Rummy out - Gates in -- your thoughts?

[radfringe]

ok so is it rearranging the deck chairs on the hindenberg? or is bush hoping daddy's buddy can save his ass?

more to come resignations/replacements?

[bumblebee1]

1. I'll go with Bush hoping his daddy's buddies can save his ass.

eom

[acmavm]

2. Trading one proven criminal bastard for another. But this one

has approval of Poopy and that means that he's just better at it than Rumsfeld.

It's not like anything the bush** family does is for the benefit of anybody other than the bush** family.

[lazyriver]

9. You are so correct about that

If anyone thinks this move is to get a new direction in Iraq, I doubt they have been paying attention. This is slight of hand to create the illusion that things are changing. Remember when he swapped press secretaries and passed it off as making sweeping changes in his cabinet when his approval rating had recently dropped?

[whistle]

3. More BushCo neo-con cronyism

[Jacobin]

22. Gates is NOT a neocon. He's a paleocon

and thats good

[Debau2005]

4. I am currently dating a super guy that is in the military

He does not want a former CIA Chief (spook) as Sec of Defense. He says his military friends are in agreement! Interesting...but then I doubt Bush bothered to ask anyone for their opinion!

[Norquist Nemesis]

7. Gates has me spooked

His name didn't ring any bells with me at first. That Bush would put in a spook, given Rummy's pentient for 'Special Forces' and the military psy-ops that have been coming out on the domestic front, all I can say is... :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared: :scared:

[Joe_VB]

5. The only thing it means to me is another,

Iran-Contra criminal back in power....

[gfnrob]

6. The day after Ortega's return!! Spooky.

[Joe_VB]

15. Interesting.....I did not put those two together.....

[endarkenment]

8. Don't care about which deck chair it is, the ship is what's sinking.

Get us out of Iraq.

[John Gauger]

10. Anyone is better than Rumsfeld.

As my friend pointed out to me yesterday, only Bush himself could be worse. Gates is Bush-appointed, so he is automatically an awful choice, but at least he's not Rumsfeld. To me, any choice other than Wes Clark is unacceptable, so I'm ready for some disappointment. He is on the commssion that is trying to redirect the course in Iraq, so I would asume that at least he has some relationship with reality, which Rumsfeld does not. I'm not expecting him to honestly answer questions, but I don't think his answers will be as disgraceful as Rumsfeld's. I think he is hoping for someone to save his ass. Bush certainly didn't make this decision himself. Some one forced him to sack Rumsfeld.

[American Jesus]

11. This is Poppy's doing.

Make no mistake about it, Poppy is 100% back in charge of the Bush Crime Family, and after this embarrassing loss to the Republican party, he's here (in the persons of James Baker and Bob Gates) to clean up Junior's clusterfuck in Iraq and get it done before Poppy himself is eternally reassigned to Hell's version of the CIA.

And this is just the beginning. I'm guessing that Cheney will step down before My birthday, and that Poppy's surprise replacement for him will be none other than Colin Powell. And should Chimpeachment proceedings begin (yeah I know what Nancy Pelosi said on 60 minutes) then the old man will tell Junior to step down for the good of the Crime Family and the party. Leaving Colin Powell as a "moderate" incumbent Black President in 2008.

Sounds crazy? Compared to 99% of the last 6 years, it's completely sane.

[plcdude]

12. frying pan

fire. Iran-Contra lies.

[asjr]

13. Tweedledum or Tweedledee--it's all the same

to me.

[Boo Boo]

14. It means that Cheney/Neocons are out, and Baker/Realists are in.

Gates is a member of Baker's Iraq Study Group. Both Baker and Gates are very close to Bush Sr., who is well known to have loathed Rumsfeld, and to have been loathed in return. Bush has appointed Gates and stated that he will be taking the advise of Baker. That looks like a huge shift in policy to me. No way would Cheney have made that move; he wanted Rumsfeld.

So, the remaining Neocons at the Pentagon have a new boss. I'm guessing that once he's confirmed we'll be seeing some resignations. I think (hope) we'll also be seeing the product of the Iraq Study Group become the basis for Bush's foreign policy for the remainder of his term. This will be your basic Realist formulation: Mideast Peace Process, dialog with our adversaries (read Syria and Iran), with the addition of establishing some sort of timetable for extricating ourselves from The Quagmire.

My guess is that it'll look a lot like what other mainstream foreign policy experts have been advocating for some time now. Think Wes Clark, Brzezinski, Steve Clemon's... It doesn't really matter which side of the isle. I think the consensus in Realist circles is that we've got to get the hell out of Iraq, while trying to limit as much as we can the damage done to our strategic interests in the region (obviously there's a major price to be payed).

Whatever. The good news is that, on Tuesday, the Neocons lost. That's the way it looks to me.

[Beaverhausen]

16. I wish Bush would bring in some new blood

and not just daddy's friends. This is a new world- not the one there was when Gates was at the CIA.

How about someone like Bob Kerrey (yes, Stephanie Mill suggested him this morning.)

[BuyingThyme]

17. Rumsfeld is not out. He's just not signing papers anymore.

And gates is just a paper signer.

[AngryOldDem]

18. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." n/t

[GliderGuider]

19. I can only see this as an enormous defeat for W.

W has received an huge come-to-Jesus smack upside the head, delivered by James Baker on behalf of Poppy. There is no way this change of personnel was voluntary, either for Rummy or W. Poppy has come in and taken back the keys to the Presidency. In one stroke: W is truly rebuked; Rummy is punished; the dangerously restive electorate is propitiated; a placating signal is sent to the rest of the world; and Gates is put in place to rubber stamp the proposals from Baker's ISG - proposals that would NOT otherwise have been accepted by Rummy or W. Not a bad day's work for Poppy and his consigliere.

By the same token this is an enormous danger for the American people. It shows that the old Iran/Contra BCCI gang is still active and capable of influencing the course of the nation. Given the spider-web of ruthless and experienced Deep Politics operatives that spin out from Bush 41, I'm not sure if I feel any safer with Rummy gone. No, scratch that. The implications of this move scare the shit out of me. I can only hope that indictments can come out soon enough to defang the new monsters that have replaced the old.

[Selatius]

20. Gates was involved with Iran-Contra, no? n/t

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

21. Block him. Force Bush to appoint somebody decent.

I understand William Cohen has some experience.

[John Gauger]

23. I would vote Wes Clark.

Although I suppose Cohen is more likely, being a Republican and all. I don't like him, but he was a Clinton appointee, which means he was competent. Clinton took his job seriously, which means that any appointment he made is better than any appointment Bush can make.