The White House was on the defensive on Wednesday with news of the release of Robert Gates' In Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary of War, in which the former Secretary of Defense offered a critique of President Barack Obama as a somewhat indecisive leader while also knocking Vice President Joe Biden, NBC News and BBC News reported.
"I never doubted his support for the troops, only his support for their mission," Gates wrote about Obama. Gates served as Secretary of Defense both for presidents George W. Bush and Obama.
In his memoir, Gates described Obama as a "man of personal integrity," who nonetheless felt uncomfortable with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama "doesn't consider the war to be his... For him it's all about getting out," charging that the president "did not believe in his own strategy" to win the war in Afghanistan.
Gates also slammed Vice President Biden, a man he as someone who "has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
Jay Carney, Obama's spokesman, said that the president disagrees with the former Secretary of Defense's assessment about Biden.
"The president greatly values the counsel of the vice president on matters foreign and domestic," Carney said.
Gates also commented on the "controlling nature" of the Obama administration within the White House, "which he says constantly interfered in Pentagon affairs, even though civilian aides lacked knowledge of military operations," as reported by the BBC.
"All too early in the administration, suspicion and distrust of senior military officers by senior White House officials - including the president and vice president - became a big problem for me as I tried to manage the relationship between the commander-in-chief and his military leaders," wrote Gates.
The former Secretary of Defense, however gave credit to President Obama for approving the raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound, something that he himself had long opposed.
Gates called it "one of the most courageous decision I had ever witnessed in the White House."
