USA TODAY…Consider, for instance, the way he learned in 2007 that a new sort of armored vehicle called MRAPs — for “mine-resistant, ambush-protected” — was saving Marines from IEDs in Iraq. He read about it in USA TODAY, then asked for a briefing. Later, it was through the continuing news coverage that he learned about frustrating delays in sending them to the troops on dangerous duty.
The problem, he says, was that military officials didn’t want to spend money on them. “They kept thinking the war was always going to end just around the corner, that the war was going to be short,” he said. “That was the original position going in, and even by 2007 they were still assuming that the war was winding down, and so they didn’t want to spend a lot of money on something that wouldn’t be needed for very long and would be surplus at the end of the war…
“Frankly, I feel like we’re swimming in an ocean of hypocrisy here,” he says. “I mean, it’s not for nothing that the president carries an electro-magnetically protected tent with him everywhere he travels in the world — everywhere he travels in the world,” including to such allies as England, France and Germany. The tent provided a setting secure from surveillance… (more)
EDITOR: We recommend reading entire article. Among other matters, it shows the extraordinary deception practiced by the military in pursuit of its interest. On the other hand, Gates has criticized President Obama what seems to us as simply doing his job.
