Published on Thursday, November 30, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Robert Gates is Rumsfeld Lite; Hadley—Just Lite
by Ray McGovern
Press reporting on information provided to the Senate by Robert Gates, President George W. Bush’s nominee for the post of defense secretary, show Gates hewing closely to the rhetoric of his predecessor. Gates is shown to be more parrot than innovator in his responses to a questionnaire given him by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which takes up his nomination on Dec. 5.
None of this surprises those of us who for decades have watched Gates make career after career out of trimming his sails to the prevailing winds. No one should expect Gates to depart one iota from the position of the president, who repeated yesterday that there will be no troop pullout from Iraq “until the job is complete.” In answering the senators’ questions, Gates insisted that an early pullout would risk “leaving Iraq in chaos
dangerous consequences both in the region and globally for many years to come.”
No surprise either in Gates’ strong endorsement of spending billions more on—and prematurely deploying—the missile defense system that was Rumsfeld’s pet project and for an earlier version of which Gates saw fit to advocate, even while he was still CIA director. Even if the system can be made to work (and this has yet to be demonstrated), the it is of highly dubious utility in preventing the kinds of terrorist attacks that appear far more likely than a nuclear-tipped missile from a “rogue” state like North Korea or Iran—if they ever succeed in developing one.
Gates lumps the two together, saying, “North Korea and Iran continue to develop longer range missiles and are determined to pursue weapons of mass destruction.” In attributing this intention to Iran, Gates demonstrates that he has lost none of his verve as master-practitioner of what we intelligence alumni call “faith-based intelligence.” Among serious intelligence analysts, especially in the Department of Energy where the expertise lies, the jury is out on whether the evidence proves that Iran is embarked on a weapons-related nuclear program—and, if so, how soon it might have a deliverable nuclear weapon. And the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei also keeps saying existing evidence permits no hard and fast conclusions.
In prejudging that key issue, Gates has elevated the status of Iranian intentions, in Rumsfeldian parlance, from a “known unknown” to a “known known.” In doing so, he has thrown in his lot with the so-called “neo-conservatives,” whose record for accuracy in such judgments leaves much to be desired, and who—after a pre-election lull—have been revving up for another try at prevailing on the president to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Gates’ position on Iran’s nuclear weapons plans suggests he will not put up much resistance to importuning by Vice President Dick Cheney and the neo-conservatives—not to mention the Israelis—that Iran’s fledgling nuclear program must be nipped in the bud.
In what is known so far of the information in the completed questionnaire, Gates made one departure from long established White House policy. Very much in tune with the admonishment of his patron Jim Baker that talking directly with adversaries in not “appeasement,” Gates implicitly criticized the anathema on negotiating with the likes of Syria and Iran, stressing that such talks could come “as part of an international conference” of the kind the Baker/Hamilton group is said to be suggesting.
The complete article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1130-21.htm
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