quoted today:
War is inevitably tragic, inefficient, and uncertain, and it is important to be skeptical of systems analyses, computer models, game theories, or doctrines that suggest otherwise. We should look askance at idealistic, triumphalist, or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to transcend the immutable principles and ugly realities of war, that imagine it is possible to cow, shock, or awe an enemy into submission, instead of tracking enemies down hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block. As General William Tecumseh Sherman said, "Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster."
Guy's name is Robert Gates. Damned if I knew he used to work for Jimmy Carter. Maybe he's not as bad as most Bush appointees after all. (But hell, he was President of Texas A&M, for pity's sake. They have a Corps of Cadets on campus and a military cult among their alumni ... the mascot's name is Reveille!) (She is a lady, though.)
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Gates was part of the 1980 October Surprise
Look it up. The lead article (mine) in Black Agenda Report this week is "Liar, Liar!! Barack Obama's Secretary of War"
Read the article and follow the many links therein and you will see that the Russians opened KGB archives after the fall of the USSR and sent Congress evidence that Gates may have been in (along with Bush 41 and Bill Casey) in on cutting the deal behind Carter's back that kept the hostages in Iran extra long, until Ronald the Ray Gun was being sworn in as the 40th president.
Of course White House and congressional Democrats, in the spirit of bipartisan looking forward and all declined to investigate the crooks Reagan and Bush didn't get around to pardoning before they left office, That was the cue for Gates to slip away fromt he limelight for a decade down to Texas A&M.
But at CIA throughout the 80s, Gates was in on every crime you can name, from fabricating crap about a Soviet plot to kill the pope to fabricating intelligence reports saying that Nicaragua was a threat to the US.
Gates is a truly awful appointment, one of the last of that crop of bloodstained Reaganite hacks still in public life from that time. He is on a level with Bush 41, with Rummy and Cheney. And since he is already in office he will NOT have to undergo a confirmation hearing.
With 2 million employees, gulags, a half dozen intelligence agencies and a nine or ten figure budget he is nobody's yes man, don't care who is president. Don't you believe it.
Maybe now we know what Barack meant when he said how much he admired Reagan.
Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com
So Sy Hersh was wrong
about claiming that Gates was responsible to averting nuke war between Pakistan and India?
Sheesh.
You just can't trust anyone.
So Sy Hersh was wrong
about claiming that Gates was responsible for averting nuke war between Pakistan and India?
Sheesh.
You just can't trust anyone.
Sy could be right
and he usually is.
But the long list of this Gates's crimes -- institutionalizing the faking of "intelligence" on the Soviet threat at CIA for twelve or thirteen years, October Surprise, Iran contra, Iran contra's domestic blowback in the form of establishing the cocaine traffic into the US, and many more, some of which I linked to in the article referred to above -- makes it a footnote. I'm sure evil men in positions of power do occasional good things for whatever reason.
Even if that makes our Secretary of War is five or ten percent less than "infinitely evil", infinity minus five or ten percent is still infinity.
And please, let's call him that. The Secretary of War.
Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com