January 9 - Christie's Mea Culpa and the Continuing "Bridgegate" Scandal; Robert Gates Unloads on his Former Boss; The Exodus of the Afghan Elite's Ill-Gotten Gains

Full Program
 

Part 1

We begin with the prospective Republican candidate for president in 2016, Governor Christie of New Jersey, who is desperately trying to head off a growing political scandal by issuing profuse apologies at a press conference after having fired his top aides. David Redlawsk, a polling expert and professor of Political Science at Rutgers University who directs the Rutgers/Eagleton Poll, joins us to discuss how Christie can recover his greatest political asset as a straight-talking bi-partisan problem solver when his closest aides indulged in such petty partisan retribution and problem-causing gridlock that is now under investigation.

Part 2

Then we look into the controversial new memoir by Robert Gates, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War”, that criticizes both President Obama and Vice President Biden’s handling of the Afghan war. Melvin Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy who was one of three former CIA officials to testify before the Senate against the nomination of Robert Gates as CIA Director, joins us. We discuss Gates’s trashing of his former boss while Obama is still in the White House and Mel Goodman’s article at Consortium News “Robert Gates’s Narcissistic ‘Duty’”.

Part 3

Then finally we speak with a former United Nations political officer in Afghanistan, Christine Fair who is a professor in the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University. We discuss the uptick in the capital flight out of Afghanistan as the Afghan elite hedge their bets prior to the NATO withdraw from a country the U.S. has sacrificed lives and treasure to stabilize. We also discuss Robert Gate’s defense of the failed counter-insurgency strategy he championed with the much-trumpeted surge.