Barack Obama will have caused his cyber-base to gnash their collective teeth to bits:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has asked most Bush administration political appointees except those targeted for dismissal to stay on in the Pentagon until replaced by the Obama administration in the coming months.
“I have received authorization from the president-elect’s transition team to extend a number of Department of Defense political appointees an invitation to voluntarily remain in their current positions until replaced,” Mr. Gates said in an Dec. 19 e-mail to political appointees.
The chance to stay is “available to all willing political appointees with the exception of those who are contacted individually and told otherwise,” he stated.
[. . .]
Geoff Morrell, Pentagon press secretary, confirmed that Mr. Gates wants to retain most political appointees. He said the policy of keeping so many holdover officials is unusual for a transition from a Republican to Democratic administration.
This represents yet another comprehensive defeat for the netroots, who want American troops out of Iraq yesterday and who naturally believe that any decision to continue the lifetime of the Bush defense establishment represents a frustration of that goal. To be sure, a fair amount of the holdover personnel will eventually be replaced, but Secretary Gates seems set to keep a lot of them for the long term, as the story indicates.
I am now growing increasingly confident–especially with the presents of a Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and the United States that the incoming Obama Administration will fail to meet the President-elect’s stated goal of removing all combat personnel from Iraq within 16 months of the Inauguration. I am increasingly confident that the President-elect will not care that the deadline is not met–indeed, I think that he does not want it to be met. I am increasingly confident that he will let the Netroots know that he does not want the deadline to be met. And I am increasingly confident that when the netroots howl in fury, he will chuckle in response.
Perhaps the chuckling will be done in private. But it will be done nonetheless.
Moe Lane
Steve Maley
Dan McLaughlin
Neil Stevens
Daniel Horowitz
The 16 months
USNJIMRET (Diary) Wednesday, December 24th at 6:31AM EST (link)was never a ‘reality based’ notion in the first place.
From a simple logistics point of view, damned difficult to move that much material out of Iraq in the time alloted.
Particularly if the ground work for the relocation of materials and equipment isn’t being done until after the inauguration.
Even more particularly so if the economy is not humming along.
The amount of sea lift (ships) necessary to move all the ‘stuff’ simply isn’t available at the drop of even a Presidential hat.
Consider also that you’ve got to have some place to put all that ‘stuff’ once you remove it from Iraq.
Personnel, equipment and personnel currently in Iraq would go…..where?
Much of the equipment is newly purchased and often shipped as soon as possible from the manufacturer to Iraq. Where do you put all those military “toys” if brought back to the USA?
It wold be a 16 month logistical nightmare, believe me.
Not that the Nut roots would give a damn about something as ‘crazy’ as a proper plan, and the attendant problems of a forced deadline.
They, the Nutters, believe in a different ‘reality’ then the rest of the world lives in.
Any idea who has been "targeted for dismissal", and why they were targeted?
smagar (Diary) Wednesday, December 24th at 7:44AM EST (link)NT
“Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?” (Macaulay)
That's Exactly What I Want To Know Too (nt)
IJB Wednesday, December 24th at 10:21AM EST (link)this was the best we could have hoped for
E Pluribus Unum (Diary) Wednesday, December 24th at 10:29AM EST (link)The fact that the Obama administration will dismiss a certain few (or evevn quite a few) is wholly unsurprising, and to be fair, not terribly unreasonable.
My guess is that they reserve the right to remove anybody in the upper DOD that is too much of an obvious political target. No names come immediately to mind for me.
Had the Obama admin come in and totally replaced the top of DOD with their own, this would have been very bad — and totally expected. We would have had basically Cal-Berkeley in charge of our troops and nukes.
What happens now is that in the near term, the prevailing culture remains, although diluted somewhat.
Kill the Terrorists
Protect the Borders
Punch the Hippies h/t IMAO
My consistent questions...
Crowe (Diary) Wednesday, December 24th at 12:39PM EST (link)…to those whom I would meet who said they were voting for Obama was, “Why? What do you know about him? What about him gives you any confidence whatsoever that he can or will do what he’s talking about now?”
Usually the response was a tirade against Bush.
To quote an important figure of the past year or so…
“America’s chickensssss…. are comin’ home to roost!”
Unfortnuately, as they roost, they will crap on all of us and not just those who voted to bring the coming tsunami of chicken crap upon us.
“We sleep soundly in our beds only because
rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence upon those who would do us harmDear Leader Obama gives us leave to do so.”huh
deepredpatriot Wednesday, December 24th at 3:45PM EST (link)He’s keeping conservatives in the DOD so that when Iran nukes Israel, or Al Qaeda invades Iraq after we leave, he can blame it on them.