Well this is interesting. Medea Benjamin - the titular "leader" of Code Pink, is now lecturing Obama on the need to listen to Code Pink's advice on whom he should install at the Department of Defense. Specifically Code Pink is against Robert Gates remaining at DOD - and they're not afraid to say so.
According to Politico:
Nominating Gates to stay, "would be a violation of the mandate for change that Obama says he represents," said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the anti-war group CodePink.
I'd be more interested in what Medea had to say if she wasn't, you know, a member of the Green Party who has spent the past 8 years running around San Francisco chasing TV cameras, running for the Senate in 2004 as a Green party candidate, disrupting Nancy Pelosi's (and my) neighborhood with 24-hour chanting vigils and organizing ill-fated attempts to boot the Marine Corp out of Berkeley, a stunt which made Berkeley a national laughing stock and led to the council revising its earlier vote calling the Marine Corp "unwelcome intruders" and granting the parking spot in front of the recruiting station to Code Pink.
You can praise her actions and those of Code Pink but have they made a single bit of difference in ending the war in Iraq or bringing our troops home? No - but they certainly have brought a lot of attention onto Medea which is right where she likes it. Wanna know where the most dangerous place in the world is? Not Iraq nor the border between North and South Korea. The most dangerous place in the world is the space between a TV camera and Medea Benjamin.
Who does she think should be the new Secretary of Defense? Her?
Personally I'm unsure as to whether Gates should stay at DOD but I sure as hell don't think Medea Benjamin and her pals in Code Pink are in any position to lecture our new president-elect on whom he should install in that role. I doubt any of Obama's choices for DOD would satisfy the purity progressives in Code Pink.
FYI: Robert Gates is also NOT a Republican. He's never been registered as one.
As Senator Reid said:
In my conversation with Secretary Gates, he's not even a Republican. Why wouldn't we want to keep him? He's never been a registered Republican.