4um: Gates: Active force, reserves must integrate

SecDef calls for Congress to mandate that Guard, Reserves have lead in DoD ops in the homeland By William H. McMichael - Staff writer Posted : Wednesday Nov 26, 2008 7:14:48 EST

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates took a giant step Monday toward more tightly blending the active-duty military and reserve components into an “integrated total force,” calling for wide-ranging personnel policy changes, codifying the reserves’ homeland defense role and adequately funding oft-overlooked reserve equipment requirements.

In a Monday memo sent to every senior uniformed and civilian Pentagon leader and copied to three other cabinet secretaries, Gates directed the development of a new Total Force Integration Policy that recognizes the “cultural divide that exists” between the active and reserve components. “All vestiges of the cultural prejudice” that remain in law “should be removed” by Congress, he wrote.

Gates also called upon Congress to “mandate that the National Guard and Reserves have the lead role in and form the backbone of DoD operations in the homeland.”

Congress, the Commission on the National Guard and Reserves it chartered and the Pentagon, Gates wrote in his 41-page memo, “all recognize that the National Guard and the Reserves are integral to the Total Force and have assumed a greater operational role in today’s force.”

The commission distributed the memo Monday evening in advance of the Pentagon’s planned Tuesday release.

Gates endorsed 82 of the 95 recommendations issued by the commission in its final report in January — some of the 82, he noted, have already been completed or are currently being implemented.

Twenty of the 82 recommendations will require the support of Congress; one asks the president to direct all federal agencies to issue guidance emphasizing the importance of reserve service and to prescribe sanctions for civilian supervisors who fail to comply with guidelines regarding treatment of reservists.

The directives and recommendations represent a near-sweeping endorsement of three years of work by the commission, which said that significant reforms were needed to support the reserve component’s relatively new operational status, including management of the reserves as part of an integrated force.

Gates agreed, saying the Pentagon needs to blend the promotion and management of active and reserve enlisted troops and, separately, officers, into integrated manpower systems. Promotions, Gates said, should be based on the achievement of competencies, not just years of service; the services should tailor “the timing of and opportunity for promotion” by career field, “depending on service requirements.” The moves would require legislation.

Two recommendations would be annual budget action items. Gates ordered that designated “lead offices” for the remaining recommendations submit their implementation plans to the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness within 25 days.

“The commission members and I are extremely pleased with today’s announcement,” said commission chairman Arnold Punaro in a statement that accompanied its release of the memo. Gates’ decisions, he said, “were not easy to reach and will not be easy to implement” … but are “changes that are essential if the Guard and Reserves are to remain fully capable of meeting current and future threats.”

Several of the commission’s recommendations have already been adopted, including the elevation of the National Guard to a joint activity of the Defense Department and elevating the National Guard Bureau’s chief to 4-star rank.

* Directed the formation of a senior study group to review the current duty status structure, including the commission's recommendation to reduce the number of duty statuses from 29 to two: on active duty, and off;

* Directed the services to conduct a “baseline review” of reserve component equipment requirements, “some of which remain tied to Cold War force management and a strategic reserve”;

* Directed the Army and Marine Corps to restore their reserve components to the highest level of readiness “as soon as possible” but no later than 2015;

* Directed the bolstering of reserve component family support services programs, particularly for transition assistance during the mobilization and demobilization process;

* Said that senior leaders at service headquarters and large commands “must be held accountable for the readiness and performance” of reserve component forces “within their purview” and that the responsibilities “must be reflected in job descriptions and performance appraisals”;

* Asked Congress to amend the Goldwater-Nichols Act to require reserve officers to be designated as “joint qualified” and, at the end of a 10-year transition period, to make joint qualification “a criterion for promotion to flag and general officer rank”;

* Asked Congress to direct the Pentagon to simplify the Tricare claims and reimbursement process to eliminate current “disincentives that discourage providers from taking part” in the program;

* Asked Congress to create a single entity that would oversee the entire Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act.

Why War Criminal Robert Gates Should Not Be Approved by the Senate as Secretary of Defense

Webster Tarpley: 'Filibuster Al Qaeda Founder Robert Gates'
By Webster Tarpley
911Blogger, Dec 6, 2006
Straight to the Source

(Today, Webster Tarpley released a statement against Robert Gates' nomination as Secretary of Defense. Gates' relationship to the Muj has also recently been explored at the Daily Kos, in a post called, Robert Gates Promoted and Financed Osama Bin Laden. -r.)

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Wednesday, December 6, 2006

"Most damning of all is the fact that Gates was one of the founders of al Qaeda, the CIA's Arab Legion which was assembled to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. Gates is thus part of the infrastructure that produced the patsies of 9/11..."

FILIBUSTER AL QAEDA FOUNDER ROBERT GATES

The nomination of Robert Gates to be Secretary of Defense must be rejected. Gates is deeply implicated in three decades of crimes by the intelligence community. There is no reason to think he intends to begin the necessary rapid departure of US forces from Iraq. His nomination by Bush can only be read as a deliberate provocation directed against the new Democratic Congress. Will the Democrats fight back, or will they capitulate? The American people are watching the Democratic Senators carefully, and they are appalled by the self-congratulatory and clubby narcissism of the Senate at a time when US forces are facing encirclement and decimation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Senators must not only vote against Gates; they must stop the confirmation process with a filibuster. A look at Gates' sordid record shows why.

