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WASHINGTON, Sept. 23, 2008 – Amid an 80-percent drop in violence and with further withdrawals of U.S. forces in sight, the coalition in Iraq has reached the “endgame,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said here today. “I believe we have now entered that endgame – and our decisions today and in the months ahead will be critical to regional stability and our national security interests for years to come,” he told the Senate Armed Service Committee during a hearing on Iraq and Afghanistan. Highlighting success in Iraq are reductions in U.S. casualties and overall violence, and the handover of...

In defiance of traditional party labels, Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, may ask the defence secretary of President George W Bush to stay on if he wins the White House. Obama’s top foreign policy and national security advisers are pressing the case for keeping Robert Gates at the Pentagon after he won widespread praise for his performance. The move would be in keeping with Obama’s desire to appoint a cabinet of all the talents. After appealing for unity with former rival Hillary Clinton and her supporters and big donors last week, Obama, 46, is turning his attention to wooing...

Barack Obama has never been shy about comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln. He did so when he announced his candidacy at the Illinois state capitol, where both he and Lincoln served in the legislature. "The life of a tall, gangly, self-made Springfield lawyer tells us that a different future is possible," Obama said. "He tells us that there is power in words ... He tells us that there is power in hope." That was, well, audacious, to say the least — and the comparisons have continued, on issues large and small. But the most important similarity, in Obama's mind, is...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Robert Gates says the United States is prepared to share with China some of the information it has about this week's U.S. satellite shootdown. His comments came after Beijing complained the missile strike could cause harm to outer space security and some countries. Gates told reporters during a visit to Hawaii that the United States is prepared to share whatever it can "appropriately" share with China. The Pentagon said earlier that debris from the obliterated satellite is being tracked over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans but appears to be too small to cause damage on...

Bob Gates has fallen and he broke his arm

WILLIAMSBURG, Va., Sept. 17, 2007 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates presented his “realist’s view" of promoting democracy abroad during a speech delivered at the World Forum on the Future of Democracy here today. (Video) Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates speaks during the World Forum on the Future of Democracy in Williamsburg, Va., Sept. 17, 2007. Defense Dept. photo by Cherie A. Thurlby  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Gates said democratic reform takes time, and to abandon Iraq would be a setback for freedom and stability in the region, and it would not be in the United States’...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2007 – Failure in Iraq would empower extremists and have “enormous” consequences for the Middle East and the United States, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today during his appearance on two television news talk shows. Appearing on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Gates said the consequences of failure is a forgotten theme in Washington’s debate about Iraq. “No matter how you feel about how we got to where we are, the consequences of getting this wrong for Iraq, for the region, for us, are enormous,” he told said....

After Rumsfeld, a new dawn? In the American movie Cool Hand Luke - a cult classic in the US - a drunken Paul Newman faces his jailer. "What we have here," intones the captain of Road Prison 36, "is a failure tocommunicate." The movie has provided fodder for a gaggle of bloggers, who now refer to USLieutenant General Douglas E Lute, President George W Bush's new "war czar", as "Cool HandLute". Lute recently made the rounds of official Washington, telling everyone that aside from theadvisability of invading Iraq in the first place (something with which, in private, he had realproblems),...

On shorty....

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Wednesday Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is stepping down and former CIA Director Robert Gates will take over at the Pentagon and in prosecuting the war in Iraq. Rumsfeld, architect of an unpopular war in Iraq, intends to resign after six stormy years at the Pentagon, Republican officials said.