Well, at least no one is saying Bill Ayers devised President Obama's Afghanistan war strategy. But former Vice President Dick Cheney says that Obama is taking credit for work of someone else. Now if only Hamlet can make up his mind.Fox News reports:
the Bush administration had developed a new strategy on the war in Afghanistan before leaving office -- a strategy that he said "bears a striking resemblance" to the one announced by President Obama in March.
In a speech to the Center for Security Policy, Cheney said the Bush administration handed Obama's transition team a policy review of the Afghan war conducted last fall to meet the new challenges posed by the Taliban.
"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," Cheney said in prepared remarks.
Cheney's comments contradicted a claim by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel that the Obama administration had to form an Afghan war strategy from scratch because the Bush administration hadn't asked any key questions about the war and left it "adrift."
Related post:
Obama/Hamlet: Afghanistan decision within weeks
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Bush and Cheney's Afghanistan strategy was
ReplyDelete"Iraq first, Afghanistan second"
So now that Cheney and Bush left a big mess for Obama to clean up, he's trying to act like the Bush administration has always had Afghanistan at the top of their priority list???
By Robert Burns, AP Military Writer
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military's top officer acknowledged on Tuesday that for all the importance of preventing Afghanistan from again harboring al-Qaida terrorists, Washington's first priority is Iraq.
"In Afghanistan, we do what we can," said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "In Iraq, we do what we must."
His statement, delivered with emphasis in a prepared opening statement to the House Armed Services Committee, prompted some Democrats to say it showed what they have argued for years: that the Bush administration has become so bogged down in Iraq that it cannot make more effort in Afghanistan.
"I find it troubling that our ongoing commitment in Iraq prevents us from dedicating resources in Afghanistan beyond what is necessary to prevent setbacks, as opposed to what is required to realize success," Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the committee, said after the hearing.
Mullen, testifying with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, said that war is "by design and necessity, an economy-of-force operation. There is no getting around that. Our main focus, militarily, in the region and in the world right now is rightly and firmly in Iraq."
December 2007
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-12-11-3963072919_x.htm