Free Republic

Speaking at a National Guard Association Conference in September 2008, Joe Biden praised Defense Secretary Robert Gates, exclaiming “Thank God Gates in in charge now!” Flash forward six years later and Gates has not returned the favor. Gates wrote a new memoir, which details his time during office, revealing can’t miss tidbits and making digs at important government officials, most notably taking a jab at Vice President Biden.

The White House, in damage control after a blistering memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates went public, insisted that a full slate of events between President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden was not meant to prop up Biden. In a rare move, the White House opened up the weekly lunch between Obama and Biden to photographers Wednesday, prompting speculation that the administration was trying to gloss over a brutal 24 hours for Obama’s number two. “You can decide for yourself what you want to believe,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday, calling the timing of the...

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is releasing his memoir, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” a 600-page book that offers a stark, insider’s view of Washington, the Pentagon, Congress and America’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. (You can read an exclusive WSJ excerpt.) Here’s a look at some of the book’s most riveting revelations:1. Contempt for Congress Mr. Gates expresses open disdain for Congress and the way lawmakers treated him when he testified at hearings. “I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and...

"I may be the secretary of defense, but I am also an American citizen,  and there is no son-of-a-bitch in the world who can talk to me like that." Turns out that (genuinely bipartisan) former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates -the only high level official to stay-on from the Bush to Obama administrations, and who worked in some capacity for every US president since Richard Nixon- 'almost quit' in a 2009 Afghanistan strategy meeting, after being treated like crap by a President who he felt had zero grasp of "the uncertainties and unpredictability of war.' " This -among other...