Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Monday he’s “disappointed” by the reaction to his upcoming memoir.
In an interview on NBC News’s “Today” show, host Matt Lauer asked if Gates has been surprised by the backlash to the book since excerpts were released last week.
{mosads}“Not really surprised, but in a way disappointed that the book has sort of been hijacked by people along the political spectrum to serve their own purposes, taking quotes out of context … it’s part of the political warfare in Washington that I decry in the book,” he said in the live interview.
He was seen wearing a neck brace after injuring his first vertebrae in a fall in his home recently.
Gates writes in his memoir Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War that President Obama doubted his strategy in Afghanistan. He also slammed Vice President Biden’s foreign policy positions and praised former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The news media, Gates said, lost sight of the fact that he “actually agreed virtually on every decision President Obama made on Afghanistan.” He writes in his book that Obama questioned the war’s surge.