The King's Corner

Eeny Meeny Miny Moe who is going to end this War? Well I don’t know, Do you? Apparently one of the potential Commander and Chief of the Armed Forces doesn’t exactly know either.  It seems that the illustrious Barack Obama has put his foot in his mouth again.  In an attempt to change the belief that he is flip-flopping on his platform for dealing with the Iraq War Obama made the following comment “I’m going to call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and give them a new mission, and that is to bring the war in Iraq to a close.  We are going to get out.” There seems to be one problem, I guess Barack Obama doesn’t understand the role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The Joint Chiefs of Staff does not have operational command of U.S. military forces.  That authority resides in the commanders of the various Unified Combatant Commands.  CENTCOM is the command with responsibility for Iraq [and 26 other countries including Afghanistan and Pakistan].  Earlier this month, the Senate confirmed President Bush’s appointment of General David Petraeus as CENTCOM commander.  Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno is the new US commander for Iraq, replacing Gen. Petraeus. Those are the people, along with the Secretary of Defense, to whom the orders Obama spoke of would be issued.
Knowing that Senator Obama, “is a student of military matters and intellectually voracious, it is thus rather stunning that he would betray such ignorance regarding the way the military actually functions.  In truth, the Joint Chiefs are not part of the chain of command. Indeed, they are specifically by statute not part of the chain of command but instead serve solely in an advisory capacity to the president.  Surely Obama knows this. Obviously he wouldn’t be seeking the role of Commander-in-Chief without knowing how the job is done. So what follows will be familiar to him, but may be enlightening to the media types who to date have overlooked yet another Obama misstatement.”