The insufferable Leon Panetta has a new book revealing how President Obama, Denis McDonough, Valerie Jarrett and Ben Rhodes constructed every encountered policy, including defense, through a domestic political lens.  Duh! 
This short-sighted and naïve world view is why the foreign policies of the Obama administration -from Libya and the support for al-Qaeda, to Iran and the almost certain nuclear bomb they will acquire- have been catastrophic in consequence. But it really doesn’t matter now does it?

The value in Panetta’s public push back -against the amateur crowd occupying the White House- would have been important when those disastrous policies were being debated, planned and executed. But now, not so much – the Rubicon has been crossed, and hundreds of U.S. military have been killed.
It should also be remembered that Panetta the Prog is responsible for constructing ‘Operation Zero Footprint’ with Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. A State Dept. and CIA operation which eventually led to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Neither Clinton nor Panetta have been held to account.
(Via Washington Post) Tell-all memoirs can be tough when they actually, well, tell all. But it would be hard to surpass the shot that Leon Panetta, President Obama’ s former CIA director and secretary of defense, takes at his former boss and the White House foreign policy team in his new book: “Worthy Fights.”

A book excerpt in Time Magazine Thursday recounts the internal battles over the timing of the withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq and whether a residual force would remain. Panetta and other Pentagon officials argued for keeping that force.
“My fear, as I voiced to the President and others,” Panetta writes, “was that if the country split apart or slid back into the violence that we’d seen in the years immediately following the U.S. invasion, it could become a new haven for terrorists to plot attacks against the U.S.” He adds that his stance “reflected not just my views but also those of the military commanders in the region and the Joint Chiefs.”
Then, particularly damaging as the nation struggles with the Islamic State and a destabilized region, Panetta suggests Obama’s team put political promises before good foreign policy.
“But the President’s team at the White House pushed back, ” he recalls, “and the differences occasionally became heated. [Undersecretary of Defense Michele] Flournoy argued our case, and those on our side viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests.”
The White House, Panetta writes, “coordinated the negotiations but never led them. . . but without the President’s active advocacy, al-Maliki was allowed to slip away.”  (more)

You can read the entire book excerpt (via TIME) HERE