President Obama is touting his foreign policy experience on the campaign trail, but startling new statistics suggest that national security has not necessarily been the personal priority the president makes it out to be. It turns out that more than half the time, the commander in chief does not attend his daily intelligence meeting.
The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent. By contrast, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush almost never missed his daily intelligence meeting.
I asked National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor about the findings, and whether there were any instances where the president attended the intelligence meeting that were not on his public schedule. Vietor did not dispute the numbers, but said the fact that the president, during a time of war, does not attend his daily intelligence meeting on a daily basis is “not particularly interesting or useful.” He says that the president reads his PDB every day, and he disagreed with the suggestion that there is any difference whatsoever between simply reading the briefing book and having an interactive discussion of its contents with top national security and intelligence officials where the president can probe assumptions and ask questions. “I actually don’t agree at all,” Vietor told me in an e-mail, “The president gets the information he needs from the intelligence community each day.”
Yet Vietor also directed me to a Post story written this year in which Obama officials discuss the importance of the intelligence meeting and extol how brilliantly the president runs it. “Obama reads the PDB ahead of time and comes to the morning meeting with questions. Intelligence briefers are there to answer those questions, expand on a point or raise a new issue,” The Post reported. “One regular participant in the roughly 500 Oval Office sessions during Obama’s presidency said the meetings show a president consistently participating in an exploration of foreign policy and intelligence issues.”
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Obama Skipping Over Half of Intelligence Briefings
- Details
- Tuesday, 11 September 2012 13:10
- Written by Darrell Lect
President Obama has been spiking the football over the killing of Osama bin Laden that happened under his watch. In fact, his team of surrogates went so far as to coordinate their efforts and brand it as a "gutsy" call. However, there's nothing gutsy about senior advisor Valerie Jarrett canceling the raid three times because she was worried about the politics. A new report shows that Obama has only attended 43.8% of his daily intelligence briefings, yet he proclaims to be a foreign policy juggernaut.
The Washington Post offers details about Obama's attendance at his daily intelligence meetings. It's certainly disconcerting, as the elite media and the White House heavily promote the perception that Obama is the saving grace to America's foreign policy; that every country hated America under Bush and Obama brought respect back to the country. That notion is patently false, as many countries dislike what Obama has done to America.
The spin is how the White House responds to a situation that is worrisome. We saw Obama's actions with the Arab Spring, which gave the radical Muslim Brotherhood power. We also saw Obama sit by idly, as protesters in Iran waited for any hope and intervention from the United States, but ramming Obamacare into law was more important. As for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, our forces face much graver danger because Obama announced when the wars will end, which was entirely for political purposes.
We believe that Obama has missed so many intelligence briefings because he's now concerned about his re-election and, earlier in his term, he cared solely about ramming his extreme agenda into law when Democrats had a super majority. Obama never had much concern about foreign policy because he's a Marxist and his domestic agenda is how he could "fundamentally transform" America. Additionally, his upbringing was very anti-American, which also needs to be taken into account. Somebody that apologizes for America, bows to foreign leaders and thinks that being friendly to the enemy is exactly the type of individual that would miss over 50% of foreign intelligence meetings.
Darrell Lect is a contributing editor for Habledash.