{"id":197717,"date":"2008-01-16T06:05:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T11:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/01\/16\/bob-gates-moron\/"},"modified":"2008-01-16T06:05:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-16T11:05:00","slug":"bob-gates-moron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/01\/16\/bob-gates-moron\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Gates: Moron"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I guess that Robert Gates is just Don Rumsfeld <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">without the charisma<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/world\/la-fg-usafghan16jan16,0,5964173,full.story\">criticising NATO forces for not doing a proper job in Afghanistan<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, he would be a bit more convincing if:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The US had not allowed Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar get away because they were too timid about potential US casualties.<\/li>\n<li>Bush and His Evil Minions<sup>\u2122<\/sup> hadn&#8217;t simply dropped a not-yet pacified south to go after Saddam, who had <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">nothing<\/span> to do with 911.<\/li>\n<li>If US tactics in the south weren&#8217;t so violent and indiscriminate (particularly the bomb happy USAF), that the <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2007\/08\/brits-to-us-sod-off-in-afghanistan.html\">British weren&#8217;t asking US special forces to get the hell out<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If US aid policies in Afghanistan weren&#8217;t primarily for the benefit of <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2007\/11\/us-spending-on-afthan-aid-inadequate.html\">US contractors who were Republican donors<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>If the US wasn&#8217;t juxtaposing this incompetence in delivering aid with an aggressive anti-opium program that leaves Afghan farmers with a choice between aiding the Taliban or starving.<\/li>\n<li>The US wasn&#8217;t currently limiting its operations in the east, where Taliban activity is minimal.<\/li>\n<li>If the US were not committing a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">smaller proportion<\/span> of its military to Afghanistan than the NATO allies.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Is there a single competent Republican party Apparatchik in this entire nation?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I guess that Robert Gates is just Don Rumsfeld without the charisma. He&#8217;s criticising NATO forces for not doing a proper job in Afghanistan. Of course, he would be a bit more convincing if: The US had not allowed Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar get away because they were too timid about potential &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,964,982,1076,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-foreign-relations","category-stupid","category-terrorism","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}