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Is this an outrage or a perfect metaphor for this administration in which no one is in the driver’s seat? Sometimes literally.
Amid tensions in the Middle East, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was hospitalized, including spending four days in the intensive care unit, according to two senior administration officials.
The Pentagon did not inform senior officials in the White House’s National Security Council of Austin’s hospitalization until Thursday — three days after he arrived at Walter Reed Medical Center, a U.S. official confirms. Politico first reported the delay.
Austin is 70. There was a time when Donald Rumsfeld was considered on the old side, but his first time on the job, he had been in his 40s. Dick Cheney was actually in his late 40s during the Reagan administration, Bill Cohen was in his late 50s and Bob McNamara was in his forties.
But by the standards of the Biden administration, Austin is ‘the kid’. Still an administration with a lot of people past retirement age should probably be more prepared for medical emergencies by senior staff.
Since Austin is 11 years younger than Joe Biden, they probably figured there was nothing to worry about. But spending 4 days in the ICU is not a joke. This suggests something serious was going on.
And so no one was running the Pentagon while we were clashing with Iran’s Houthi-backed Jihadis.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, who was on leave, has picked up his duties, the senior defense official said.
Hicks was on pre-scheduled leave when Austin was hospitalized this week, according to a defense official. She has been on vacation in Puerto Rico, the official said.
She “has maintained full communication with the DOD staff throughout,” the official said. “She has monitored DOD’s day-to-day operations and conducted some routine business.”
Zoom.
Austin’s number two was on vacation (and no one told her to scrap her vacation because your boss, who is a rather vital figure, is undergoing surgery, and you should probably stay home.
And even afterward, she “maintained full communications” while on vacation.
This is the sort of nonsense we’d have expected from a fourth-rate European NATO member country twenty years ago where nothing really matters anyway and the military just exists to occasionally show up at parades.
I don’t even understand this insane level of ineptitude and disregard for basic protocol. But then again I also don’t understand how national security secrets keep being leaked by guys arguing on video game forums.
(By the way if you want to know what Kathleen’s qualifications are to head the Pentagon, don’t ask. It will only depress you further.)
Her qualifications: A woke academic
Oh, “national security” is such an obsolete, and probably racist and colonialist concept anyway. Who needs it in this brave new world we inhabit where we have the rules-based international order and the UN I hear so much about from our administration.
The statement of the obama when he was elected about fundamentally changing America in a few days bears another look. This clown in the hospital and his little friends of the joint chiefs are a very scary bunch. Many are homosexual but all are certainly in their position in the armed forces because of their dependability to do what they are told.
They have not been in combat other than with a file cabinet. BUT they can be counted on to try to use their troops to put down secession or worse. The question is “will their troops follow them to kill protestors or secessionists?” Other than that they are useless.
President McKinley had an infirm Secretary of the Navy, However, the Assistant Secretary was an available, young, and active fill-in named Theodore Roosevelt (1897-98). He ordered a fleet to be located where it could attack Spain’s fleet at Manila in the Philippines if the US went to war with Spain to free Cuba. (Congress would declare Cuba could not become a colony). Biden lacks Theodore Roosevelt’s intellect, vigor, and character. Biden’s appointees are not chosen for having such attributes.
The joint chiefs aren’t in the chain of command. Since 1987, they are merely advisors to the President and the SecDef.
I thank God that these administrative idiots were not on the job. This would have been a disaster with them in the mix.
Given the DAMAGE they do WHILE on the job, it’s probably a GOOD thing when they are NOT on the job!!