Your World As I See It

Chapter 2: "Cry 'Havoc!' and Let Slip the Dogs of War" or "That Time That General Mattis Played Me For A Fool" Brief summary for those with limited time for this stuff: in this chapter, Bolton details the behind-the-scenes decision-making that went into the 2018 military strike against Syria in response to Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own people (not to be confused with the 2017 military strike against Syria in response to Assad's use of chemical weapons on his own people). He goes into how General Mattis outmaneuvered him in influencing President Trump's final decision, how useless Steve Mnuchin and Nikki Haley's contributions were, and, naturally, Trump's characteristic lack of focus. When we last left our self-styled hero, JB had just come on board as the National Security Advisor. In this second installment, he hops right into the fire (some might call it a dumpster fire) with the administration gearing up to react to B...

Finally back to blog! In the interests of reading this so other don't have to, here we go with John Bolton's The Room Where it Happened . In this series I will post my thoughts and reactions to reading the formal National Security Advisor's memoir of his time in the Trump White House. Naturally, I have a great number of thoughts on JB and his mustache, but I'll get to those after the focus on the book itself. Dig in to chapter 1! Chapter 1: "The Long March to a West Wing Corner Office" (or "Let Me Tell You Why I, John Bolton, am such an astute and amazing fellow!") The first chapter of the book deals basically with the preamble to Bolton becoming the NSA. For my purposes, this section of the book wanders around three basic threads: 1. Bolton confirming what any modestly-informed follower of American politics suspects: that Trump and his campaign/administration were woefully unprepared to win the election and to understand how the government works in ...