Dave Lindorff: Huffing and Puffing at the Pentagon

[marmar]

Published on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Huffing and Puffing at the Pentagon
by Dave Lindorff



American Secretary of War Robert Gates knows a real leader when he sees one. “Clearly, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, Vladimir Putin, and not President Dmitry Medvedev, “has the upper hand right now.”

Well hell, Gates should know. After all, he deals on a daily basis with the same peculiar situation here in the US, where the president also is a figurehead and the real power lies in the hands of Vice President Dick Cheney.

But Gates doesn’t speak with such clarity and directness in other matters. “I think that there is a real concern that Russia has turned the corner here and is headed back toward its past rather than toward its future, and my hope is that we will see actions in the weeks and months to come that provide us some reassurance,” he said, speaking on ABC and CNN, claiming that the country was returning to the authoritarianism of the old Soviet era.

Ahem.

It might also be noted that the US is heading increasingly towards an authoritarian future, no? Certainly over the course of the last seven years we have seen the executive branch in the US claim that it no longer needs to enact or adhere to laws passed by Congress or to terms of international treaties approved by the Senate. We have also seen this administration refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas for information and testimony from White House officials, effectively establishing the presidency as a dictatorship, have we not? ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/19/11065/

[bemildred]

1. Notice how Gates assumes Putin and Medvedev are competing?

One wonders whether he considers that they might actually have a cooperative relationship? Or is that too foreign to his experience?