Gates’s criticism of Obama in ‘Duty’ shows risks of initial ‘team of rivals’ approach --- In reminiscing about his time in office and the advice he has received along the way, President Obama often cites an early warning passed on by the Washington veteran he decided to keep in his first Cabinet: Robert Gates. -- “Every day,” Gates told Obama in the first weeks of his presidency, “someone, somewhere, in the federal government is screwing up.” -- Now it turns out that Gates often believed that person was Obama — or, at least, some of those very close to him. -- With the impending publication of a memoir that is critical of the president and some of his top advisers, Gates has highlighted the risk Obama took by building a jostling, ambitious, big-intellect “team of rivals” to advise him. -- The former defense secretary, a holdover from the George W. Bush administration, has called into question Obama’s commitment to his Afghan war policy, criticized how political calculation influenced national security decisions and complained about the president’s distrust of the uniformed military command. -- Conservatives see a politically motivated White House and a president who couldn’t decide what to do in Afghanistan, choosing a half-measure and escape plan instead of a strategy to win. Liberals see a president unafraid of the military and eager to reflect the country’s growing antiwar sentiment, focusing instead on economic problems at home. --- White House officials say the feeling in the West Wing about Gates’s assertions is a sense of disappointment more than betrayal. The book is a distraction at a time when postwar Afghanistan plans are in flux, fallout from National Security Agency disclosures are roiling diplomatic relations and Iraq is surging with violence, they say. -- More, Scott Wilson, Washingtonpost, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gatess-criticism-of-obama-in-duty-shows-risks-of-initial-team-of-rivals-approach/2014/01/08/550427c0-7875-11e3-b1c5-739e63e9c9a7_story.html?hpid=z1