Blast from Past: New Defense Secretary Gates is same Gates in '97 Schwarzkopf video!

[Mugsy]

Someone just brought this to my attention tonight.

The famous 1997 video of former General H. Norman Schwarzkopf explaining why we didn't go into Baghdad in 1991 concludes with the former Deputy National Security Advisor seconding Schwartzkopf's conclusion that Iraq was "a potential tar pit" we were determined "not to get stuck in."

That "Security Advisor" is our new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates!

If you never saw the video, you need to!

(View my YouTube Channel here.)

[knowbody0]

1. nice web site Mugsy!

I remember watching that video b4 the invasion but did not realize that was Gates. Maybe there IS hope.

[sce56]

2. Gates should rembered most for his involvment in the IranContra Affair

It is just a shuffle of the criminals in the admin with more of Poppy Bush's minions coming back to continue there attack and disregard of our constitution.

From
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/09/the_cheneygates_cabal.php
An Intelligence 'Fixer'

Those of us who had a front-row seat to watch Gates’ handling of substantive intelligence can hardly forget the manner in which he cooked it to the recipe of whomever he reported to. A protégé of William Casey, President Ronald Reagan’s CIA director, Gates learned well from his mentor. In 1995, Gates told The Washington Post ’s Walter Pincus that he watched Casey on “issue after issue sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued.” Gates followed suit, cooking the analysis to justify policies favored by Casey and the White House. And the cooking was consequential.

I was amused to read this morning in David Ignatius’ column in The Washington Post that Gates “was the brightest Soviet analyst in the shop, so Casey soon appointed him deputy director overseeing his fellow analysts.” He wasn’t; and Casey had something other than expertise in mind. Talk to anyone who was there at the time—except the sycophants Gates co-opted to do his bidding—and they will explain that Gates’ meteoric career had most to do with his uncanny ability to see a Russian under every rock turned over by Casey. Those of Gates’ subordinates willing to see two Russians became branch chiefs; three won you a division. I exaggerate only a little.

To Casey, the Communists could never change; and Gorbachev was simply cleverer than his predecessors. With his earlier training in our branch, and with his doctorate in Soviet affairs, Gates clearly knew better. Yet he carried Casey’s water, and stifled all dissent. One result was that the CIA as an institution missed the implosion of the Soviet Union—no small oversight. Another result was a complete loss of confidence in CIA analysis on the part of then-Secretary of State George Shultz and others who smelled the cooking. In July 1987, in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair, he told Congress: “I had come to have grave doubts about the objectivity and reliability of some of the intelligence I was getting.”

Iran-Contra

And well he might. For example, in the fall of 1985 there was an abrupt departure from CIA’s analytical line that Iran was supporting terrorism. On November 22, 1985 the agency reported that Iranian-sponsored terrorism had “dropped off substantially” in 1985, but no evidence was adduced to support that key judgment. Oddly, a few months later CIA’s analysis reverted back to pre-November 1985 with no further mention of any drop-off in Iranian support for terrorism.

The U.S. illegally shipped Hawk missiles to Iran in late November 1985. When questions were raised about this in the summer of 1987, Stephen Engelberg of The New York Times quoted senior CIA official Clair George: “There was an example of a desperate attempt to try to sort of prove something was happening to make the policy look good, and it wasn’t.”

Also in 1985 Gates commissioned and warped a National Intelligence Estimate suggesting that Soviet influence in Iran could soon grow and pose a danger to US interests. This also formed part of the backdrop for the illegal arms-for-hostages deal with Iran.

More serious still was Gates’ denial of awareness of Oliver North’s illegal activities in support of the Contra attacks in Nicaragua, despite the fact that senior CIA officials claimed they had informed Gates that North had diverted funds from the Iranian arms sales for the benefit of the Contras. The independent counsel for the Iran-Contra investigation (1986-93), Lawrence Walsh, later wrote in frustration that Gates “denied recollection of facts thirty-three times.”

In 1991, when President George H. W. Bush nominated Robert Gates for the post of Director of Central Intelligence, there was a virtual insurrection among CIA analysts who had suffered under his penchant for cooking intelligence. The stakes for integrity of analysis were so high that many still employed at the agency summoned the courage to testify against the nomination. But the fix was in, thanks to then-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, David Boren and his staff director, George Tenet. The issue was considered so important, however, that 31 senators voted against Gates when the committee forwarded his nomination. Never before or since has a CIA director nominee received so many nay votes.

