It appears that Bush is attempting to replace one war criminal with another as Secretary of Defence. Well, it's not too surprising since these war criminals protect and promote their own. Robert Gates, as the C.I.A. director during Iran-Contra, shares responsibility for the state-sponsored right wing paramilitary terrorism that tortured and massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians throughout Central and South America under the war criminals Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. Gates has also been a central figure in manipulating intelligence to fit policy, the exact thing that brought about the illegal war against Iraq.

Americans love to get hysterical about 9-11, but the people in Central and South America lived through more than a hundred 9-11's during the '80's, all of them fully supported, funded, trained and perpetrated through U.S. state sponsored terrorism.

No wonder people around the world say that Americans deserved 9-11. It gave them just a little taste of their own medicine.

The following excerpt from an article by Robert Parry exposes Robert Gates for the war criminal and deceiver that he is. If this criminal is confirmed, it can only mean more bad news for the future of American foreign policy and the principle of the rule of law and justice.

The Secret World of Robert Gates
By Robert Parry
November 9, 2006

Robert Gates, George W. Bush’s choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family’s inner circle, but there are lingering questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official.

The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers – three key areas that relate to his future job.

Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director – and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.

If Bush’s timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates’s past.

Fifteen years ago, Gates got a similar pass when leading Democrats agreed to put “bipartisanship” ahead of careful oversight when Gates was nominated for the CIA job by President George H.W. Bush.

In 1991, despite doubts about Gates’s honesty over Iran-Contra and other scandals, the career intelligence officer brushed aside accusations that he played secret roles in arming both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. Since then, however, documents have surfaced that raise new questions about Gates’s sweeping denials.

You can get the whole story at this link:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/110906.html

Also, in this excellent interview of Robert Parry and Melvin Goodman by Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now," you can get a clear profile of who Robert Gates really is and why Bush needs him now as Secretary of Defence.
The following is an excerpt for the interview. The link will follow.

AMY GOODMAN: Our guests, Mel Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, co-author of the book, Bush League Diplomacy. We're also joined by Bob Parry, veteran investigative journalist, editor of consortiumnews.com, for years worked as an investigative reporter for both Associated Press and Newsweek magazine, where he was key in exposing the Iran-Contra scandal. His latest book is called Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Bob Parry, I’d like to ask you -- Mel Goodman mentioned Bob Gates as being part of the Iran-Contra class, but in this world of ahistorical journalism that we live in today, where very few people -- Iran-Contra is practically ancient history to most of the -- especially the young Americans in this country, could you give us a quick snapshot of what the Iran-Contra scandal was?

ROBERT PARRY: Well, in a synopsis, the Iran-Contra scandal was an effort by the Reagan administration to circumvent various restrictions on carrying out their foreign policy, both in the Middle East and also in Central America.
The Contra part related to the Nicaraguan Contras who were put in place to fight the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. And when Congress tried to cut off that support from the CIA, the Reagan administration went around Congress by having Oliver North of the National Security Council, in essence, sort of oversee this operation of getting weapons and money to the Contras. But it still involved many people in the CIA, even when they were denying they were involved. We now know, based on the investigations, that CIA Director William Casey, who was Bob Gates’s direct supervisor, was deeply involved, as were people lower down the chain, including some of the station chiefs in the field.

In the case of the Middle East, the Reagan administration was carrying out secret policies to arm basically both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. This started, we now know, back in the very early part of the 1980s. By 1981, there were shipments of weapons that had been approved by the Reagan administration that went through Israel to Iran, and that continued on through to the mid-1980s. And at times when the Iranians would get the upper hand in the war with Iraq, the United States would tilt back and start helping the Iraqis, the government of Saddam Hussein. So there were efforts to move weapons through third countries that would help Saddam Hussein in his fight. There was military intelligence that was provided to assist him and even advice on how to use his air force. So there was this whole secret policy that was operating behind the scenes, and the Reagan administration essentially was trying to go around Congress, keep the intelligence committees as much in the dark as possible, and Bob Gates was in the center of almost all of that.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of -- I’d like to get back to Mel Goodman. After initially rejecting Gates for an appointment, the Senate then later confirmed him. In your estimation, what were the changes or what happened that the Senate changed its mind?

MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, I think the Senate didn’t change its mind. The man who changed his mind was David Boren, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and his staff director, George Tenet, who, of course, went on to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency and is/was Mr. Slam Dunk for President George Bush in the Iraq war. Boren and Gates developed a very close relationship over the period of the late ’80s and early ’90s. And Gates gave the impression to Boren that Gates would be very careful in running the CIA, that he would pay a lot of attention to the director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and that he would come to the Intelligence Committee to vet covert operations and certain projects of the CIA.

You can read the whole interview at this link:
http://www.democracynow.org/article..../11/09/1444242