I’m actually more interested in other revelations from Bob Woodward’s new book than the quote Dalton highlights. Like the fact that Obama didn’t like options for Afghanistan offered by experts, so he decided that he knew best:

President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page “terms sheet” that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in “Obama’s Wars,” to be released on Monday.

According to the report, Obama refused to talk of “victory” against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. In fact, his top priority was leaving, regardless of the conditions on the ground. Somehow he viewed the withdrawal of U.S. troops from an unstable, former terrorism-backing state as a national security imperative.

“This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan,” Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. “Everything we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It’s in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room.”

Top military advisers told Obama that another 40,000 troops and more time in order to fulfill their military objectives. Obama, who possesses absolutely no military experience, again decided that he knew better. He denied the request.

Obama is shown at odds with his uniformed military commanders, particularly Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command during the 2009 strategy review and now the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan…

Tensions often turned personal. National security adviser James L. Jones privately referred to Obama’s political aides as “the water bugs,” the “Politburo,” the “Mafia,” or the “campaign set.” Petraeus, who felt shut out by the new administration, told an aide that he considered the president’s senior adviser David Axelrod to be “a complete spin doctor.”

Not to be difficult, but that’s precisely what David Axelrod is: A spin doctor. He’s known for his work on the Obama campaign and his astroturf efforts. Meanwhile, many of Obama’s aides came from the corrupt Chicago political machine. It sounds like Jones and Petraeus had their numbers.

During a flight in May, after a glass of wine, Petraeus told his own staffers that the administration was “[expletive] with the wrong guy.” Gates was tempted to walk out of an Oval Office meeting after being offended by comments made by deputy national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon about a general not named in the book.

And this: When Obama floated the idea of naming Hillary Clinton to a top post, Axelrod asked how Obama could possibly trust her. That just thrill the Clinton Democrats.

And finally, this:

Obama kept asking for “an exit plan” to go along with any further troop commitment, and is shown growing increasingly frustrated with the military hierarchy for not providing one. At one strategy session, the president waved a memo from the Office of Management and Budget, which put a price tag of $889 billion over 10 years on the military’s open-ended approach.

I hate to be difficult, but $88.9 billion per year is chump change compared to the domestic spending habits of the Obama Administration and its allies in Congress.

Along with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time, they kept pushing for their 40,000-troop option as part of a broad counterinsurgency plan along the lines of what Petraeus had developed for Iraq.

The president is quoted as telling Mullen, Petraeus and Gates: “In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, ‘We’re doing fine, Mr. President, but we’d be better if we just do more.’ We’re not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] . . . unless we’re talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011.”

This is not an administration dedicated to victory in the war on terrorism. It’s an administration dedicating to abandoning the war on terror as soon as possible, regardless of conditions on the ground. And that’s not promising.