Gates is the one most responsible for institutionalizing the politicization of intelligence analysis by setting the example and promoting malleable managers more interested in career advancement than the ethos of speaking truth to power. In 2002, it was those managers who then-CIA Director George Tenet ordered to prepare what has become known as the “Whore of Babylon”—the October 1 National Intelligence Mis-Estimate on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He instructed them to adhere to the guidelines set by Vice President Dick Cheney in his infamous, preemptive speech of August 26, 2002, and complete it in three weeks—in order to force a congressional vote before the mid-term election. To their discredit, the managers complied and issued the worst NIE in the history of American intelligence.

All those quoted in the press yesterday and this morning regarding the Gates nomination seem blissfully unaware of this history—all, that is, but Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. Pointing out Gates’ reputation for putting pressure on analysts to shape their conclusions to fit administration policies, Holt told the press yesterday that the nomination is “deeply troubling,” and stressed that the confirmation hearings “should be thorough and probing.”



We must get our old congress to stop his nomination until after the new one comes in we don't need more people guilty of treason back in the Bush Admin.
Yes Lying to congress should be considered TREASON!

October 17, 2006,Will be remembered as the Enabling day of the 21st Century!
"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures..."
~Adolf Hitler, March 23, 1933, before the German Parliament (Reichstag) as he urged them to pass his "Enabling Act"

Got Fascism Yet?


http://www.georgewalkerbush.net/bush-nazilinkconfirmed.htm



Fascism Accomplished!

[originalpckelly]

4. The fella isn't one of these anti-Iran nuts, he may stop any potential...

war with Iran. Don't you see how good that is? He knows the people in Iran, right at the time when we need to talk to Iran to get them to stop all this bullshit about nukes and get them to stop fucking Iraq.

He did those things because they were pragmatic. We as a nation had a goal of bringing the Soviets down, and he along with Democrats and Republicans, managed it.

The Congress should have cooled it off with the Contra crap, you guys need to get over it.

This is 2006 not 1986. People in Iraq are dying, and this fella was anti-Iraq war, like Jim Baker. He is the best thing that could have happened for America (maybe Jim Baker or some equivalent Dem.)

We need to stop the crap the Republicans pulled and de-politicize intelligence & national security. If we don't they'll try to bash us over the head with it again, when they shouldn't.

These are better Republicans, because they are not revolutionary neo-cons.

[sce56]

6. We never did make up for what they did back in the 80's! Never forget it was done in our NAMES!

The 8 years Reagan was in office represented one of the most bloody eras in the history of the Western hemisphere, as Washington funneled money, weapons and other supplies to right wing death squads. And the death toll was staggering - more than 70,000 political killings in El Salvador, more than 100,000 in Guatemala, 30,000 killed in the contra war in Nicaragua. In Washington, the forces carrying out the violence were called "freedom fighters." This is how Ronald Reagan described the Contras in Nicaragua: "They are our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers."


October 17, 2006,Will be remembered as the Enabling day of the 21st Century!
"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures..."
~Adolf Hitler, March 23, 1933, before the German Parliament (Reichstag) as he urged them to pass his "Enabling Act"

Got Fascism Yet?


http://www.georgewalkerbush.net/bush-nazilinkconfirmed.htm



Fascism Accomplished!

[volstork]

3. K&R

Kick this-- we need to get the word out on this!
Somebody email Olbermann.

[Buzz Clik]

5. Two thumbs up for Schwarzkopf and Gates in 1991.

Although Bush41 never came out and said, "We're going to Kuwait to protect a shit pot of oil", we all knew that was exactly why he went there. Nothing more, nothing less. As long as he limited the mission to Kuwait, the entire international coalition was cool with it. After kicking Saddam's butt in Kuwait, we stopped bombing, rolled up the tents, and came home. Bush explained it at the time, Schwarzkopt and Gates explained it later.

Then came Dim Son who had a bug up his ass to invade Iraq and refused to listen to all the wise voices around him telling him what a horrible idea it was. And here we are, just as Stormin Norman predicted: mired in the tar like a dinosaur, footing the bill for rebuilding the infrastructure and paying in American lives for policing a civil war. How goddam stupid can a man be?!!!

[Mugsy]

7. How many times can Poppy Bush bail his ass out?

Is it just me, or does it seem like every time Junior gets into trouble, another one of Poppy's old henchmen magically appears in Shrub's Administration?