Dems take a dive on the Gates nomination

I hope this is not a sign for the next two years. But the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agreed unanimously to recommend Bush's nominee Robert Gates for approval as Secretary of Defense.

I think this is a big mistake. A mistake because Gates is a bad guy to have as SecDef, a mistake because the Dems needed to make this much more of an examination of failed Bush policies, a mistake because the Dems look like they rolled over for a White House push to get him approved before they take leadership of the Senate.

Gates promised to conduct a review of the Iraq War with all options on the table. After a war that's already lasted longer than the Second World War did for the US, he doesn't have any better idea in mind than to look at "all options"?

Carl Levin, incoming Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, gushed over him:

Incoming Democratic committee chairman Carl Levin of Michigan predicted that Gates would be quickly confirmed, adding that the new Defense chief brought a "welcome breath of honest, candid realism to the situation in Iraq that has been missing" up to now from the administration.

Levin co-sponsored the notorious legal provision denying prisoners at Guantanamo the right to appeal to US courts to show cause why they are being detained, i.e., habeus corpus.

With this kind of candor, he should fit in well with the Cheney-Bush administration. Gates made early headlines by agreeing that the US was not winning the Iraq War:

But, later on after the lunch break, Gates "clarified" his response for the sake of US troops in the field who "might have misunderstood what [he] said."

"I want to make clear that pertains to the situation in Iraq as a whole," Gates said. "Our military forces win the battles that they fight. Our soldiers have done an incredible job in Iraq, and I'm not aware of a single battle that they have lost."

Gates said that the U.S. "is going to have to have some presence in Iraq for a long time."

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