Democrats are already questioning the nomination of Robert Gates as the next Secretary of Defense because of his closeness to the Iran-Contra affair of 1987. And I just heard on the radio (no wire story link yet) that Sen. Harry Reid has some questions along those lines.
Meanwhile, from the right, a completely different concern (and a far more serious one) emerges. Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee explains (emphasis his):
Robert Gates, the nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of State was the Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser during the failed 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War that may have led to the mass murder of 100,000 Shiite Iraqis …
The obvious question is, “Did Bob Gates have a hand in shaping Bush’s call for rebellion?”
If so, would he also partially responsible for failing to support
the rebellion, leading to one of Saddam’s greatest genocides? I do not
know the answers to these questions, but they must be asked before he is confirmed as the next U.S. Secretary of Defense.
UPDATE: Do these guys know something? Defense stocks went down yesterday after the announcement that Rumsfeld was leaving.
