gates

Yesterday I highlighted the departure of Gen. William Wallace from the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine command as an example of the end of the Rumsfeld era — and, if I can be so bold, the rise of the counterinsurgents. At Wallace’s retirement ceremony, Defense Secretary Bob Gates placed Wallace in the context of 30 [...]

Every now and then, as I turn from Florida Avenue NW and walk north on Connecticut to get to The Washington Independent offices, I come across Donald Rumsfeld, ambling down the hill and toward Dupont Circle, heading for a destination unknown. He typically has a bodyman behind him, wearing a black suit and an earpiece, [...]

Americans overwhelmingly approve of President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet appointments, but that hasn’t resulted in increased confidence in Obama’s ability to lead the country.
According to a CNN poll released Wednesday, 75 percent of Americans support Obama’s cabinet nominations, including 71 percent who back his choice of Hillary Clinton for secretary of state and 83 percent who [...]

Read this sentence and tell me some dirty hippie didn’t write it:
Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit.
That’s Defense Secretary Bob Gates in the new [...]

Clearing the way for an Obamanik, Gordon England, the deputy secretary of defense since 2005, is on his way out. From the official Pentagon announcement:

I was on the phone during Bob Gates’ first presser since being reappointed as defense secretary by President-elect Obama, but my man Matt DeLong kept me covered and sent along his notes. And look at this! Gates is OK with Obama’s timetable for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq in 16 months!

When last we left the question of who would staff a Gates Pentagon — GOP appointees or Obama’s people? — it looked pretty much like Obama would put his team in at the sub-cabinet level. Trusted defense adviser Richard Danzig would get the deputy secretary position and probably Michele Flournoy of the Center for a [...]

Matthew Yglesias flags this aspect of a New York Times story about the Obama national-security team:
Yet all three of his choices — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert M. Gates, the current and future defense secretary [...]

You know whose opinion you should really value when assessing the impending retention of Bob Gates at the Pentagon? Larry Di Rita, the last living Rumsfeld acolyte — seriously, put him in the Smithsonian or something — says that sure, sure, Gates does lots of nice things competently, but “success in Iraq is not without [...]

I ask, Mike Allen answers. So long, Eric Edelman:
EXCLUSIVE: Secretary Gates’ deputy at the Pentagon is slated to be Richard Danzig, who was Navy secretary under President Clinton. The #3 (policy) will PROBABLY be Michelle Flournoy, a Clinton administration veteran who was dual-hatted as principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction, [...]