My reaction to Afghanistan change of command: "Who Is Robert Gates?" (Consortium News archive)

[bobthedrummer]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/gates.html

[bemildred]

1. An excellent question.

Mr Gates has a long track record.

[bobthedrummer]

2. When"fresh eyes" replaced Reich marshall Rumsfeld after the 2006 midterm "election" I posted a bit

about Robert Gates, many of these DU archived threads are valuable today

"Gates is Poppy's guy-this takes us to another data-dumping thread" (started 11-9-06)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2665635

[bemildred]

3. The most interesting thing is the new effort in "AfPak".

I think they are going to try out RIMA and all that Special Forces and computer crap again in the mountains and slums of Pakistan. I don't think anybody really knows what the outcome of that will be, given the likely delusional "goals" of the effort, but I would wager it will fail and it will not be pretty. We appear to be returning from the lunatic Bushites to the merely delusional "Realists". Hidden behind it all is the continuing search for some useful purpose for the militarized state security apparatus that even remotely matches up to it's cost.