[BITList] gates's warning

[CT's]

is this guy brilliant – or what?
ct


Gates's warning: Avoid land war in Asia, Middle East, and Africa
In a speech to cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, Gates’s message was clear: The US military services, as well as the elected and appointed civilians who send them to war, need better ways of foreseeing and preparing for national security threats.

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Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates teaches a political science class on homeland security and defense at the US Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Friday, Feb. 25. In a speech to cadets, Gates warned against sending a big American land army into Asia, the Middle East, or Africa.

By Brad Knickerbocker, Staff writer / February 26, 2011 

As he winds down a remarkable Pentagon career – overseeing two long and very costly wars, wrestling with a military-industrial complex resistant to his budget moves aimed at questionable weapons, and shaking up the senior officer corps – Defense Secretary Robert Gates has a message for his successor.

“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 [Douglas] MacArthur so delicately put it.”

In referring to Iraq and Afghanistan, as he did elsewhere in his speech to cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point Friday, Defense Secretary Gates was not directly critical of the man he replaced – Donald Rumsfeld – or of the Bush administration’s leading an invasion of Iraq now generally acknowledged to have been based on faulty reasoning, insufficient preparation, and – initially, at least – poor execution.








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