Robert Gates Unmasked

[skyhook77sfg]

when adulation poured in from wise old US senators and young corporate media experts about how lucky America was to have a man like Robert Gates carrying out the duties of governance my reaction was the gagging urge to retch...

then somewhat later a resolve to bite my lip and watch this dramatic exit stage far right proceed as scripted.

Surely there would be an opportune lull in this most interesting rehabilitation of the intelligence anaylst who was 180 degrees out on just about every single major development under his watch..and totally wrong in his area of education and expertise, the Soviet Union.

But no...the establishment closed ranks in an airtight compartmentalization that allowed no wiggle room for the antiseptic of light to penetrate. The truth about this pudgey little bureaucrat who had made a career out of enabling others more actively evil to defraud the American public, kill and maim needlessly and enrich a small cabal of incestuously connected sociopaths cleverly costumed as American patriots...truth like this was not meant for public consumption.

So AZARI, as you said Gates was an interesting man... you are right...here's some data of interest.


On 8th November, 2006, President George W. Bush nominated Robert Gates as his new United States Secretary of Defense. When he heard the news, Melvin Goodman commented: "I think there is a rather delicious irony in the fact that here is a nation that went to war with politicized intelligence, and now it’s naming as a CIA director someone who was the most important practitioner of politicized intelligence in the history of the CIA. So, as Yogi Berra would have said, “This is deja-vu all over again.”

Rarely in our lifetime has one individual perfected the ladder-climbing skills of bootlicking, asskissing and delivering to power whatever power wanted as the s0ft spoken Kansan Rober tM Gates.

When George Bush (who'd been a CIA asset since the late 1950s) became CIA director in 1975, one of his duties was to oversee a project called Team B. This was an offering from President Ford to right-wingers who argued that CIA analysts were underestimating Soviet military strength, and who wanted a second opinion. Official CIA estimates of Soviet strength were proven by history as exaggerations. Team B estimates of several magnitudes higher, proved to be wildly off the mark.

The CIA analysts regarded Bush's backing of Team B to rewrite their data as a betrayal, but Reagan rewarded Bush by making him his running mate in 1980. Once elected, Reagan named every one of the Team B members to sensitive military posts, and jacked up the Pentagon budget.

When Bush became president in 1989, he chose as his CIA director Robert Gates, who'd been the leader of the pro-Team B faction in the CIA during Bush's tenure as director. Gates had spent the Reagan years providing seriously distorted intelligence estimates of Soviet strength, which may be why the CIA was so woefully unprepared to anticipate the collapse of the USSR.

One of the effects from the exaggerated intelligence about the Soviet menace was to make other potential risks – such as allowing development of a nuclear bomb in the Islamic world or training Islamic fundamentalists in techniques of sabotage – pale in comparison. Analysts who raised alarms about Pakistan’s development of nuclear were muzzled because the Reagan administration wanted Pakistan’s assistance in funneling weapons to Islamic fundamentalists fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.

While worst-case scenarios were in order for the Soviet Union and its clients, best-case scenarios were the order of the day for Reagan’s allies, including Osama bin Laden and other Arab extremists rushing to Afghanistan to wage a holy war against European invaders, in this case, the Russians.

As for the Pakistani drive to get a nuclear bomb, the Reagan administration turned to word games to avoid triggering anti-proliferation penalties that otherwise would be imposed on Pakistan.There was a distinction that the possession of the device is not the same as developing it. The argument was that they don’t quite possess it yet because they haven’t turned the last screw into the warhead.

Finally, the intelligence on the Pakistan omb grew too strong to continue denying the reality. But the delay in confronting Pakistan ultimately allowed the Muslim government in Islamabad to produce nuclear weapons. Pakistani scientists also shared their know-how with “rogue” states, such as North Korea and Libya.

“The politicization that took place during the Casey-Gates era is directly responsible for the CIA’s loss of its ethical compass and the erosion of its credibility,” Goodman told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1991.
“The fact that the CIA missed the most important historical development in its history – the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the Soviet Union itself – is due in large measure to the culture and process that Gates established in his directorate.”

http://consortiumnews.com/2011/05/31/th ... ert-gates/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


for Gates secret involvement in Iran Contra and the earlier payment to Iran to delay hostage release until Reagan inauguration see:

http://www.alternet.org/world/151342/ho ... age=entire" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


YES ROERT GATES WAS AN INTERESTING MAN

[Tinker]

Well...I will always have a soft spot in my heart for him telling NATO that they need to start footing more of the bill, that the US public doesn't have the will for that anymore.

[skyhook77sfg]

how about revisiting the charter that created NATO...

realizing it has outlived it....

and letting the euros deal with euro affairs...

after all as they so often say

they have so much more style, substance and history

than their rustic and naive bumpkin cousins in the US.

[Tinker]

[AzariLoveIran]

[Tinker]

America is a fortress. Worrying about invasion by foreign powers is a bit of hysterical nonsense.

[skyhook77sfg]

AZARI


close but would suggest an even better outcome by amending

"name of game not war but accommodation" to

name of game not war but LEADING BY EXAMPLE

[Najar]

Yesterday i was watching meet the press , and Lindsey Graham was emphatic in stating that if we walk away from Libya , it will be 'end of nato'. I couldnt help to think 'so what'.

[Tinker]

[skyhook77sfg]

or just a generational difference in frame of reference

now receding not quite as quickly as it should.


like the saying about paradigm shifts

first ignored

then ridiculed

then accepted after those with equity

in the old way of thinking finally die...


or something to that effect

[Tinker]

[skyhook77sfg]

the so called greatest generation was IMHO in their dotage also the most selfish generation.

they voted themselves heretorfore unheard of govt. benefits for education, housing, medical care, pharmaceuticals....the list goes on and on....

and then turned off the spigot they had drained so no others could benefit.

so called is the right term all right TINKER