"How the War Hawks Caged Obama" by Robert Parry (11-30-09 Consortium News)

[bobthedrummer]

"Two of President Barack Obama's most acclaimed Cabinet appointments-keeping Republican Defense Secretary Robert Gates and picking former Democratic rival Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State- set the risky course that his administration is following toward a military escalation in Afghanistan."

Lots of deep history in this article too, even though the CIC has made his decision-a very fateful one for US.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/113009.html

[bobthedrummer]

1. A bit quick on the unrec tonight aren't we my trolls...

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Ah seed ma chanst an ah tuk it

ta putcha onna Gratest Page.

Rec #5 Yee-Hah!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. The new boss has met the real bosses and decided to play it their way.

[polichick]

3. Fascinating - I especially like this bit...

"Though Washington’s conventional wisdom remains enamored of those two “Team of Rivals” appointments – and especially the bipartisan appeal of the Gates selection – it is increasingly apparent that warnings from the Democratic rank-and-file about the need to make a clean break with Bush-era warmongering carried some real-life wisdom."

Many supporters (including me) thought it was best to choose people who would break with Bush-era warmongering.

[Kolesar]

5. Supposed Warhawk Robert Gates was one of old Bush's guys who advised AGAINST the Iraq War

That sure was a long article. Somebody tell me if it came to a point.

[Gregorian]

6. So exactly who is running this country?

After a discussion similar to the OP here, I stood up and asked "Who is running the country?".

Any pie chart will visually show just what is the single most important part of this country. Sadly, it is not one we need. But it is one of choice. One which deprives us of the money we so desperately need for other things.

We know the president's real power is only the power to persuade. So who is running this country?

[Kolesar]

7. The bankers run this country

I don't understand your second paragraph.

[Gregorian]

8. The Pentagon runs this country.

That's where our tax dollars go. And that is who is making Obama's decisions.

[Individualist]

11. DLC

That's why we're seeing a continuation of the neocons' war policies.

[optimator]

9. there is a possibility that he agreed to begin with

we need to make a list of the logical reasons why obama abdicated.

[democrank]

10. It`s settled. Junior Bush was right.....

War is peace.

[blm]

12. 8 years after 9-11 and so many Americans STILL never looked into the matters that set it in motion.

Everything happening since 9-11 is rooted in the decades of illegal operations being conducted by the Bushes and their global fascist cronies before 9-11.

And SOME of Bush's cronies are still in positions of power and influence. Some even wear donkey masks.

[G_j]

13. “He’s either going to let the Pentagon run him or he has to run the Pentagon,”

http://www.heraldsun.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Hersh-+Military+waging+war+with+White+House%20&id=3974209-Hersh-+Military+waging+war+with+White+House&instance=homethirdleft

Hersh: Military waging war with White House

By Neil Offen

[e-mail]; 419-6646

DURHAM — The U.S. military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most renowned investigative journalist says.

The army is also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have Obama boxed in,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several hundred people in Duke University’s Page Auditorium on Tuesday night. “They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.”
<snip>

“He’s either going to let the Pentagon run him or he has to run the Pentagon,” Hersh said. If he doesn’t, “this stuff is going to be the ruin of his presidency.”

,snip.

[chill_wind]

14. "The time for making those personnel decisions was really a year ago

The time for making those personnel decisions was really a year ago, before the inauguration. To clean house now – less than a year into his presidency – would prompt serious questions about Obama’s executive judgment.

It also can’t be said that Obama wasn’t warned. Here at Consortiumnews.com, for instance, we ran story after story raising questions about whether Gates, a longtime Bush Family operative known for his behind-the-scenes maneuvering, would end up undermining Obama’s presidency.

Our articles pointed out that Gates has long collaborated with neocons promoting the foreign policies and intelligence strategies that have brought the United States to its present circumstances.

Gates was linked to secret arms sales in the early 1980s to both Iraq and Iran as the two countries fought an eight-year war. However, because Gates had influential friends among Democrats – the likes of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David Boren – as well as Republican allies, investigations into Gates’s roles in the Iran-Contra and Iraqgate scandals faltered.

Purging the Analysts

Also, as an ambitious CIA bureaucrat in the early 1980s, Gates became CIA Director William Casey’s action officer in breaking down the CIA analytical division’s tradition of providing objective assessments to the President and other senior policymakers.

As Casey’s choice to head that division, Gates purged analysts who wouldn’t go along with the politicization and promoted those who would, a distortion of a core CIA function that has had devastating consequences through this current decade and the disastrous Iraq War."

(...)

A lot of us thought that, at the time.

[bobthedrummer]

15. "Rising Military Suicides" by John Donnelly (Congress.org)

"The pace is faster than combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan."
http://www.congress.org/news/2009/11/25/rising_military_suicides

Hosea 10:13 (The Living Bible)
"But you have cultivated wickedness and raised a thriving crop of sins. You have earned the full reward of trusting in a lie-believing that military might and great armies can make a nation safe!"
:cry:

[bobthedrummer]

16. A kick before President Obama's address tonight-someone else can kick after

[conscious evolution]

17. K&R

[bobthedrummer]

18. We support our troops-kick