Gates may be asked to stay at Defense

CNN:

As each day passes, the buzz is building that Robert Gates might be asked -- and agree -- to stay on as defense secretary, at least for a while.

Gates himself left the door open this year, when I first asked him whether would consider serving in the next administration.

"The circumstances under which I would do that are inconceivable to me," Gates craftily replied in an April Pentagon news briefing.

When I asked him again later in the summer while touring Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, he gave the same answer but added an all-important qualifier: "I've learned never to say never."

Well, those circumstances that seemed "inconceivable" back then appear all too conceivable now. In fact, it's the talk of the Pentagon.

What we know from some of the few people who have actually discussed this with Gates is that he IS willing to stay, although not too long.

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Gates has been a good and lucky Secretary of Defense. He is lucky in the sense that the military finally figured out how to fight counterinsurgency warfare at about the time he came on board. If they had figured it out a two or years sooner, he may never have gotten his shot and Bush would not be nearly so unpopular.

Gates has been good in the sense that he has forced the issue on equipment needed to win the war we are fighting. That means more UAVs and better vehicles for protecting the troops from IEDs. Both have made it easier for us to win in Iraq and Afghanistan. The UAVs have probably been the most important factor in detecting and destroying enemy forces as they move to plant IEDs or attempt to move to contact. They made it easier for us to take advantage of the intelligence we were getting from Iraqis after we started protecting their neighborhoods..