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Showing posts from February, 2011

Another nail in

History is still in the process of deciding on "W" Bush's legacy, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates put another nail in the coffin of Bush's foreign policy legacy. Speaking at West Point recently, he said: “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it." Of course, Donald Rumsfeld and Bush charged the U.S. into two such wars simultaneously. And when Rumsfeld left his post, VP Dick Cheney hailed Rumsfeld as the greatest Secretary of Defense in American history. Hmmm. Gates is the one who belongs in a short-list of the greatest appointed public servants of our time. Appointed by Bush to save his administration's defense strategy, he stayed on with Obama to attempt to bring our nation's defense situation back from the brink. That is a tough job which he has navigated well.