we needed to be. We kept kind of deferring the tough decisions. And there were always too many people in the room,†he said
At larger White House meetings, with some staffers in the room he did not even know, Hagel indicated that he was reluctant to speak at length, fearing critical comments and secure information might find its way into media reports.
“The more people you have in a room, the more possibilities there are for self-serving leaks to shape and influence decisions in the press,†he said.
Haglel preferred tighter focus National Security meetings. Regarding those types of meetings, HAgel said,.
“We’d get in and get out. I eventually got to the point where I told Susan Rice that I wasn’t going to spend more than two hours in her meetings, some of which would go on for four hours.â€
But the same senior administration official defended the long National Security Council meetings, saying their length was only natural given the complexity of the security challenges facing the country: “It speaks to the rigorous policy process that we run.â€
Hagel said that in those meetings too much time was spent on “nit-picky, small things in the weeds,†while larger questions were ignored. “We seemed to veer away from the big issues.â€
Lack of ISIS/Syria Strategy
Hagel offers a rare view from inside the Obama administration that indicates that Obama was caught flat-footed by the rise of ISIS and the conflict in Syria. His account describes an administration that certainly lacked a clear strategy regarding Syria while he was Secretary of Defense, and he suggests that it may not have one anytime soon either.
When ISIS began to rise in power, when asked about the nature of the threat, Hagel told reporters that “this is beyond anything that we’ve seen.†He cited ISIS' military skill, financial resources, and adept online propaganda as an unprecedented danger that surpassed previous terrorist organizations.
Some in the Obama administration were not happy with Hagel’s description, and “I got some criticism from the White House,†he said.
But events vindicated his remarks.
“Then I got accused of trying to hype something, overstate something, and make something more than it was,†Hagel said.
For Hagel, the administration’s indecision over how to address the conflict in Syria was driven home in a congressional hearing in September 2014, when he was grilled by senators about the administration’s plans to build a force of rebel fighters to take on the Islamic State.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), an outspoken critic of the White House’s anti-Islamic State strategy, asked Hagel if the administration would come to the aid of U.S.-backed rebels if they were attacked by the Assad regime. The administration had debated that pivotal question for weeks but had not made a decision, and Hagel was forced to improvise.
“We had never come down on an answer or a conclusion in the White House. I said what I felt what I had to say. I couldn’t say, ‘No.’ Christ, every ally would have walked away from us in the Middle East if I had.â€
But the question remained a “glaring†omission in the administration’s policy that he raised in meetings afterward.
“Are we going to support our guys or not support our guys? That wass a damn crucial question,†Hagle said.
A month later, with his concerns mounting about the absence of an overarching policy in Syria and the fight against ISIS, Hagel fired off a two-page memo to Rice and Kerry — and copied the president. In it he said that the administration needed to decide on its approach to the conflict in Syria and its stance toward the Assad regime. The memo bluntly stated. "We don’t have a policy.â€
It was not well received by the white House at the time, and is not well remembered now.
Asked to comment on Hagle's remakrs this week, a senior administration official rejected Hagel’s portrayal. He called it misleading and that the Defense Department at the time had a leading role in setting up the training program and could have addressed any shortcomings that arose.
Hagel counter, “In the memo, I wasn’t blaming anybody. Hell, I was part of the National Security Council.â€
Differnces over Guantánamo
Apart from his differences with the administration’s over Syria, Hagel said some of his biggest arguements came over the controversial detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Under a law adopted by Congress, Hagel, as defense secretary, had the ultimate responsibility for approving the transfer of inmates to other countries. And it meant he would bear the blame if a released detainee later took up arms against the United States.
The White House, trying to fulfill Obama’s promise to close the facility, pressed Hagel to approve transferring inmates to other countries.
But Hagel often refused to do so, or delayed transfers when he judged the security risk was too high.
The White House grew deeply frustrated with Hagel over these refusals and delays.
“It got pretty bad, pretty brutal,†Hagel said. “I’d get the hell beat out of me all the time on this at the White House. “
Although he himself supported shutting Guantánamo down, Hagel incidcated that he would not be initmidated into approving trasnfers for this reason alone. The White House kept pushing, arguing that security concerns had to be weighed against the damage done to America’s image abroad by keeping Guantánamo open.
Differences and arguments over Guantánamo were cited by White House officials as the last straw that led to Hagel having to step down. During his two years in office, Hagel approved 44 detainee transfers. His successor, Ash Carter, has approved only 15 transfers since taking office. At his current pace, Carter will not transfer as many as Hagel approved by the time Obama’s second term ends.
Stepping down as Secretary of Defense
After clashing over and over again with the White House on Guantánamo, Syria, and other issues, Hagel indicated that it was inevitable for him to be asked to step down as the secretary of Defense. Even so, HAgel indicates that he was not prepared for the humiliating way in which he was let go, “with certain people just really vilifying me in a gutless, off-the-record kind of way.â€
The White House asked Hagel if he would stay on until a successor was found, and he accepted. But even then White House officials continued to trash him in anonymous comments and leaks to the press, claiming he rarely spoke at meetings with the President and that he deferred to General Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on most occassions.
