Bush Crime Family Crony Robert Gates a Shoo-In

Monday December 04th 2006, 8:16 pm

“Robert Gates, the former CIA director and Texas A&M University president, is expected to easily win nomination as President Bush’s next defense secretary following a hearing today that is likely to focus on strategies in Iraq,” reports Express-News.

Easy nomination, no matter the guy is a criminal, not to mention a blood-thirsty warmongering psychopath.

Gates was at the core of the so-called Iran-Contra affair, but then it is business as usual in Washington, as the Bush administration is packed like a sardine tin with Iran-Contra criminals. Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, knew Gates was lying about his collaboration with fellow criminal, now respected Fox News talking head, Oliver North, the guy who wanted to suspend the Constitution and throw demonstrators in gulags under Rex-84. In 1984, as understudy and protégé of then CIA director-ghoul, William Casey, Gates wanted to bomb the dickens out of Nicaragua.

“It is time to talk absolutely straight about Nicaragua,” Gates wrote in a memo to his boss. “The Nicaraguan regime is steadily moving toward consolidation of a Marxist-Leninist government, and the establishment of a permanent and well-armed ally of the Soviet Union and Cuba on the mainland of the western hemisphere. Its avowed aim is to spread further revolution in the Americas.”

Actually, the Sandinista National Liberation Front, while socialist, was primarily dedicated to finally getting rid of the corrupt and brutal dictator, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who was “elected” president after he outlawed rival political parties. Human rights campaigner Franklin Foer stated the forces of Somoza saw “civilians as enemies, and on this basis justified their rape, torture, and murder,” notes Melissa Pingree. “Human rights organizations said Somoza would pull out people’s eyes, have women raped in front of their husbands and children before being killed, and skinned people alive.”

Naturally, bureaucratic spooks like Robert Gates never talk “absolutely straight” about such brutality, as dictators such as Somoza are routinely supported by U.S. administrations, be they Republican or Democrat.

“Nicaragua wasn’t the only place Gates wanted to take action,” writes James Ridgeway for Mother Jones.

In 1985, sounding very much like one of today’s neoconservative hawks, the then head of intelligence analysis at the CIA drafted a plan for a joint U.S.-Egyptian military operation to invade Libya, overthrow Col. Muamar Ghaddafi, and “redraw the map of North Africa.” On the basis of this idea, CIA Director Casey, sometimes said to be the man who invented Gates, ordered up a list of Libyan targets and the National Security Council developed a plan to have Egypt attack Libya with U.S. air support and seize half the country. The Joint Chiefs drew up plans for a military operation involving 90,000 troops. Alarmed, the State Department subsequently succeeded in downsizing Gates proposal to “contingency” status.

Now, with the neocons at the helm, such a plan may actually go forward, as the State Department, without somewhat more rational bureaucrats as Colin Powell there to keep the “fucking crazies” in check, is now decidedly part of the Dark Side. Of course, Powell was all for the Iraq invasion and occupation, as his absurd and completely transparent weapons of mass destruction speech at the United Nations demonstrates, but at minimum he was opposed to the more bloody and apocalyptic calisthenics of the Israel First neocons, although that is not saying much.

In many ways, Gates is a perfect choice for the neocons. “Gates was making it clear to analysts what intelligence they were to produce,” Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, tells the Los Angeles Times. “It’s a chilling record, because you have two main themes of the Iraq war present in Robert Gates’ career at CIA: the arrogance and bullying of a Rumsfeld and the intelligence cherry-picking of a Cheney.”

In short, the neocons could not ask for more, as Gates possesses a “bullying intellect and occasionally dictatorial style,” not unlike his predecessor. Never mind his murky past as an Iran-Contra criminal—this will not even be mentioned tomorrow, as he faces the Senate. “Washington’s near-total preoccupation with the situation in Iraq will crowd out any serious probing of Gates’ past, including his murky role in the Iran-Contra scandal and the cooking of intelligence on the Soviet Union during Gates’ tenure at the CIA more than a decade ago,” writes Mark Benjamin for Salon. “Democrats’ backing of Gates is a departure from their position on him in earlier years. After President Ronald Reagan nominated Gates to be CIA director in 1987, Gates withdrew his name when he came under fire in the Senate for his role in the Iran-Contra affair.”

As Nancy Pelosi said in the lead-up to the midterm election, the Democrats have no problem with the neocons, no problem with the unitary decidership of Bush, no problem with lies dealt out like cards in a round of draw poker, no problem eviscerating the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, no problem with Iraq—the problem is management style, not invading sovereign nations and killing upward to 650,000 Iraqis—and no problem installing a Bush crime family bed fellow to oversee the Pentagon.

It matters not that Gates has politicized intelligence, a habit no doubt looked upon fondly by the neocons. “Bob Gates, over the period of the 1980s, as a deputy for Intelligence and then as a deputy to CIA director Bill Casey, was politicizing intelligence. He was spinning intelligence on all of the major issues of the day, on the Soviet Union, on Central America, on the Middle East, on Southwest Asia. And I thought this record, this charge, should be presented before the Senate Intelligence Committee,” explains Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst. “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 … 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.’”

Finally, Gates is the perfect Pentagon fit due to relationships forged in the corporate world. “As Gates awaits Senate confirmation to serve as President Bush’s secretary of defense, ethics watchdogs worry about the revolving door between government and private business that allowed Gates to align himself with defense contractors, investment houses and a global drilling company involved with Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton Inc.,” explains the Los Angeles Times. “Companies with which Gates has been affiliated have secured hefty no-bid Pentagon contracts,” and thus the established pattern of cronyism and corruption will continue, as should be expected with this crew at the helm.

Indeed, it is déjà vu all over again.