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Press reporting on information provided
to the Senate by Robert Gates, President George W. Bush's nominee
for the post of defense secretary, show Gates hewing closely
to the rhetoric of his predecessor. Gates is shown to be more
parrot than innovator in his responses to a questionnaire given
him by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which takes up his
nomination on Dec. 5.
None of this surprises those
of us who for decades have watched Gates make career after career
out of trimming his sails to the prevailing winds. No one should
expect Gates to depart one iota from the position of the president,
who repeated yesterday that there will be no troop pullout from
Iraq "until the job is complete." In answering the
senators' questions, Gates insisted that an early pullout would
risk "leaving Iraq in chaos [with] dangerous consequences
both in the region and globally for many years to come."
No surprise either in Gates'
strong endorsement of spending billions more on-and prematurely
deploying-the missile defense system that was Rumsfeld's pet
project and for an earlier version of which Gates saw fit to
advocate, even while he was still CIA director. Even if the
system can be made to work (and this has yet to be demonstrated),
the it is of highly dubious utility in preventing the kinds of
terrorist attacks that appear far more likely than a nuclear-tipped
missile from a "rogue" state like North Korea or Iran-if
they ever succeed in developing one.
Gates lumps the two together,
saying, "North Korea and Iran continue to develop longer
range missiles and are determined to pursue weapons of mass destruction."
In attributing this intention to Iran, Gates demonstrates that
he has lost none of his verve as master-practitioner of what
we intelligence alumni call "faith-based intelligence."
Among serious intelligence analysts, especially in the Department
of Energy where the expertise lies, the jury is out on whether
the evidence proves that Iran is embarked on a weapons-related
nuclear program-and, if so, how soon it might have a deliverable
nuclear weapon. And the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),
led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei also keeps
saying existing evidence permits no hard and fast conclusions.
In prejudging that key issue,
Gates has elevated the status of Iranian intentions, in Rumsfeldian
parlance, from a "known unknown" to a "known known."
In doing so, he has thrown in his lot with the so-called "neo-conservatives,"
whose record for accuracy in such judgments leaves much to be
desired, and who-after a pre-election lull-have been revving
up for another try at prevailing on the president to attack Iran's
nuclear facilities. Gates' position on Iran's nuclear weapons
plans suggests he will not put up much resistance to importuning
by Vice President Dick Cheney and the neo-conservatives-not to
mention the Israelis-that Iran's fledgling nuclear program must
be nipped in the bud.
In what is known so far of
the information in the completed questionnaire, Gates made one
departure from long established White House policy. Very much
in tune with the admonishment of his patron Jim Baker that talking
directly with adversaries in not "appeasement," Gates
implicitly criticized the anathema on negotiating with the likes
of Syria and Iran, stressing that such talks could come "as
part of an international conference" of the kind the Baker/Hamilton
group is said to be suggesting.
A New First:
Snubbed by a Quisling
President George W. Bush landed
in Amman yesterday afternoon for talks with Iraqi Prime Minister
with a thick cloud hanging over their abortive meeting. The
leaked memo of Nov. 8 criticizing Maliki by national security
adviser Stephen Hadley threatened to scuttle the talks entirely,
but after Maliki canceled yesterday's meeting, he and Bush managed
to put up a good, but transparent, front today.
Among other indignities, the
memo gives the lie to the president's protestation Tuesday that
Iraq is "a sovereign nation." Maliki's quisling status
is laid bare, and Hadley's suggestion that the U.S. "consider
monetary support to moderate groups" will not go down well
with the immoderate groups raising hell in Baghdad.
Equally clear in the memo is
the White House's continuing divorce from reality. For example,
under "Steps Maliki Could Take," Hadley leads the list
with:
"Bring his political strategy
with Moktada al-Sadr to closure and bring to justice any [Mahdi
Army] actors that do not eschew violence."
Right.
This is in the same league
of naïveté as the Washington Post's editors' solemn
but lame suggestion yesterday:
"Mr. Maliki needs to give
his own deadline to the Americans for launching a truly make-or-break
campaign to retake the streets of Baghdad."
Been there; tried that. Where
have the Post's editors been over the past few months?
There is some irony, if not
comic relief, in Hadley's observation that "the information
he [Maliki] receives is undoubtedly skewed by his small circle
of Dawa advisers." And so it is in Washington as well.
If Gates is confirmed this will not sweeten the flavor of the
self-licking ice cream cone that is the coterie of advisers around
our president.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing
arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC.
After serving as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and then
27 years as a CIA analyst, he co-founded Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Imperial
Crusades, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair.
CounterPunch
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CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
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