Robert Gates: Bush’s “Worst Person in the World.”

[apologies to Keith Olbermann]

The LA Times observes exactly what Over the Line, Smokey! has seen from almost the very beginning of the tenure of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense: Gates is not going along with the bullshit, unless the bullshit was in the Iraq Study Group’s report.

President Bush has mobilized his administration, including his top general in Iraq, in a major push to win more time and money for his war strategy. But one crucial voice has been missing from the chorus: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’.

In fact, Gates’ recent comments seem to run counter to the message from the White House. During a recent trip to the Middle East, Gates told the Iraqi government that time was running out and praised Democratic efforts in the U.S. Congress to set a timetable for withdrawal, saying it would help prod the Iraqis. He reiterated that point during a meeting with reporters last week.

….
“I believe Gates is on a completely different page than President Bush and Gen. Petraeus,” said a former senior Defense official who has supported the buildup. “He wants to see some results by summer, and if he doesn’t see those results, he seems willing to throw the towel in.”

Gates was a member of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which recommended in its report last year that most combat troops withdraw by early 2008. … several people who worked on the report said Gates was closely involved in early drafts and would have supported its eventual conclusions.

…there remains no question in my mind that Bob Gates, had he not become secretary of Defense, would have supported those recommendations,” said Leon E. Panetta, …member of the Iraq panel.

Gates came to the Pentagon last year vowing unvarnished assessments of progress in Iraq, and established a reputation on Capitol Hill for speaking frankly. As a result, he has become a trusted administration voice on Iraq policy…

But ever since taking over from the divisive Donald H. Rumsfeld in December, Gates largely has kept his views on the president’s troop increase to himself. …

But administration officials have since acknowledged that the new course already had been set, and Gates became its chief manager.

There were those who saw the Gates appointment as a cave-in, from the beginning; Sy Hersh:

The only reason Gates would take the job, after turning down an earlier offer to serve as the new Director of National Intelligence, the former high-level C.I.A. official said, was that “the President’s father, Brent Scowcroft, and James Baker”—former aides of the first President Bush—“piled on, and the President finally had to accept adult supervision.”

In his confirmation hearings, Gates pulled out this surprise:

BYRD: Do you believe the president has the authority, under either the 9/11 war resolution or the Iraq war resolution, to attack Iran or to attack Syria?

GATES: To the best of my knowledge of both of those authorizations, I don’t believe so.

This is directly opposed to the Bush/Cheney/Rice position.

Then, during his first weeks on the job, Gates pulled the rug out from under the “Iran is blowing up our soldiers right and left with explosive devices” circus by delaying the presentation of “evidence” to make it more “factual.” He then damned the significance of the story “with faint praise”:

I think there’s some serial numbers, there may be some markings on
some of the projectile fragments that we found, that point to Iran.

Could he possibly have stuffed more qualifiers into a single sentence? Could he possibly have underlined more clearly how scanty the numbers of weapons involved, and the evidence for any of them, were (that “some, some” beating like a drum)? Notice how he carefull said “point to Iran”, rather than “point to Iran’s government”?

He later defused the “it looks like an attack on Iran is imminent” rouses, undercutting the administration’s propaganda war:

…any kind of military action inside Iran itself, that would be a very last resort.”

Gates almost never goes on talk shows, and is the direct opposite of Rumsfeld’s arrogance when he does appear. Gates handled the Walter Reed fiasco by assigning blame and firing some people, the kind of management almost unheard of in the Bush administration. He is clearly not telling Bush what Bush wants to hear, and the Commander Guy is getting fed up, as evidenced by the very public “advertising” for a “War Czar.”

Bush wants some retired General with a bunch of ribbons on his chest, a short haircut and a brusque manner, to push Gates around: this new position would supposedly entail “knocking heads” of cabinet members? Which cabinet members is he referring to ? What cabinet level officials have anything important to do with Iraq, who aren’t totally compliant? I don’t think he’s talking about the Treasury Secretary, do you? Secretary of State? Of course not, he’s talking about the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. He wants some arrogant general to use his military record to undermine and bully Gates into submission.

The “War Czar” would relegate Gates to adding up budget numbers and meeting with the Joint Chiefs (another hated group) to decide on what color uniforms will be worn to the Army Navy Game next fall. So far, Bush hasn’t found anyone who’ll take the job, but I understand he now has a candidate who looks promising: he graduated from the ROTC program at Regent University.

But absent some sort of unexpected sea change/firing, it seems that Gates is in the mode of “okay, we go through the motions of a short term surge, like the ISGR would allow, then we’re getting the flip out.’ Bush is in a very difficult position; firing Gates would likely bring the impeachment discussion to the editorial pages, and even some talk shows; at the very least it would doom Bush’s intention to remain in Iraq for the next two years.

Bottom line, I think the LA Times has it right: Robert Gates probably lunches by himself, makes daily phone calls to Pappy and the “realist” crowd, and works to right the ship of our military, with or without the support of George W. Bush. I don’t mean to paint him as some hippie/antiwar protester; but in the land of the blind….