GATES!?! Iran-Contra Gates?!?! WTF!!!

[Rick Myers]

Here's Bob's background:

Gates was an early subject of Independent Counsel's investigation, but the investigation of Gates intensified in the spring of 1991 as part of a larger inquiry into the Iran/contra activities of CIA officials. This investigation received an additional impetus in May 1991, when President Bush nominated Gates to be director of central intelligence (DCI). The chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) requested in a letter to the Independent Counsel on May 15, 1991, any information that would ``significantly bear on the fitness'' of Gates for the CIA post.


http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_16.htm


on edit: looks like Daddy is taking over!!!

[gfnrob]

1. Ortega is back, sooooo...

Who else???:hippie:

[babylonsister]

2. Yep, the very same:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=2944614&mesg_id=2944614

[originalpckelly]

3. He's still a good guy...

get over it, his appointment means a win for us in Iraq or a quick withdrawal.

He's a Bush Sr. Republican, not a Bush Jr. Republican.

He's like Baker.

We've won this political battle. Rummy is out.

[springhill]

4. Yeh,

Just one more criminal in the administration.

[Gwerlain]

5. No joke. n/t

[Gwerlain]

6. Well, Baker like in BakerBotts...

if you've been following CorpGovActivist and IdesOfOctober's threads.

[originalpckelly]

8. HOLY SHIT I FORGOT!!!!

Well he is supposed to be a moderate, but being moderate doesn't mean you're a crook.

HOLY SHIT THIS COULD CAUSE THE CHENEY SCANDAL TO BREAK!!!

[elehhhhna]

11. Slime is rising to the top again, I see. That George. What an idiot.

[Critters2]

7. A good guy?!! How do you figure?

A criminal is a criminal. I hope the Dems have to balls to fight his confirmation.

[NYC Liberal]

9. Yeah and so was Cheney - he was AGAINST invading Iraq

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/192908_cheney29.html

CHENEY in 1992: "And the question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth?" Cheney said then in response to a question.

"And the answer is not very damned many. So I think we got it right, both when we decided to expel him from Kuwait, but also when the president made the decision that we'd achieved our objectives and we were not going to go get bogged down in the problems of trying to take over and govern Iraq."


Count me unconvinced.

[grizmaster]

14. oh yeah, swell war criminal you're siding with there

tell me your not serious

[acmavm]

10. Well hell, why not. He's brought back the worst of the worst.

Ollie North went to mess with the Ortega election (but couldn't cut it) on orders from these clowns.

[GregD]

12. Gates and electronic voting

Gates has been involved in the electronic voting crisis through his appearance on the boards of directors for SAIC and www.votehere.com - see http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/Landes_SAIC-VoteHere-Diebold.htm

[Jcrowley]

13. Gates is bad medicine

Demilitarize intelligence gathering

Previous directors, particularly Deutch and Robert Gates, have done great harm to the CIA and the intelligence community by deemphasizing strategic intelligence for use in policymaking and catering instead to the tactical demands of the Pentagon. The CIA began to produce fewer national intelligence estimates and assessments that dealt with strategic matters and placed its emphasis on intelligence support for the war fighter. Gates, moreover, ended CIA analysis of key order-of-battle issues in order to avoid tendentious analytical struggles with the Pentagon; Deutch's creation of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) at the Department of Defense (DOD) enabled the Pentagon to be the sole interpreter of satellite photography. This is particularly important because the Pentagon uses imagery analysis to justify the defense budget, to gauge the likelihood of military conflict around the world, and to verify arms control agreements. In creating NIMA, Deutch abolished the CIA's Office of Imagery Analysis and the joint DOD-CIA National Photographic Center, which often challenged the Pentagon's analytical views.

In its short history, NIMA has been responsible for a series of major intelligence disasters, including the failure to predict Indian nuclear testing in 1998, the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and more recently the exaggeration of the missile programs in North Korea and Iran. The failure to anticipate and record Indian nuclear testing stemmed from the Pentagon's downgrading of South Asian intelligence collection and DOD's low priority for counterproliferation. Open sources did a far better job of predicting the nuclear tests than did the U.S. intelligence community. To make matters worse, CIA Director Tenet told the Senate that the CIA could not monitor and verify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and, for the first time in 80 years, the Senate failed to ratify a major international treaty.

The bombing of the Chinese embassy was attributed to the faulty work of NIMA as well as the inability of the CIA to conduct operational targeting for the Pentagon. Consequently, when the crew of a U.S. B-2 Stealth bomber skimmed over Yugoslavia and dropped three bombs on a building in downtown Belgrade, it actually believed that it had made a direct hit on the country's arms procurement headquarters. Instead, three people were killed and 20 wounded, creating a diplomatic crisis with Beijing and key members of the NATO coalition. The CIA had never been responsible for operational targeting before, and as a result of the Belgrade disaster, Tenet has made sure that the agency stays out of the targeting business.

http://www.issues.org/18.2/goodman.html

[Cleita]

15. Who cares. No one good is going to come out of this administration.

It's time to impeach, investigate, try and sentence all of them.

[Beaverhausen]

16. Get this information to Olbermann pronto

[WHAT]

17. I'm curious...

I remember reading years ago that Gates (CIA) was uncle to Gates (higher education guru known for dropping-out of college and making money). It just stuck in my mind and became more important when I tried to figure-out what was going-on. I may have "misremembered" but it is still stuck in my mind. Money and power usually go together and it's hard for me to believe that much money is legitimte. Also, b gates father was a member of the law firm that insinuated itself into the Mariana Is. human exploitation franchise.

I guess I need an octo thread and I still like the shiny hat I bought here.

[Ignacio Upton]

18. Hopefully he won't be confirmed in the lame duck Senate

n/t.