The election night confetti has settled and only the rice cakes remain... untouched.
Donald "Back Off!" Rumsfeld has been sent on to the Robert McNamara Nursing Home and a new man slips behind the desk. He is Robert Gates: the spymaster.
A year ago such a Pentagon selection might have seemed odd but today it seems inevitable.
Let us all recall that Bush the Lame authorized a subtle tinkering with the watchworks there and that the details of the fix had not been made known to relevant Congressional electors. The point of the spear was not mearly sharpened, it was replaced with a depleted uranium tip. Let's call the Pentagon's new point " the Strategic Support Branch"... they do.
It was created to provide the SecDef with an independent tool for the "full spectrum of humint [Human Intelligence] operations."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/... Such Intel operations fall under the purview the president but can seem to those on the business end of the lance to look like war.
Gates, who had bubbled for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, now bursts on to the scene again as the perfect mechanic for the infernal machine.
This forlorn future may be out of reach for any Congress.