lol After reading your quick summary/bio on him, I believe my assumptions of him are correct. He’s been around DC for an awfully long time. Not many people hang around DC that long without becoming more of a political person than anything else. He WAS an officer in the Air Force, but that was a long time ago.
It would be nice to have a SECDEF that is/was a real ‘warrior’ at one time or another, but I’d imagine the fighters rarely kiss enough ass to reach the top of the political ladder in DC.
The NeoCons resent Gates because he served in the Iraq Study Group and was a symbol of their fall from power.
Some of those NeoCons blame Gates for Bush abandoning Scooter to die on the political battlefield.
However all that played out, the Realists are running foreign policy now.