Gaffney: It took “the policy equivalent of sustained waterboarding” for advisers to support Obama's “anti-nuclear agenda”
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
From Frank Gaffney's April 14 Washington Times op-ed:
Sarah Palin clearly has gotten under President Obama's skin with her sharp critique of his muddle-headed pursuit of U.S. denuclearization. In response, Mr. Obama felt compelled to note that he wasn't acting on his own. He told ABC News last week, “If the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin.”
Now, based on the acquiescence of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen with respect to the president's other radical assault on the U.S. military - namely, his determination to repeal the law barring avowed homosexuals from serving in the armed forces - one would have reason to doubt the ability, or at least the willingness, of these two men to give the commander in chief “advice” he did not want to receive.
In fact, it appears to have taken the policy equivalent of sustained waterboarding to bring the Pentagon leadership around to support much of Mr. Obama's anti-nuclear agenda. The New York Times reported that it required 150 interagency meetings, including 30 by the National Security Council, to produce the new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and START follow-on treaty. Give the guys on the E-Ring credit for holding out as long as they did. In the end, however, the Defense Department was reduced to agreeing to the following extraordinary decisions:
Previously: