Posted on Thursday, 22nd October 2009 by Glenn D. Frankovis
From The Weekly Standard Blog – Bill Kristol:
The following is the October 21st, 2009 response of former Vice-President Dick Cheney to the distortions coming out of the Obama administration and being aired by the State-Run media recently.
(An excerpt from the speech)
“Recently, President Obama’s advisors have decided that it’s easier to blame the Bush Administration than support our troops. This weekend they leveled a charge that cannot go unanswered. The President’s chief of staff claimed that the Bush Administration hadn’t asked any tough questions about Afghanistan, and he complained that the Obama Administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.
In the fall of 2008, fully aware of the need to meet new challenges being posed by the Taliban, we dug into every aspect of Afghanistan policy, assembling a team that repeatedly went into the country, reviewing options and recommendations, and briefing President-elect Obama’s team. They asked us not to announce our findings publicly, and we agreed, giving them the benefit of our work and the benefit of the doubt. The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them. They made a decision – a good one, I think – and sent a commander into the field to implement it.
Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity.”
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October 23rd, 2009 at 5:24 am
Karl Rove’s Wall Street Journal opinion: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574487241866434378.html
(An excerpt):
“Meanwhile, the Obama administration has made winning the war harder by mismanaging the U.S.’s relationship with the Afghan government. Mr. Obama refused to take a call from Afghan President Hamid Karzai after his recent disputed election, a confidante to Mr. Karzai told me. That same confidante also said that the Afghan president was dismayed when political strategist James Carville, who has close ties to both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Mr. Emanuel, became an adviser to Ashraf Ghani, who ran against Mr. Karzai. Mr. Karzai took that as a sign that Mr. Obama was encouraging opposition to him. And, finally, administration figures have raised doubts about the White House’s confidence in Afghanistan’s government. In his interview on CNN on Sunday, for example, Mr. Emanuel questioned “whether, in fact, there’s an Afghan partner.”