Trump gives new Pentagon chief a taste of his world view

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Trump gives new Pentagon chief a taste of his world view

By ROBERT BURNS
January 2, 2019

WASHINGTON (AP) — On his first working day in charge of the Pentagon, Pat Shanahan got a taste of President Donald Trump’s scattershot way of looking at the world.

As Shanahan sat to Trump’s left at a Cabinet meeting at the White House, the president denounced U.S. allies as freeloaders, expressed disgust with U.S. warfighting strategy in Afghanistan, mused about his own potential to be a great general, dismissed Syria as “sand and death,” spoke encouragingly of a second North Korea summit, and falsely claimed he had fired former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.

It was a very public reminder of the challenges that Shanahan, as acting defense secretary, faces as he navigates the complex terrain that led to the early end of his predecessor’s tenure.

At one point, Trump turned to Shanahan with an unusual demand.

The commander in chief said audits of Pentagon war spending must be “private” — an apparent reference to reports produced by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Trump asserted that the reports give away too much information and should not be publicly released, although the law that created that watchdog’s office says its reports must be made public.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/de857412f017429a8d04c90df631d6f8

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. GOP supports this shit and must pay a SEVERE price, grrr.

No, donald, not only would you make the worst general in history, you could not get thru one day of boot camp and the first time you saw combat you would shit your pants for two hours straight.

You are a coward, donald, a no good fucking coward.

So stop going on about being a general. Coward.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Trump gave away too much info on Israeli deep cover operatives in Syria. That was real. . . . nt

[soryang]

3. Defense policy or marketing strategy?

"We have some great allies, but a lot of our allies were taking advantage of our taxpayers and our country,” Trump said. “We can’t let that happen, and Pat Shanahan agrees with that and he’s agreed with that for a long time. And that was very important to me."

In a Freudian slip last week Trump referred to the nation as a "company" and then quickly changed to "country."

Creating new and larger markets for advanced US weapons in Eastern Europe and Asia is a policy that we may come to regret bitterly in the future.