SPUTNIK GLOBE
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to inform his own deputy and even President Joe Biden that he had been hospitalized and could not perform his duties for an extended period of time revealed the systematic incompetence of the entire Biden administration, former US defense officials told Sputnik.
Austin underwent an initial medical procedure on December 22 and then suffered severe pain on January 1 after which he was admitted to intensive care at Walter Reed military hospital in Maryland.
Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks assumed some of Austin’s duties on January 2, but she had no idea what had happened to him at that time. Hicks was only informed of his hospitalization on January 4.
The White House was also kept in the dark for four days about Austin’s condition. Air Force General C. Q. Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was told on January 2 that Austin was hospitalized. But, for some reason, he failed to inform the White House, leaving the Defense Department leaderless while war raged in both Ukraine and between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza.
Incompetence on All Levels
Retired CIA analyst Philip Giraldi, founder and chair of the Council for the National Interest, said the chaos, disorganization and incompetence extended well beyond Biden and Austin personally but throughout their entire administration.
“The lack of competency … as far as I am concerned, extends throughout the entire Biden administration inner circle. We are in for a rough 2024!” Giraldi said.
Retired Pentagon analyst Chuck Spinney further noted that Deputy Defense Secretary Hicks had no scientific or engineering background, or the kind of military management that the Defense Department always needed.
“Hicks … has a PhD in political science, but no history of real scientific and engineering training and no experience in managing the subtle, technologically intensive, bureaucratically complex infighting strategies of the Pentagon’s bureaucracy – with its many hidden as well as obvious nodes of independent interests and informal power sharing relations,” Spinney said…
