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Rumsfeld Out, Gates In: Clear Sailing
The FCM missed it (surprise, surprise) but one did not have to be a crackerjack intelligence analyst to see what was happening. At the time, Col. W. Patrick Lang, USA (retired), and I wrote a piece (See link, Dec. 20, 2006) in which we exposed the chicanery and branded such a surge strategy "nothing short of immoral, in view of the predicable troop losses and the huge number of Iraqis who would meet violent injury and death."Surprisingly, we were joined by Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Oregon, who explained to ABC’s George Stephanopoulos why Smith had said on the Senate floor that U.S. policy on Iraq may be "criminal."
"You can use any adjective you want, George. But I have long believed that in a military context, when you do the same thing over and over again without a clear strategy for victory, at the expense of your young people in arms, that is dereliction. That is deeply immoral."
Go West, Young Man
There are a host of reasons why Robert Gates should not be asked to stay on by President-elect Obama. Robert Parry has put together much of Gates’ history in Parry’s 2004 book, Secrecy & Privilege; readers may also wish to see what former intelligence analysts and I, who knew Gates at CIA, have written by going to Consortiumnews.com’s Gates archive.
For me, Gates’ role in the unnecessary killing of still more Americans and Iraqis is quite enough to disqualify him. I have known him for almost 40 years; he has always been transparently ambitious, but he is also bright. He knew better; and he did it anyway.
One can only hope that, once President-elect Obama has time to focus seriously on prospective cabinet appointments, he will discount advice from those taken in by the cheerleading for Gates or from the kind of dullard who suggested Obama finesse the FCM’s simplistic embrace of the surge by saying it "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."
For Gates, Rumsfeld was an extremely easy act to follow. But, at least in one sense, Gates is worse than Rumsfeld, for Rumsfeld had finally begun to listen to the right people and adjust. It now seems the height of irony that the adjustments he proposed in his memo of Nov. 6, 2006 would have had most U.S. troops out of Iraq by now.
But can one portray Gates as worse than Rumsfeld across the board? I think not. When you crank in torture, lying, and total disrespect for law, Rumsfeld has the clear edge in moral turpitude.
Still, I suspect this matters little to the thousands now dead because of the surge that Gates did so much to enable—and to the families of the fallen.
Surely, it should not be too much to expect that President-elect Obama find someone more suitable to select for secretary of defense than an unprincipled chameleon like Gates.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word , the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). McGovern was Robert Gates’ branch chief at the start of Gates’ career as a CIA analyst; he never asked McGovern for a letter of recommendation.
This article appeared originally on Consortiumnews.com.
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