Robert Gates was an integral part of the gun-running, drug-running, and death squad murders lumped under the heading of the Iran-Contra scandal. Gates started in Iran-contra as a stooge of William Casey, and continued under Bush the elder.

When Gates was nominated by Reagan to be head of the CIA in 1987, his role in Iran-contra crimes was already so filthy and so blatant that he was forced to drop out of contention under questioning. In doing this, Gates was seeking to defend his new master, George H.W. Bush, who at that time was preparing a presidential bid for 1988. The elder Bush was the czar of all Reagan-Bush covert operations, including Iran-contra. Gates fell on his sword to avoid revelations which would have doomed the candidacy of Bush the elder. Payback for Gates came in June 1991, when he was nominated once again to be head of the CIA, this time by Bush the elder. Sam Nunn and some others posed embarrassing questions, but this time the cover-up of Gates' Iran-contra role was supervised by Sen. David Boren of the Bush Skull & Bones clique. The Democrats, intimated by the elder Bush's apparent victory in the first Gulf war, rolled over. If Gates was too dirty to even get to a vote in committee in 1987, how can he be acceptable today? If Democratic Senators like Levin and Biden opposed Gates in 1991, how can they find him acceptable for a much more important post at a time of far greater crisis?

Gates' resume is marked by a total absence of independent and competent judgment. His pedigree is rather that of a stooge who serves powerful masters. The first was Reagan's CIA Director William Casey, the kingpin of Iran-contra. The second was George H.W. Bush, who took over that role from Casey. Gates appears as a Bush family retainer, as when he was tapped by the family in 1999 to become Dean of the George Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. Gates is a secret government toady, not the autonomous figure of integrity required to terminate US involvement in Bush's catstrophic Iraq adventure.

The Bush regime has become infamous for fixing the facts and the intelligence to suit the pre-determined policy of aggression and adventurism. As Pentagon chief, Gates would control the majority of the US intelligence budget. His track record promises nothing but more faked intelligence. In September 1991, Time Magazine cited widespread reports that Gates "cooked the books" while he was at the CIA to support the political demands of the Reagan and Bush regimes. A New York Times editorial of November 4, 1991 concluded that "charges that Mr. Gates slanted intelligence assessments, leaving Congress in the dark and more amenable to administration policy, stand unrefuted." George Shultz reports in his memoirs that he "felt that Gates was giving me an idealized picture of what was an altogether different reality," and complained to Gates on January 5, 1987, "I don't have any confidence in the intelligence community. I feel you try to manipulate me. So you have a very dissatisfied customer. If this were a business, I'd find myself another supplier." The Senate would be well advised to find itself another supplier today. Will Gates resist the new attacks on Iran, Syria. North Korea, demanded by Cheney and the neocons? His assurances in this regard are worthless.

In the final report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, Lawrence Walsh left little doubt that he believed Gates had given perjured testimony during that investigation. But Walsh concluded that the matters involved were so complicated that it would be very difficult to prove them before a jury. For this reason and for no other, Gates did not face criminal charges for perjury.

Most damning of all is the fact that Gates was one of the founders of al Qaeda, the CIA's Arab Legion which was assembled to attack the Soviets in Afghanistan. Gates is thus part of the infrastructure that produced the patsies of 9/11:

According to former CIA Director Robert Gates's memoir From the Shadows, the big expansion of the US covert operation in Afghanistan began in 1984. During this year, "the size of the CIA's covert program to help the Mujaheddin increased several times over," reaching a level of about $500 million in US and Saudi payments funneled through the Zia regime in Pakistan. As Gates recalled, "it was during this period [1985] that we began to learn of a significant increase in the number of Arab nationals from other countries who had traveled to Afghanistan to fight in the Holy War against the Soviets. They came from Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and elsewhere, and most fought with the Islamic fundamentalist Muj groups, particularly that headed by Abdul Resaul Sayyaf. We examined ways to increase their participation, perhaps in the form of some sort of 'international brigade,' but nothing came of it. Years later, these fundamentalist fighters trained by the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan would begin to show up around the world, from the Middle East to New York City, still fighting their Holy War, only now including the United States among their enemies. Our mission was to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan. We expected a post-Soviet Afghanistan to be ugly, but never considered that it would become a haven for terrorists operating worldwide." (Gates 349) But the international brigade Gates talked about was in fact created as the group now known as al Qaeda. (Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror, pp.139-140 )

This is the same al Qaeda which provided the troupe of patsies, psychotics, and double agents (bin Laden, Atta, Moussaoui, etc.) which were used to pin the 9/11 attacks on Arabs and Moslems, instead of the US bankers' rogue network which actually carried out 9/11 for geopolitical reasons. Gates is up to his ears in the terror apparatus of this rogue network, the September criminals who created 9/11.

There can be no question of approving such a candidate. Even the Senate's willingness to hold hearings for so compromised a figure amounts to an obscene farce. In the recent election, Democrats campaigned against the rubber-stamp Republican Congress. These same Democrats dare not rubber stamp the Gates nomination now. In particular, Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate are reminded that if they fail to filibuster Gates, the aroused anti-war base of the Democratic Party will demand accountability on the campaign trail. We do not want bi-partisan sellouts, but rather a real opposition to the Bush regime and its crimes. Above all, we want 9/11 truth as the essential precondition for restoring lawful government.

Webster G. Tarpley Washington DC