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According to this report, taken from a Roll Call subscription story, House Armed Services Committee ranking member Buck McKeon alleges that Barack Obama has ordered Centcom commander, General David Petraeus, and Afghanistan commander, General Stanley McChrystal, to "scrub" their assessment for more troops, because the President "wasn't inclined to send troops over there."

Well, that certainly gives new meaning to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Here are the key parts of the Roll Call story by Jenifer Bendery and John Stanton.

House Armed Services ranking member Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) said Wednesday that Gates told him on a July trip to Afghanistan that Obama "wasn't inclined to send troops over there."

McKeon said Gates also told him that, in light of Gen. David Petraeus and McChrystal being asked to submit assessments to the president on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively, Obama had "given instructions" to them to "scrub everything, to make sure they didn't ask for more than they needed."

That conversation prompted McKeon to ask McChrystal if the directive sent "a chilling message" that the U.S. and NATO commander should ask for less troops than he needed. "He said, ‘No, I'm honor-bound to ask for what I need,'" McKeon said."

Barack Obama has troops in harm's way, fighting the only war he campaigned for a year and a half as saying was the "Good War", and now that he's seeing wavering support in polling and his Democratic anti-war base, he wants to pretend the problem doesn't exist. He is ordering his generals not to inform him, and worse yet, don't even make the request public.

He's Vietnamizing Afghanistan. Take all the fecklessness of Jimmy Carter, the smarminess of Bill Clinton, and now sprinkle in the commander-in-chief ineffectiveness of LBJ, and you have a composite of Barack Obama.

Thus at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State....As I went to bed about 3 A.M., I was conscious of a profound sense of relief.  At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene.  I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.  Eleven years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms.  My warnings over the past six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me.  I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it...Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.

Greetings,

I found your interview last week with Sam Tanenhaus fascinating. Especially fascinating to me were Mr. Tanenhaus' observations about the current state of the Conservative Movement. So, I thought I'd reply to them.

The American Left has been claiming, almost since the day Ronald Reagan left office that "American Conservatism was out of intellectual steam. There were no fresh or vital new ideas that would power Conservatism into the future."

Well, setting aside the fact, that as far as I can tell the Last New Idea the Left had was "maybe, just maybe, we went a little overboard during the French Revolution", I would like to reply to Mr. Tanenhaus and others who are saying the Conservatism is a Dead Letter.
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Mr. Obama doesn't need more TV time. He needs a new health-care plan that comes from actual bipartisan negotiation and compromise—one that most Americans see as something that will actually improve their health care. He needs his facts to align with reality.