Caveat Emptor

I get a creepy feeling whenever the name Bob Gates is mentioned. He is a native Wichitan and a former Air Force Officer. I was on my way home from work and about a block from his childhood home when I heard that Poppy Bush had nominated him to be the Director of Central Intelligence. The hair on the back of my neck went up then; and it went up Wednesday when George Bush named him as his nominee to replace the departing Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Gates is a career spook, and an ideologue to boot. He was up to his eyeballs in Iran Contra and that Lawrence Walsh never brought charges against him just tells me that he was better at covering his tracks than the ones who got caught. Absence of evidence is not the same thing as absence of guilt.

Gates was the original facts-fixer. George Schultz complained bitterly about Gates, and recounted the following exchange in his memoires: "You deal out intelligence as you deem appropriate. I feel an effort is made to manipulate me by the selection of materials you send my way."

Back in these days, Gates' most ardent supporter was then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney.

An anti-Soviet hawk, and closely allied with the core group of people who would later be identified as Neocons; Gates was wrong about Gorbachev, and if he had won out over Jim Baker, the Cold War would not have ended when it did and it would have probably bankrupted both countries, not just the Soviet Union. Back then, Gates was a Soviet Expert and Deputy Director of the NSA, and Condi's mentor.

I have some ideas for Secretary of Defense that would be much better than Bob Gates. Three names top my list.

First is Sam Nunn who for years was the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He would do a fine job in the position, and since he is a Democrat, Bush would get to trot out that bipartisanship he discovered the day after the election.

Second is Admiral Bobby Inman. When President Clinton nominated Inman to replace Les Aspin as Secretary of Defense the Republicans in the Senate baselessly attacked the mans character and professionalism and behaved like jackasses; simply because he was a Clinton nominee. The Republicans who attacked him then and are still around would likely sit on their hands if Bush were to nominate him to the same position.

Third is Clinton's final Secretary of Defense William Cohen. He has experience in the position and since he was a Republican Senator for many years he should enjoy wide bipartisan support. He also oversaw Kosovo operations and not a single American life was lost. I appreciate that, since I had some skin in that game.

There you go. Three qualified and capable nominees, each one of whom would be a better choice hands down to replace the departing Rumsfeld than Bob Gates, and the nomination of any one of these men would go a long way toward restoring trust between the military and the civilians who oversee it.

RUMSFELD IS GONE

Rumsfeld has resigned. Well, it's about time. He has been an abject failure as Secretary of Defense. He has managed to most likely lose two wars. He has the blood of 3000 American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani civilians on his hands. He is a disgrace, and his resignation is three years too late.

Quite frankly, I would like to see him in a dock at The Hague.

Yes-man and Director of Central Intelligence under Bush-41, Bob Gates, is Bush's choice to replace the departing Rumsfeld.

By the end of the day, perhaps we will hear that Cheney has requested Bush's resignation?

Update: Doc Larry has Rummy's exit interview

Worst. SecDef. Ever.

I get to hear some pretty good rants, especially when my brother is in town and he and my husband get together. Take them to a bar and give them a couple of beers and a pool table, and sit back and listen. Hoo boy. Did they tear Rummy a new asshole last weekend.

Quick - how many previous SecDefs' can you recall? I can come up with a couple that I recall because they were horrible - Robert MacNamara and Louis Johnson - and two from the Clinton administration - Les Aspen, because he passed away soon after leaving the post, and William Cohen because Bill Clinton tapped a Republican. There was another one, but without using Google, his name escapes me. The success of a Secretary of Defense is measured by how quickly he passes from memory and into the footnotes of history.

But who among us can honestly say that we will ever forget Rumsfeld? He has long since surpassed MacNamara in every area - he is more craven and more vitriolic and a bigger technocrat than MacNamara ever though about being. He has less thought for our troops and the mission he has asked them to complete.

I said it. Rummy is the worst SecDef in our history. Now I will back it up.

Rumsfeld has removed every bit of counterbalance in his way. Remember General Shinseki? The man who saw this Iraq fiasco coming, and was fired for saying so? The Pentagon climate is fetid, the atmosphere of command has been poisoned. He is great at bureaucratic knife-fights, but he is lousy at running Defense. His management style is authoritarian and rigid and those who come into his office to tell him news he does not want to hear learn quickly not to make that mistake again. Accountability is non-existant. Watch a press conference. He will answer the easy questions, usually with an insult or two. But ask him a tough question, and he shoves a uniformed officer in front of the mike and steps aside for a moment.

The Secretary of Defense is the civilian authority over evey man and woman in uniform, from the lowliest grunt to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and the SecDef answers only to the president.

Leadership is supposed to mean that the leader has penultimate authority and uses it judiciously; for everything, good and bad, rests on the shoulders of the leader, the man in charge. This man in charge has some strange notions about how the military works. Instead of sober analysis, he decides on a course that will be taken and then those beneath him are charged with first justifying his decision, then executing it. Instead of listing to those professional soldiers at his avail, he surrounds himself with yes-men who know better yet disgrace their uniforms by backing his plays.

He wants to run the Department of Defense like a business. Except it is not a business. It is a branch of government. Rumsfeld stubbornly clings to failed hypotheses of war-fighting, even in the face of staggering evidence to the contrary. He cuts the brass out of the decision-making loop, and totally disses them. He doesn't just undermine, he accuses, abuses and belittles the professional military advice, but relentlessly keeps them out of the decision-making process.

Everything that goes right is due to him, everything that goes wrong is the fault of the troops or the officers who command them. That's no way to run a meritocracy, and that is exactly what the military is.

Rumsfeld is so keen on his new ideas to *make everything better* that he has frivolously ignored the tried-and-true, to our nations peril, to our indicidual peril and to the peril of the troops in uniform. This tunnelvision has caused him to lash out At any and all who dare offer another point of view.

Rumsfeld, like his boss, flatly refuses to accept this reality that they have created. And they do not intend to. Bush has told us that this will be the responsibility of the next administration and the next SecDef to find a way out of this clusterfuck.

Morality you say? What is that all about? Morality is an outdated concept and it has no place in a Rumsfeld DoD. All of these offenses add up to a shredding of the Honor Code, and that is the most important principle of a free country. The Honor Code is why a free country can remain free, without falling under the tyranny of it's military. The Honor Code is the most important construct of all, and should it fail, it could set off a chain of events that might easily destroy our nation.

For these reasons, and oh so many more, Rumsfeld is the worst Secretary of Defense this nation has ever seen.

No one will ever forget the name Donald Rumsfeld.