By Tom McInerney &Paul Valley,Human Events
Robert Gates has undergone a transformation
When President Obama announced his National Security Team of Hillary Clinton,Robert Gates and James Jones,we were a bit apprehensive. And that apprehension was,unfortunately,proven justified when Gates announced his 2010 budget on April 6,2009.
The 2010 budget is so different from earlier budgets Defense Secretary Gates helped draft and push through Congress during the last Bush years that we had to wonder:did he have some sort of revelation in which it was revealed to him that the threats to the United States had been vastly reduced?
We should have suspected something was amiss when he made senior military leaders sign Non-Disclosure Agreements —in effect a gag order —so that the Service Chiefs could not discuss details of the coming budget with their staffs or even with Congress. The gag orders even reached to the service vice chiefs of staff who run the services on a daily basis. Gates —who describes himself as the Secretary of War —thus ensured that the Service Chiefs had to rely on their personal skills to convince him of their needs without the support of experts whose only reason for being is to provide analysis and advice to the service leaders.