Former Sec'ty of Defense Gates' talk was very interesting...he elaborated more than I expected he would on the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq and his view that the intelligence we relied on was not thorough (his words), it was not "checked and double-checked" and he is not sure (or so he said) how old the intelligence we relied on actually was...In his opinion, we underestimated SH's capabilities in Bush Sr's Desert Storm and overestimated SH's capabilities in Bush, Jr's 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Gates continues to have high praise for Pres Obama's "gutsy" decision to order the capture/kill of OBL, which was in the planning stages for at least 18mos...given lasting memories of Carter's 1980 failed attempt to free our hostages held in the U.S. Embassy in Iran, he repeated Obama's decision was a "gutsy".
Gates said as much as we don't like (trust) Pakistan, we need them and we have to find a way to deal with them.
Gates spent time talking about the threat coming from Iran and emphasized we cannot solve every problem with bombs (war).
Having been a student of Russian history, Gates devoted some of his talk to today's Russia - Putin will grab power again inspite of the current unrest in Russia and having come from the KGB, Putin still sees the world through that lense - in Gates opinion, Putin governs in the past...Medevedev, a more modern leader with a vision for Russia's future, was never going to last as long Putin was still around.
As far as domestic politics goes Gates touched on it briefly - he feels unless we can set aside our idealogical differences and learn once again to compromise, this country will continue to struggle. When asked during the Q&A session for a phrase he'd use to describe the presidents he served under, he had the highest praise for Ronald Reagan.
Sending Amerians into harm's way weighed heavily on Gates - he described the Friday morning meetings where he was presented with troop deployment recommendations awaiting his approval. He said "all wars end in mud" to drive home the point wars cannot be conducted solely from the air/with drones and eventually there has to be boots on the ground.
Gates talk lasted one hour, afterwhich there was a Q&A session. I would have liked to hear something about North Korea but it was not included in his talk.
Last Sept Robert Gates was named Chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA - he is an undergraduate alumnus of the College and will succeed retired SC Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whose will complete her term in February.
As expected, Robert Gates has a book coming out soon.
Market Data 
Markets 
AI
