The New Rumsfeld

Bush junior is a master of bad choices. He has the ability to ferret them out from a sea of wonderful alternatives. While we are still reeling from reek of inappropriateness and criminality, he implements them.

Nominating Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense is classic bad choice. I fail to understand why credible people are supporting his nomination to succeed Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.  
The only explanation I can imagine is PRSD. Post Rumsfeld traumatic shock disorder; that the nation, including congress, is so traumatized by the past 6 years of Bush’s disastrous choices that anybody, even an Iran Contra hoodlum  looks good.

Gates has all the baggage that made Rumsfeld a bad choice and more.
He’s a crony.
His relationship to the Bush family goes way back so don’ t expect independence.  
He is a long time associate of America’s own Darth Vader, Dick Cheney.
He is a believer in the politicizing intelligence and has a history of doing so.
He did his best to politicize the CIA. He sent agents to foreign policy think tanks that reflected White House dogma in hopes that they bring their reports in line with White House thought.
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He has no military experience.
With Iraq well beyond the crisis stage, we certainly don’t need any more ambitious amateurs running things.
His past activities indicate a strong leaning toward political extremism.

Gates is an untreated and unrepentant student of shadow government and illegal meddling in other people’s affairs. He is firm believer in the hegemony of the moneyed classes and projecting American power. Even worse, his expertise is in projecting power clandestinely where it is much more difficult to control.  

Iran Contra received only a cursory investigation. We are all ready paying a price for the Clinton pulling his punches on the Iran Contra investigation by having to deal with again as the Bush administration is providing full employment for most of the surviving cabal. With Negroponte, Reich, Poindexter and Abams on the payroll, is it really a good idea to add Gates?
Doesn’t this seem like congress is asking for trouble?  

New information was found in Iraq that deeply implicates Gates in the Iran Contra enterprise, the delay of releasing American hostages held in Iran and in arming Saddam Hussein in 1982.  

Because of the mendacity and ultra-secretiveness of the Bush administration, their intentions are always unfathomable until after the fact. You can be nearly certain that Gate’s nomination benefits the narrow range of personal interests that the Bush administration serves and that it will be at the expense of everyone else.  This puts an even greater than normal burden on congress to vet any nominee or legislation very carefully

Senator Reid needs to explain to us why he doesn’t intend to organize any opposition to putting another military amateur in place of the last dangerous dilettante.  He needs to tell us why having another Bush crony in the administration is great idea when all the others have proven to be tragic mistakes.

I would like to know what gives congress the right to overlook the fact that Gates has been involved in nefarious activities in all three of the countries where the US is currently involved militarily and was part of what amounted to a shadow government that contravened and lied to the US congress.    

After reaping the whirlwind for staging a war based on cooked intelligence, why on earth would congress think it’s a good idea to put a man in charge that has a history of cooking intelligence and pleasing the White House at the expense of truth.

There have to be dozens of people who are better qualified than Gates and there are millions who don’t have his baggage. This isn’t just a case of mediocrity; it’s a case of yet another inappropriate nominee that a lazy, wrong-headed congress intends to rubber stamp.

Such a poor system makes the many the victims of the few.

CarolDW