“They already had my resignation, so what was the point of continuing to try to destroy me?†he asks.
It was a painful end to a career in which Hagel had risen to great success. After his 1968 combat tour in Vietnam, where he was decorated with two Purple Hearts, he served as a Capitol Hill staffer, worked as the deputy administrator for the Veterans Administration under President Ronald Reagan, made a fortune in the early years of the cellphone industry, handily won two terms as a senator for Nebraska, and was at one point considered a potential Presidential candidate.
Thugh he holds Obama in some esteem, Hagel remains pained at how his term as Secretary of Defense was tarnished by what he indicates were backstabbing personnel in Obama's White House.
Tarnished? This traitor served the illegal Usurper Obama and he thinks his term was tarnished? He should be be tried for treason.
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/2015/11/20/jarrett-obama-not...
Jarrett: Obama Not a Lame Duck, Really Big Things Coming...... Its the second half of the fourth quarter but really big things happen at the end of the game.
Many thanks!
They are category enemy combatants. Put em in the US and the a-holes at the JustUs department of politically correct ineptotrons, and they become “civilians” who are not US citizens yet... somehow brought under US law. This was well explained when the prison was setup, with every convenience for the little darlings including a muzzie chef and lots of entertainments.
Pretty obvious.
I was able to read it. Maybe it was a pop-up you saw. Just look for the X in upper right or upper left of popup and click it to go away. If not try the Esc button to get rid of the popup asking you to subscribe.
Chuck! Trump just fired the Faggot-Muslim-In-Chief!
It's ALL GOOD!
Senate? Congress? We have those? Are you sure? I thought we only had two branches of DICTATORSHIP in America: the tyrannical executive, and the rubber stamp judiciary.
Seems to me that the so-called legislative branch was simply a figment of our imagination ... But, then again, I never was one much for following the blowhard proclamations and phony promises of those cowardly limp-wrist faggots, who pretend to be representatives of the people.
Sort of like “guns did this” and “guns did that” - don’t you think?
Who wrote the UN report, Iran?
After all, both Iran and Libya have been given spots like “head of the UN human rights commission” etc...
El Baradei, an Egyptian with family ties in Iran, was the head of the IAEA looking into Iranian WMD at a time Egypt was also trying to start a nuke program.
The source for the claim that CW came from anything other than Assad is Seymour Hersh... who has his own agendas.
The source for the claim that CW came from anything other than Assad is Seymour Hersh... who has his own agendas.
His biggest agenda is denying that Iraq had an ongoing WMD program. So that pretty much tells you how he would feel about WMDs being used where the satellite photos showed those Iraqi trucks heading in the war.
Yeah, so did Hillary on Benghazi...
and reported that the chemical composition ( fingerprint) of the agent used did not come from Syrian military stocks.
Not that they would ever admit it did since then they would implicate themselves... Syria's chemical weapons came from Russia, after all.
But they did not say which lab the weapons could be traced to...
I wouldn't either, if I were them. You realize that Russia's also violated every BCW treaty they ever signed? Why would they take credit for a chemical attack or blame an ally who bought the stuff from them and/or developed it with Russian assistance? Why would we give Russia any credibility on this given their proven treaty and sales record? Just because we hate Obama? Hell, Obama isn't doing anything that a Russian mole would not do if elected to the US Presidency... ever wonder if Obama's Russian is as good as his parent's? They met while taking Russian in college.
Regardless by taking control of the CW held by the Syrian regime the Russians thwarted another future false flag and stymied obama...
Russia wasn't trying to stymie a false flag, Russia was simply removing its stocks just as Primakov and the boys did in Iraq, to avoid complicating future relations with other countries by keeping their stuff from being used on some other country's troops or other target that could result in blowback on Russia. The russians have always had bug out plans for their products in the event their client states become destabilized.
That and also to blame inevitable failures on the other party.
bkmk
Probably.
fl
I feel your pain. lmfao No I don’t. Suffer, cry whatever. mwah ha ha ha ha
Sleep with dogs Chuck, and you get fleas but this time you also got the crabs.
I will be so pumped when Trump appoints Patreus as SecDef.
Hagel: “But Hagel remains pained at how his term as Pentagon chief was tarnished by what he views as backstabbing by some in the White House.
“I don’t know what the purpose was. To this day, I’m still mystified by that. But I move forward. I’m proud of my service,†he said.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Its simple Chuck, you were being discredited by liberal fascist ideologues in case you immediately went public. BTW, San Bernadino proves you were right Chuck, and the Prick Pres was wrong, and he is traitorous.
Eff Obama and his totalitarian Utopianism. May he rot in hell.
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.