Robert Gates Lines Up with Bush
By Robert Parry
December 19, 2006
In early December, when Senate Democrats politely questioned Robert M. Gates and then voted unanimously to confirm him as Defense Secretary, they bought into the conventional wisdom that Gates was a closet dove who would help guide the United States out of George W. Bush's mess in Iraq.
The thinking was that Gates, a former member of the Iraq Study Group, would represent the views of James Baker and other "realists" from George H.W. Bush's administration. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee praised Gates for his "candor" when he acknowledged the obvious, that the war in Iraq wasn't being won.
By Robert Parry
December 19, 2006
In early December, when Senate Democrats politely questioned Robert M. Gates and then voted unanimously to confirm him as Defense Secretary, they bought into the conventional wisdom that Gates was a closet dove who would help guide the United States out of George W. Bush's mess in Iraq.
The thinking was that Gates, a former member of the Iraq Study Group, would represent the views of James Baker and other "realists" from George H.W. Bush's administration. Hillary Clinton and other Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee praised Gates for his "candor" when he acknowledged the obvious, that the war in Iraq wasn't being won.
So, Gates is onboard with Bush's "stay-until-victory" plan for Iraq and is enthusiastic about having a "more lethal and more expeditionary" U.S. military.Though soft-spoken and mild-mannered – especially when compared to his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld – Gates sounds in substance more like a closet hawk than a closet dove.
Desperate to present themselves as "bipartisan," the newly victorious Democrats also avoided any impolite questions about Gates's history of deceptiveness or his role in politicizing the CIA's analytical division in the service of right-wing ideologues in the 1980s. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Secret World of Robert Gates," "Why Trust Robert Gates on Iraq," and "Robert Gates: Realist of Neo-con?"]
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