Barack Obama has only been President-elect one week, was invited to the White House for a private discussion with President Bush, while his wife Michelle took a tour of the White House with Laura, and the not so private discussion was revealed by his aides today, while other Obama operatives, called national security advisers, revealed in the Washington Post that he would explore talks with Iran and Syria to resolve the Afghanistan War, while withdrawing US troops from Iraq.

The leaks on the private discussion in the Oval office angered President Bush, and rightly so.

The revelation?  Rookie Obama wants to bailout the auto industry before the end of Bush’s term and Bush allegedly said he would consider it for some form of auto industry aid if the Dems would drop their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Columbia.

Meanwhile the Washington Post reported that Obama said during the campaign that his administration would explore talks with countries such as Iran and Syria, rejecting bedrock Bush policy and rhetoric that some US military officials believe may have outlived their usefulness.

However, the Post reported that Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called a withdrawal timeline “dangerous.”  Others are distrustful of a new administration they see as unschooled in the counterinsurgency wars that have consumed the military for the past seven years.

The Post went on to say, “Iran, on Afghanistan’s western border, has played a mixed role over the years, at times indirectly cooperating with US objectives and at times assisting the extremists.”

Obama advisers also said he is open to supporting discussions between the Afghan government and “reconcilable” elements of the Taliban, a nascent effort of which the State Department has been fairly dismissive.

I don’t profess to be a student of foreign relations, military strategy or the mid-east, but do understand character, judgment and behavior.  And if this is an example of Obama’s character, judgment and behavior within seven days of being president-elect we are in for some fireworks.

Perhaps we should more carefully examine the comments a Republican congressman from Georgia who said Monday that he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.

“It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he’s the one who proposed this national security force,” Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. “I’m just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may — may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism.”