Swinging Gates

If only this was a reference to the SecDef's personal life:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he believes Iran is "hell bent" on acquiring nuclear weapons, but he warned in strong terms of the consequences of going to war over that.

"Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need and, in fact, I believe it would be disastrous on a number of levels," he said in a speech he was delivering Monday evening at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

Summary: Iran getting nuclear weapons will be a disaster, but we're not going to do what it will take to stop them.  Or, "Bleep the ounce of prevention, we'll wait and pay through the nose for the pound of cure."

And you wonder why I maintain that war with Iran, on their terms, is inevitable.

Secretary Gates' irresolute double-talk wasn't limited to Iran:

Gates also said that if the war in Iraq is not finished on favorable terms the consequences could be dire.

"It is a hard sell to say we must sustain the fight in Iraq right now, and continue to absorb the high financial and human costs of this struggle, in order to avoid an even uglier fight or even greater danger to our country in the future," he said.

But he added that the U.S. experience with Afghanistan — helping the Afghans oust Russian invaders in the 1980s only to abandon the country and see it become a haven for Osama bin Laden's terrorist network — makes it clear to him that a similar approach in Iraq would have similar results.

But....

He called a drawdown of U.S. forces in Iraq "inevitable," with the debate mainly over timing.

So which is it?  Are we staying in Iraq (and Afghanistan) with sufficient forces to hold that territory and deny it to al Qaeda (and Iran), or aren't we?  Particularly if we're already as much as declaring that we're going to sit with our collective thumb up our collective ass and let the Iranian mullahgarchy go nuclear?

That leaves only two things left to say: Robert Gates ain't no "Big Dog" Rumsfeld (which was why the Donk Senate confirmed him); and with the outgoing Bush Administration essentially waving the white flag at Tehran on every front, can national security even be a bona fide contested issue in the 2008 campaign?