On June 29, 2010, Gen. David Petraeus was reaching the end of one of the most hectic weeks of his extraordinary career.
, a foreign policy adviser to Biden in the Senate who also served in the State Department during the Obama administration.Biden would have been aware of what the Obama administration was asking of the Petraeus family by interrupting the general’s tenure in Tampa and sending him back to the combat zone with no notice for a fourth tour. That understanding, in part, explained his appearance at the going-away dinner, according to Petraeus.
The Rolling Stone episode took place not long after the argument over the Afghan surge. During that debate, McChrystal, Petraeus, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates had all argued in favor of deploying 30,000 to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan in order to pursue a counterinsurgency strategy. Biden, supported by Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Marine Gen. James Cartwright and Army Lt. Gen.
When the Rolling Stone article came out in June 2010, it appears to have struck a nerve that was still raw for Biden. Michael Hastings, the article’s author, would later write in his 2012 book “The Operators” that Biden called Obama, “furious” at the quotes about him, and that the president had to spend five minutes “calming him down.”program “This Week” that he had not taken the slights attributed to McChrystal and his staff personally.
Panetta, who attended many meetings in the White House with Biden and senior military officers, said that although the vice president did not shrink from asking hard questions regarding military assumptions, he always did so respectfully. “I never heard him shout at anybody,” Panetta said.
Is this from The Onion? Nobody, I repeat NOBODY, had an ounce of respect for the Obama/Biden clowns. They F'd up everything they touched.